Ni hao!

Wow, I just realized I've been here for a week!

Temperature was 39oC when I arrived. Very much like the Philippines and maybe even more humid!

These are the very nice people who made my first day smooth. (Left to right) Ning, Juani, and Dennis. Ning is the Taiwanese undergrad who got assigned to show me around my dorm and the campus. She continued to help me the next day. She was really nice. Juani is a high school schoolmate and Dennis is a Fil-Chi who grew up in Iloilo! He speaks good Mandarin. Unfortunately, they both stay in Taipei, which is an hour away.

My dorm room. Mine is the left half. The bed is on top of my desk area. You have to put together the pictures to get the whole picture. The dorm is a little old. There are 5 floors and no elevator. I'm on the 4th floor :) But it's clean. All rooms have aircon but we need prepaid cards to operate them. Interesting, huh? :) Common bathrooms have hot and cold showers. Somehow, my floormates and I never use the bathrooms at the same time; they're always empty. Because I underpacked, I have more shelves and closet space than I have stuff for at the moment. I just found out that our dorm has a TV area, cooking area, gym area (there are treadmills!), and a laundry area (with washers and dryers).

This is my roommate, Lopi. She's Taiwanese and she's very sweet. This is her half of the room, and how I imagine my half will look in a few months :)

These are my classmates in the Mandarin program (left to right): Sumit, Kannan, Bi Na and Fu. All are Indian except Fu, who is Vietnamese. We didn't know there would be so few people who would sign up for the free Mandarin course. Sayang, it's a really useful course. Lately, we've become comfortable enough to laugh at one another's Chinese :) In Chinese, among Filipino, Vietnamese, and Indian, the hardest to say is Filipino. It's really difficult, even for me. So I've given them a hard time. The class joke is that I should just change my nationality to make it easier for everyone. :)

Lunch food. The one in the bowl is mine. The others are Sumit's and Kannan's. Food options here are similar to those you find in the Philippines. There's American, Chinese, Japanese, Korean. So it's not a problem for me who's not a hard-core Filipino-dish fan. Food is not expensive and servings are huge! So we'll see if I'll gain weight :) For the record though, I didn't finish that bowl. :)

I went downtown Last Wednesday night with Sumit and his friend and found this Filipino store! It's named Bing Go (Ate Bing!). Guess what I bought? Lucky Me, Yakisoba, Chippy!, Chips Delight! Haha. The store had a TV and it was showing TFC's coverage of Cory's funeral. Filipinos flocked to watch. That was the first time I felt a bit homesick.

This was downtown. Note the temple-looking structure in the background, and the McDonalds' iced tea I'm holding! :)

I haven't had to adjust to a lot yet since arriving. We have 7 hours of Chinese class everyday, Mon-Sat. By evening, we're really just sick of Chinese :) Haha. I realized I'm actually unwilling to learn the Chinese language as a way of life. I thought I was. I know a little but not enough to be able to express myself. I realized that many times I actually think "Well, they should learn English!" Maybe I'll feel differently over time. :)

Soon I will have to do my laundry. There are no manangs here :), and even in the laundry shops people have to do their own laundry. I know this is a trivial thing for most people, but next to Mandarin, I think this is the hardest thing so far. :)