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.

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).