Hiking and Wunshan High School

In my previous post, I said that I would tell you about my trip to the mountain with my host father, and I will also be talking a bit about my high school here.  On Monday, my host father (or as I call him, baba) informed me that we would going to a nearby mountain for a hike.  So we got into the family car and headed over to to the mountain.  On the way we passed two temples, and they are REALLY cool looking.  They are extremely colorful and are decorated with tons of intricate carvings of people, dragons, and other things.  I have yet to actually enter one, but the insides seem very beautiful as well, judging simply from the glimpses I've seen from the outside.  After walking past a few small food stands (there are many food stands here, just on the sides of the roads) we were on the mountain.  Forest surrounded us on either side, mostly consisting of palm trees and bamboo stalks.  My father had warned me that there would be many monkeys on the mountain, but as we climbed I didn't see any.  However, when we finally reached the top of the mountain (calling it a mountain might actually be a stretch, it's more of a very, very, very  large hill), many monkeys suddenly came into view.  They were rather shy, which made it difficult to get good pictures of them. I was also surprised to see squirrels at the top of the mountain. They look remarkably similar to the squirrels we have in Northfield, but with shorter tails. They are also much more daring, and were very fun to watch as they leapt from branch to branch in the trees.  Also at the top, there were several large, metal bins, filled with tea, which are provided to climbers for free!  There was also a view of the sea, and of the city, although it was rather foggy, so the view wasn't quite as good as it would be on a clear day.  My host father tells me that we will return on Sunday, to eat lunch with a group that meets there every week, and I'm hoping that it won't be cloudy so that I can get some good pictures.

Yesterday, I visited my high school for the first time, along with two other exchange students.  One is a boy from Brazil, named Joao, and the other a girl from France named Farah.  It was really nice to meet with other exchange students and talk about how our first few days have been going.  Luckily for me, they both speak English very well (it's incredible how many people here speak English), so we didn't have any trouble communicating.  We met the principal of the high school, who cannot be described as anything other than jolly.  He is always smiling and seems to really enjoy his job.  I also met my homeroom teacher, Jennifer, who was also very nice and welcoming.  She took me to see her class, and I introduced myself to a few of her students.  Introducing myself in Taiwan is sort of an embarrassing procedure.  Usually, I say "Wo jiao Eduardo", and then I introduce myself with my Chinese name, which my host family chose for me, "Wo jiao Kuo Fu Cheng".  To a westerner this may seem like a normal Chinese name, but Kuo Fu Cheng is an extremely famous singer and actor known in pretty much all of eastern Asia, so people usually laugh whenever I tell them my name.  Just try to imagine a foreign exchange student coming to Northfield High School, and introducing himself as "Justin Bieber" or another super-famous actor/singer that everyone knows about-- you'd have to laugh.

Anyway, I also met a guy named Craig from Manchester, England, who is working at Wunshan High School as an English teacher.  After meeting these people, there was a short presentation where each of us exchange students introduced ourselves, and then there was presentation about Wunshan high school.  Afterwards I mostly just talked with Jennifer and Craig, and learned that they play Ultimate Frisbee here in Kaohsiung!  I was extremely surprised to hear this, but also elated to know that the great game of Ultimate Frisbee had a solid foothold in Taiwan.  I later also found out that my high school has an astronomy club, which I plan to join and am excited for. 

That night, I went to the night market with Joao, which was an incredible experience.  The night market is basically a place with a TON of food stands.  However, I think I will save that for another post, because this one is fairly long already.  But before I go, I will just share a quick list of interesting things I've noticed here in Kaohsiung.

• People don't use the Chinese word for goodbye very much (zaijian), they usually just say bye-bye
• There are annoyingly few trash cans around the city
• There is a ton of seafood, most of it very fresh
• It is not very common to drink water here, people drink a lot of tea
• The streets are CRAZY, but people jay-walk and walk along the streets as if it's no big deal
• There is quite a bit of smog, and one thing I miss is the bright blue sky back in Northfield, because here I have only seen it as a rather pale blue

Thanks for reading... until next time, zaijian!