This past weekend I went to Yilan and learned how to surf! Four other people and I rented one long board + our own personal surf instructor for the entire day for a whopping total of 150NT, or about 5US$ each. First, they taught us how to jump on the board while the board was still stable on the sand.
Then we jumped in the water and tried it! The water was pretty cold for Taiwan standards, but still warmer than Lake Mich at ANY time of the year. The surf instructor held the surf board for me, I laid down, and he pushed me onto the wave. If I didn't immediately fall off, I kind of stood on the board, but then immediately fell off after that. The falling off part wasn't so fun, especially since I got sand in places that sand should never be. But surfing was pretty cool and I'd recommend trying it at least once. I'm not rushing to go back and do it again, but I'd definitely go if the opportunity came.
Not only was it super cheap to do, but the guys who we rented from gave us a ride back for free. They just let a group of 5 randos hop in their SUV and drove us back. I'm blown away by the kindness of the Taiwanese some times... can you imagine letting a group of foreigners who didn't speak English into your car that you didn't know and driving them around for free? I didn't think so. The moral system here is very different from back home. Things like that aren't uncommon - the Taiwanese can be downright nice in ways that Americans rarely are.
For instance, I clearly don't know Chinese, but I still have to function in society. I order food out a lot and use a variety of techniques.
- The point and giggle. This technique works best in places with pictures and people who are sympathetic to my illiteracy.
- Have a coworker write down what I want on a piece of paper in Chinese and I hand the paper over to the worker. This is a bit more effective but still embarrassing.
- Other desperate measures are acting out the type of animal I want to eat. I once moo-ed to a waiter.
Why not just speak Chinese to them? Oh, because nobody has any idea what the fuck I'm saying when I speak Chinese. The tones are ridiculously hard for me and I've pretty much just given up.
Anyway, for the most part, people put up with this ridiculousness and try to help me out when ordering food or buying something. Occasionally someone will pop up and translate for me if the worker can't speak English. I try to at least start in Chinese every time to not be rude, but I know some less culturally sensitive people who just walk up and speak English to the workers. And you know what? A lot of them don't mind and really try to help. They even apologize for not speaking English better. Seriously?! I'm in your country! Imagine that back home... someone just walking up to a worker and speaking Spanish? Hells to the no. Pointing at a picture to order food? You might get service, but the workers most likely would be gossiping about you and secretly telling you to "go back to your country" or "learn some friggen' English already." I can't comprehend that situation working back home.
Don't take this as a Taiwanese > Americans or that Americans > Taiwanese. Although the Taiwanese have proven to be kind in ways that would probably not happen back in the States, we similarly have several courtesies that aren't practiced here often. People bump into me without apologizing, rarely hold doors open for each other, don't follow traffic laws AT ALL, and even the most decent of people pull illegal activities all the time, like companies reporting less income so they pay less taxes (happens A LOT). Oh, and I'm illegal here. Even though I do work for Hess, all the kindergarten teachers are technically not allowed to teach and to the government officials, we don't exist and our companies just lie about us. The police have come into my work and I've had to hide on the roof. Seriously. So both cultures have their awesome points and low points.
Speaking of low points, I got robbed last week :-/ I had 10,000 NT, or around 350US$, sitting in an envelope in my apartment and last Sunday I noticed the envelope was missing.
It sucks because I've always felt like Taipei was a really safe place. I never thought I'd actually have someone break into my apartment and steal money. Luckily, they only stole the cash and didn't take my laptop or any electronics. But still, it's not fun getting robbed, especially weeks after I buy an insanely expensive plane ticket to Africa and don't have a bunch of cash to throw away.
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Since I live in Taiwan and internet sites register this, I keep getting ads in Chinese, despite the fact that I can read hardly any Chinese symbols. These three symbols constitute about half of what I can read: 一二三. They mean yī, èr, sān, or 1, 2, 3. I know, I know, you're super impressed that it only took me 8 months to learn such complicated symbols. Anyway, sometimes I'm curious and my browser, google chrome, will translate it. For instance, when I saw this ad, I wanted to know wtf it was trying to tell me. Today, I was curious and translated, and I got this gem.
I was blown away by the depth of this ad. Clearly green men are being used in a metaphorical sense, and the repetition is surely a literary tool of geniousness. How could only 1,736 people like this?!
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