So I am, after all, starting to feel settled in my new flat, despite a few teething problems when moving in. Most of the problems were the cockroaches. However, they are dead now. All of them. I hope.
My flatmates are quiet, to the extent that I hardly ever seen them. They are all Taiwanese, and mostly, I think, somewhat older than I am. They were certainly shocked to find a young female foreigner had moved into the spare room. There are, respectively, internet man, military man, and singing fruit man, who sings loudly along to his tv. Yesterday he came into my room to adjust a cable and handed me two giant oriental grapefruit, before vanishing again. I have managed some communication with them - me and internet man have made common cause against the cockroaches, whilst singing fruit man frequently exhorts me not to leave my keys in the lock and tells me off for the untidiness of my room. The phrase 亂七八糟 (everything in disorder) came up, and suddenly it was as though my ayi stood before me once again... Sadly, as they all mostly speak Taiwanese (actually a different language from Mandarin. I had thought I was just being stupid and misunderstanding people, until I realised my university has entire courses teaching it), conversation is... painstaking.
Courses have started, and after a class change, I have been placed in a class on Taiwanese/mainland history, where everyone speaks better Chinese than I do. It is stimulating: a history course delivered in Chinese, to a group of students who happen to be non-native speakers, and so who require the occasional word/grammar point explained. My Chinese is also definitely less good than the rest of the class (most of whom are Japanese, and thus write beautiful characters), so I'm learning pretty fast.
I've even settled in enough to actually begin seeing a little of Taiwan - beaches, mountains and karaoke buses. It's been an entertaining few days and hopefully, I'll even get some pictures up soon.
My flatmates are quiet, to the extent that I hardly ever seen them. They are all Taiwanese, and mostly, I think, somewhat older than I am. They were certainly shocked to find a young female foreigner had moved into the spare room. There are, respectively, internet man, military man, and singing fruit man, who sings loudly along to his tv. Yesterday he came into my room to adjust a cable and handed me two giant oriental grapefruit, before vanishing again. I have managed some communication with them - me and internet man have made common cause against the cockroaches, whilst singing fruit man frequently exhorts me not to leave my keys in the lock and tells me off for the untidiness of my room. The phrase 亂七八糟 (everything in disorder) came up, and suddenly it was as though my ayi stood before me once again... Sadly, as they all mostly speak Taiwanese (actually a different language from Mandarin. I had thought I was just being stupid and misunderstanding people, until I realised my university has entire courses teaching it), conversation is... painstaking.
Courses have started, and after a class change, I have been placed in a class on Taiwanese/mainland history, where everyone speaks better Chinese than I do. It is stimulating: a history course delivered in Chinese, to a group of students who happen to be non-native speakers, and so who require the occasional word/grammar point explained. My Chinese is also definitely less good than the rest of the class (most of whom are Japanese, and thus write beautiful characters), so I'm learning pretty fast.
I've even settled in enough to actually begin seeing a little of Taiwan - beaches, mountains and karaoke buses. It's been an entertaining few days and hopefully, I'll even get some pictures up soon.
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