Hunker Down

Dude! If anyone wants to know. I'm okay. I had to hunker down in the hotel room this entire weekend. Apparently this typhoon was a pretty big one and shut down the entire country. The eye of the storm passed right over Taipei so it has been super wet and rainy for the past few days. Peter and I were able to venture out a bit to see debris all over the roads and up-rooted trees. The east side of Taiwan was severly affected with flooding, landslides, and roads washed away. I had planned on going to Taroko gorge to do some hiking, but that may be dangerous. I'll need to see if the weather clears up before going (biggest danger is falling rocks).

After some though, I decided to get my own room instead of sharing with Peter. It will be an extra $300 per month, but totally worth it. Peter has been obsessing about a couple girls who he has met during his stay here. It is almost unbearable hearing him talk about these girls all the time. Any subject we talk about inevitably morphs into a discussion of his relationship with these women.

My first day of Mandarin class was great. I have one on one instruction, so I will dictate the speed of the material we cover. I get the feeling that I will profit very little with only one month of Mandarin. However, it should give me a good base to start. I hope that being in Taiwan will also speed the learning process. On the other hand, my Taiwanese has improved tremendously. There are still many people (typically older folks) who still use Taiwanese regularly. My vocabulary is coming back and I have been able to get by a little bit understanding and speaking some. My knowledge base for Taiwanese covers mostly what I learned up to about 5-6 years old from my grandparents and cousins. That means I know a lot of fart and booger jokes in Taiwanese.