What does that say??

It can be very difficult to look words up in Chinese because of the characters.  Mostly we just don't worry about anything that's written or have someone read it for us, but occasionally you really need to understand something and no one is around.  I've found a website - nciku - that will let you draw the character without knowing the correct order of the strokes.  It can be tedious with more complex characters or if you have many characters to read, but if there are just a few words this tool can be very helpful.  Now, if a button accidentally gets pushed on our air conditioning remote I know which one to push to get it back.

Zhōngqiū jié kuàilè! - Happy moon festival!

Mid-autumn festival, or moon festival is upon us.  During the last week we have had many sorts of mooncakes - red bean, taro, pomelo, pineapple and a few others that remain a mystery.  Most we like, some we don't, but like steamed buns it's always a risk biting into one as the middle could be anything (including meat)!

Today we topped all those desserts off with BBQ at a friend's house:

Back to basics

We have started to learn Chinese. Step 1: Learn the sounds. Children in Taiwan all learn a phonetic alphabet called BoPoMoFo, or Zhuyin Fuhao, so we are too. In the picture above you can see our workbook where we are learning to write the first two "letters". Flashback to kindergarten! Jeremiah and I quickly realized it is not easy learning how to write a new alphabet. The alternative to learning this alphabet is to use pinyin, which is a romanization to represent chinese sounds (which is difficult because the sounds we know from english don't always correspond with the sound in chinese). Our flashcards have both bopomofo and pinyin.

PS Awesome pen, right? I sure do eat a lot of carrots, why not write with one? Thanks TK, I love it!

Awkward elevator chit chat

We use the elevator in our building almost every day.  Most of the time we ride alone, but sometimes we share with another couple, a group of kids, or the lone old man or woman.  Sometimes we ride in silence or talk to our respective groups, sometimes smile at one another, or my favorite - share cheerful "ni haos".  Every once in awhile someone tries to strike up a conversation in Chinese.  Normally we apologetically say in English "no Chinese".  Last time, however, I wasn't thinking and said it in Chinese.  Well, I tried to say it.  In the moment I got flustered and instead said either "You don't speak Chinese?" or "I don't speak Chinese?" (I can't really remember what I started with because I was so focused on the fact that I had accidentally turned the statement into a question).  The old man laughed at me.

We're trying out Chinese lessons this week.  Maybe next time I ride with him I will be able to correctly put together a statement.  Or maybe I should just stick with ni hao.

Good Fortune

 

One day this sign appeared on my office door.  The sign is the character for "good fortune" and is hung upside down, because the Mandarin word for “upside down,” dao, is a homonym of the word “arrival” and thus represents the “arrival” of prosperous times.

Wall Art

The Chinese word for fish (yu 鱼) is pronounced the same as the word for "abundance" or “surplus” (余), so fish decorations are popular during the Chinese New Year.  We've got these fishies hanging in our apartment.

Guo Nian

Look around town and you'll see red and gold, everywhere - lamps, clothes, signs, couplets, flowers, etc. Shops are well stocked and busy.  Children are excited to have a break from school.  Travel plans have been arranged for families to visit one another. Chinese New Year is almost upon us.

I've done a little research on the story behind Chinese New Year, and this is what I've gathered from a few different sources. (Anyone have anything to correct or add... please leave a comment!)

Depiction of the Nian from here

Legend tells of a terrible beast called Nian (or Nien) who would come to villages to satisfy his appetite, eating the people, as well as their livestock and crops.  One year, an old man offered to help them with their problem. He said to Nian: "I hear that you are very capable, but can you swallow the other beasts instead of people who are by no means your worthy opponents?"  Nian took the challenge and ate many of the beasts that hurt people, livestock and pets and thus these beasts were frightened back to the forests. This old man turned out to be an immortal god and before flying back to heaven he told the villagers that they should put up red decorations each new year to scare away Nian in case he decided to come back (in other versions of the story the villagers discovered that the Nian was scared of loud noise and red so they chased him away without the help of a god). The villagers enjoyed their peaceful lives, each year hanging red lanterns and red scrolls on their doors and in their windows to keep away the Nian and also lighting firecrackers to frighten him if he tried to come back.

 A very different depiction from here

Since then, the term "guo nian" has the meaning of "pass-over" or "survive" the nian (the word for "year") and is sononomous with New Year.

Ni hui shuo Yingwen ma?

Yesterday we went on the same hike we went on last weekend, only this time we stopped every once in awhile to actually look up at the scenery. At the top we got some noodles with the assistance of a nice woman who, seeing our struggle with knowing what was available and how to communicate to the man what we wanted, explained what was in each pot and then ordered for us.



While it was delicious, we were hungry again by the time we reached home. We stopped at a stall that we walk by almost everyday but have never stopped at. Unlike the carts we go to, her food was not out so we couldn't just point at what we wanted. Nor did we know if she even had anything that we could eat. So, I used one of the two sentences I know in Chinese - do you speak English? I didn't expect her to, but it never hurts to ask. She responded with a bunch of words I didn't understand - it could have been "crazy lady, what are you talking about? What language are you speaking?" for all I know - because I have no clue if I pronounce anything correctly. I told her we didn't want meat, and she understood that. Jeremiah used the translate function on his iphone and asked her for no meat and no eggs, that we were vegetarian. Through lots of back and forth with the lady and another customer who knew a little english we got our food. The best part of this story for me is the end. It was time to pay, we just didn't know how much. This is the other of the two sentences I know - how much does it cost? - so from my seat where I was trying to talk to the other customer I said it in Chinese. And the lady I was talking to looked impressed and said "that was right!" and "very good!" This made my day. I felt like the kid who finally got an answer right in school. Maybe I'll up my Chinese knowledge to three sentences soon!

What's different you ask?

We've obviously made some adjustments and changes since coming to Taiwan. These are some of the things I've noticed recently that we do in Taiwan that are different from home.
We:
-use chopsticks (duh, right? But, a recent email from my uncle outlining the many uses of a cane reminded me that chopsticks also have many uses, though not done in public so we don't offend the local people. They make great pointers, head scratchers, poking devices, etc.)
-eat buns that have beans tucked inside (and we like them)

Picture from here

-don't pay attention to the lines on the road when driving; the government must have thought they would be a good idea, but drivers have a different idea
-eat out a lot

-drive to work in 10 minutes
-comment on how cool it feels when the temperature drops below 85
-buy meals from street vendors

-speak a few chinese words (When Jeremiah doesn't understand someone he turns to me and asks "Allison, what are they saying?" like I'm going to know. Most of the time I have no idea.)
-get cold tea delivered to us at school once a week
-park anywhere we can (even sidewalks)

-walk in the street because 1) there are hardly any sidewalks, and 2) when there are sidewalks they are either parked on or the shops are spilling out from their building onto the sidewalk and streets
-drink coke instead of pepsi
-have our laundry done by someone else
-sometimes run red lights, but never turn right on a red
-go to 7-11 often (to pay bills, get cash, as a breakfast stop on the way to school...)
-talk to our families through skype, emails and cards

-notice flashes of dark movements out of the corner of our eye and pray it's a gecko and not a cockroach (well, this is mostly for me, though jeremiah probably hopes so too because cockroaches mean we have to catch and release; geckos can just hang out)
and... last but not least
-get to hold super cute Taiwanese babies (as much as Lisa hopes this is our baby so she can be a grandma, it isn't :)

a-musings

random thoughts and observations from the first few days

-when you wake up on an overnight flight to someone speaking to you in chinese, asking you what you want to drink, you feel like they’re messing with you… until you come to your senses and realize they’re not
-allison looks so cute standing in the middle of a hundred foreigners at sfo
-when it gets really humid, your sandals stick to your feet when you walk
-after walking out of customs at the airport in taipei, we (well, i) almost turned around and walked back on the plane when i didn’t see someone with our name on a poster. fortunately, allison slapped some sense into me and said we should just keep looking and not give up so soon. sunny showed up a minute later
-all the new teachers here have amazing stories about other countries they’ve taught at. we don’t, but we will
-i miss my mom and dad, but will see them in december!
-allison is doing amazing and seems to be adapting even better than i am
-chinese characters look nothing like english (duh), but it is fun pretending like some of them look similar at the grocery store, until you realize that you’re telling someone that the character for soy milk looks like the same character for motor oil. wrong.
-greeting someone with “ni hao” (hello) in chinese, isn’t always the best thing to do because they assume you know a little chinese, which we don’t. but that doesn’t stop me from doing it!
-having a $100 dollar taiwanese bill in your hands isn’t as fun when it only equals $3 in the US
-sweating non stop all day + not being able to read anything at the grocery store = weight loss
-one of the teachers here was an extra in chasing amy. oops, asked him about 75 too many questions about the movie once i found that out.
-we’re excited for our moms to send us comfort packages, but we’re not going to ask them to. (and yes, we know they read this blog)
-i could see allison’s “i’m a little overwhelmed” feeling go away after she bought some cheerios, cleaning supplies, and matching cute bowls, plates, and glass (it’ll go away even more once we get that fridge)
-we have two extra rooms and are hoping for visitors (anytime!)
-our school is actually in the jungle.
-taiwanese scooter drivers have balls of steel. no, titanium
-the fact they have a costco here wasn’t comforting. it was kind of sad.
-i need to learn to speak chinese, and how
-our doorbell sounds like a bird chirping
-i can’t wait to see peter again
-you can’t flush any paper down the toilet. see-ick.
-allison is quickly learning the importance of looking both ways
-allison just said “jermeiah is quickly learning that scooters go really fast and needs to tell her to run, not walk” when 20 of them are barreling down on us”
-starbucks and mcdonalds have internet, but it isn’t free. learned that the hard way after walking ten minutes to starbucks and another ten minutes to mcdonalds. was still fun though.
-it is fun having three people try to help you at mcdonalds just because you’re american
-not having a fridge isn’t half bad when you eat out a lot. and by eat out, i don’t mean fast food, i mean, rice, fresh veggies, and amazing tofu for every meal
-they have guinness and it is the dark export stuff
-charades is even more fun when it is cross cultural
-it was nice talking to my mom, dad, brother, and sister on the phone. actually, it was very nice
-is it college football season yet?
-we love it when people comment on our blog because it lets us know you’re out there
-i didn’t need to bring ten pairs of a pants
-i love having allison here with me, even if she is sitting next to me practicing her chinese lessons and confusing the hell out of me

bye. have a great day!

Preparations

As we get ready to move to Taiwan we get more and more excited. Our house is on the market, we've started to decide what to do with our furniture (a lot of it we are giving away or selling) and what things we want to keep and store while we are gone.

We have been reading blogs from people teaching english in different areas (blonde in taiwan and You Can't Go Wrong With a Fork) to get a feel for the culture and the types of experiences we can expect. I have been learning some chinese through a podcast that I listen to on my commute. I can say "I'm sorry, my chinese isn't very good. Do you speak english?" - "Duìbuqǐ, wo Zhōngwén shuōde bu hǎo. Nǐ huì shuō Zhōngwén ma?". I'm not sure anyone would actually be able to understand it but at least the effort is there. And I think these are the characters for "school counselor": 輔導老師. Not that I can read/write characters, I just copied them from the newsletter from AST where we were introduced.

Soon we should find out where we will be living!