I just found out about this website that can help you learn languages amongst other things for free. I'm quite surprised. Before I went to Taiwan, I was surfing around the web, searching for online opportunities to learn Japanese, then Chinese after it was decided I should go to Taiwan. All I found of free stuff was a few articles with useful words that weren't helping much with learning and weren't really newbie friendly. And then there were also some subscription based services with podcasts and stuff that looked more interesting, which I did, however, decide not to try out.

Anyway: Here's an interesting website which is mostly free I guess. (Actually, where do they earn their money? Users donating or affiliated services?)

Regardless of that, you can try it out at Smart.fm. (Here's My Profile, if you wanna socialize.)

I just tried out a Chinese and a French lesson. Maybe I could use this one to keep my Chinese fresh or even avoid failing my French exam next year if I work hard.

Seems one can also study geography and the period table with more and it's free, so if you have time and feel there might be something you'd like to learn using simple computer games, you should try and take a look.

I also just got back from Taiwan. I'm now in Denmark so it's a little late already. Here's my blog on boonbot.com about me going back home.

Didn't really take any photos recently. Been busy going to school.

Yeah, school just started for me. School started this Monday (1st of March) and it started really well. It's really great now. Everything is much better for me: I can speak not just more English with students, but also gets the chance to use my Chinese much more with students that have time for other things but studying and are more outgoing.

I've really been feeling like just going straight home to Denmark lately. The weather was really depressing during the Chinese new year. (Chinese New Year lasts more than one night. It's essentially a Chinese counterpart to Christmas where people will have vacation and eat traditional food and go to temples n' stuffs.) One American I met told me it has probably been the worst (coldest, rainiest) Chinese New Year the last five years.
Not that it compares with Denmark, though. The sea froze and it's been the coldest winter since 23 years ago. Damn. That's at least one good reason to be far away in Taiwan.

Actually I'm more than halfway through the exchange program. When I look back upon my last ~6 months here I feel pretty empty. Really. They were a waste of time and I wasn't really as happy most of the time as I had preferred. Got to see a lot of stuff and got me a nice foundation for learning Chinese. But except for the first about one or two months I'd say the time could've been used more efficiently. Am not exactly unhappy about only having so little time left apart from feeling I've wasted away my first half year seeing more and more empty space between the good times. Don't misunderstand me. When I write in my earlier blogposts that I really like Taiwan and being here too, I mean it. Just been having to hide away the bad things more and more lately.

You could say that during the Chinese New Year, I got into what most people with their pocket philosophy would deem as Culture Shock (or Language Shock, anyone?). Not that I agree completely when skimming through wikipedia once again, but seeing as people kind of interpret it as something simply like feeling down because you're lonely and being a foreigner at the same time. Wouldn't say it's exactly the culture that's the problem myself, although. The language is a somewhat bigger player, but that should be manageable by taking the right precautions. All in all, I don't care much about the recent time.

Coming time is hopefully (and seemingly) going to be much better. It's getting hotter again. (Taiwan's weather is crazy these days. One day I'm covered up in thick jackets while inside or outside of the house so as to prevent another cold or flu of suddenly getting foothold. The next day it's summer. (Well, in Taiwan it's called spring but like I care.) Suddenly I'll have to throw off most of my clothes to survive outside and spin the aircon up during the night so as to be able to sleep.

I love hot days, of course. I know from the time when I arrived to Taiwan that it sometimes might just get a little uncomfortable with so much heat, but I'd dislike the slightest bit of cold weather more. Everything is just so much more nice with all this sun. You get enough sunlight so as to get rid of that nasty winter depression that gets to me every year. You can wear light clothes. Might just make you feel a little better looking, and of course, it works really great on everyone else. Especially the young people around here. Most of the girls in Taiwan are hot. And then they get hotter. And for girl readers: Of course the guys do so too. Maybe even more. Girls will often show their legs in various uniforms from school or work even during winter. (How can they stand it?)
But yeah, anyway, there's generally more beautiful people during hot and sunny days, agree not agree?

Also, you'll sweat a lot and thus have to drink a lot more. (Here, you don't have to worry about sweat that much. Taiwan is generally a smelly place and people don't care much about their own smell anyway, so it'll be hard to distinguish your bad sweaty-smell amongst all the others. Besides, with all that sweat, I bet a bigger percentage of it must be water. I don't know. Even though sweat would be dripping from me, sometimes from just climbing a stair, it doesn't seem to have such bad an effect.)
About drinking more. In Denmark it's probably a bother. You have to carry a big bottle around or even pay a fortune in convenience stores if you can find one, should you need some hydration. Here, there's drink shops everywhere serving the most delicious tea and they'll charge you almost nothing. Well, if some 45 NT$ for a just-mixed delicious fruit tea with ice around the corner is too much or if you live in one of the rare not-so trafficked areas, you could head around another corner and buy refrigerated drinks at 25 NT$ a litre.

My Chinese did improve a lot I'd say. Actually to the Taiwanese here, it would probably sound more hilarious than a Google translation from French to Danish. You could say, Danes are probably often amused listening to immigrants who try to speak Danish, seeing as Danish is an immensely hard language to pronounce correctly. My Chinese is probably worse, but I use it where English can't be applied or where I just feel I'd like to make that order right away instead of waiting for some Engrish-speaking clerk to get dragged over at my place. I've been using it a lot. Even went to play arcade games and competed with other Jubeat enthusiasts and getting a new experience out of the game today. That's something that you can't do if you only speak English. People who have an interest in arcade machines apparently don't speak a single word of English apart from those words the machines will occasionally burst out.

Yeah. It's going to be better. Because if it doesn't, I'm jumping on a plane back to cold Denmark where I know ppls and can do almost anything I want. Just for now, it seems I might not need to consider that possibility at least for now. Taiwan is a great place. Just wish it wasn't so goddamned traditional.

Cool title huh?

Today, I started my mandarin class in the Mandarin Daily News Language Center. I'm going to go there every day between 10 am and 12 am = I only have to go to school in KaiNan Highschool between 1 pm and 4 pm, which is to live with. This is for september so far. at the end of september, I have hopefully learned bopomofo and a bit more mandarin, and by then I will have to find out what I'd like to do about my mandarin lessons for october. But that depends very much of how much I have learned by then.

When I finished my mandarin class today, I went to KaiNan Highschool and could suddenly distinguish male from female amongst my classmates, for people were wearing the standard uniform today, which means there is a difference in how the two genders are dressed. (Although, the school has a policy about hairstyle too, so I could actually just look at peoples hair yesterday to determine their gender.)

But you see, taiwanese teenagers look extremely young compared to their age, and even though most of my classmates are already 17 years old, they look like they just went into puberty a few months ago. I heard they should behave pretty much like they look too, but of course I can't confirm that yet. I do, after all, not understand a word of what they're saying anyway. They seem like very nice persons though, although it can be a little hard with all the attention most of them seem to have a very strong urge for when around me.

Today, I took no pictures, so I'll just post one that Joni took of me, while I visited Longshan Temple and still had a beard. 

On my way to my first day of school in Taiwan, I felt a little relieved, because Joni told me I didn't have to do the chinese speech in front of the whole school today.

Luckily, we did bring my speech anyway:

You can probably read on my face that I think this is rather ridiculous. I'm reading up from a paper, only knowing about half of it's meaning (like wo laizu danmai, ku-y-tse and stuff like that), but I got over it without going completely black, which is rather surprising with all those what... 2-5 thousand people standing around everywhere and looking at me. I have no idea how many people that were standing in the middle of the school, but damn, I don't think I've ever seen so many people in one place before.

So I got over the part I feared the most. (I think and hope a month will pass before I have to make another speech in chinese, when I am going to the next monthly rotary meeting in banchiao rotary club.) And afterwards, I went to school for 8 long hours with only a few mandarin learning books to entertain me, sitting at a tiny, taiwanese size desk where my legs couldn't even really fit in under. Haha. At least the air conditioning is ok, which is actually rather important. I wouln't know what to do if it weren't. The school is, super strict though. It's so strict it's actually kind of like a prison. A guard will keep you from getting out untill you're off from school, guards patrol the school to see if students are sleeping, eating or drinking while the class in on (in order to enforce teachers to be strict.) and while you have sleeping class between 12 am and 1 pm, you will be able to see a guard passing by the class, checking on the students through the window every 3 minutes to see if they are sleeping or trying to.

Oh, but there is one good thing about the school, though: The girls uniform. (Sorry girls, but I am but a man. xD)

Too bad for me that my class had physical education that day, which means everyone wears a sports uniform with big jogging trousers.

As always, people are very friendly, and even though no one can speak english very well, (not even the english teachers,) they all try their best to help me. I've even been invited to a tour around taipei or something alike sometime by the english teacher in my class.

But then after school: 

Later that day, Joni took me to some peculiar massage clinic where they stretch people and give them a massage afterwards. For me, the methods seemed quite ruff. I got my spine stretched a little and then my back kneaded, and it wasn't really super relaxing, but it was my first time, so I don't know if it's I'm just sensitive or maybe not used to it, or if it's just supposed to not be relaxing, but at least I think it worked a little, even though I did the stretching part wrong. (And I bet my back is a mess from all those years of not holding a good posture too.)

Maybe I will get used to it over time if I come there again. Maybe not. But it seems like Joni is rather used to it. (I have to note down anything that could be a reason for the people over here to be so much more healthy than us westeners.)

Finally: I have a link for you to flickr. Forgot to post it yesterday, so here is a link to a collection of the pictures I took in Taiwan. So far there's just some pics from the trip with David and his family so far, but they're good quality: Taiwan (clicky).