Things I Have Learned (While Abroad)

I was going to make a list, you know, of "things I have learned".  I would have been not unlike a fifth-grader at the end of a school year standing in the front of the classroom, with droplets of sweat clinging to the back of her neck while staring at piece of paper veined with thin blue lines and covered in smudges.  Her classmates would be squirming in their seats anxious to tear down the hallways and into the sunshine that beckons through the dirt-streaked windows.

But this is not fifth grade, is it?

The truth is I can't articulate exactly what it is I've learned in my time here.  I've done all those stereotypical things that people "do" when they are abroad: strengthened my language skills, made new friends, pushed myself beyond my comfort zone, etc, etc.  But there has been more to my experience than these things.  There were definitely times when I was so overwhelmed I felt I couldn't adjust anymore, and I didn't feel like I needed to.  I observed that some of my fellow exchange students got stuck in ruts: the going to clubs four times a week rut; the buying cheap shit rut; the I-hate-Taiwan-rut. (full disclosure: I was stuck in all of those ruts at one point or another this year.  Mom--I never went out four nights a week.)  It was extremely painful to leave those ruts, but when I did, I always learned more about myself and the world became a richer place.  And I will always be grateful for finding the courage to leave former, less than beautiful versions of myself behind.  It meant saying goodbye to ways of thinking, people, and habits that were no longer in my best interest.  But the people I have met, the new opinions I have adopted and the new things I am doing are fulfilling beyond my wildest expectations.  This year, while it had its ups and downs, was a gift.

 I am grateful for who I have become and the people who have accompanied me thus far.  If you're reading this blog, then that means you.  Thank you for coming along with me on this journey.  I look forward to the many places we'll go together.

Sincerely,
Marjorie

P. S.  I can change!  I can take a picture with Hello Kitty paraphernalia and not puke.

That's it!

I'm officially done.  Like with EVERYTHING.  All that's left is to pack and say goodbye.

WAT WAT.

So I'm feeling a little like this:

Also, the show this clip is from (The West Wing)  is THE BEST SHOW EVER and you all should totes watch.

I'll post a longer entry about What I Have Learned tomorrow.

Cheers,
Marjorie

SQUEEEEEEE

I just found out this evening I was selected to be an American delegate for a ten-day conference in Beijing, China in August.  According to the website, the program gathers American and Chinese college students and creates and environment where we can discuss the future of the two countries.

I am so excited.

So even though my days in Taiwan are almost over, I'm not done traveling.


First, off to Hong Kong!


(Here's hoping I can get it together to post some pictures)

See you all Thursday!

NINE DAYS

I am in disbelief.

My Research Project (Taiwanese Tuesday)

Or, what I've been worried about for the last six months.

I came to Taiwan with the intention of researching about seventeenth-century Chinese eunuchs in hopes of using that research for a creative thesis.

It didn't work out, mainly because I couldn't find a professor to work with me.

The resident director of my program is Buddhist, and knows pretty much Every Living Buddhist in The World.  I'm sure she's met the Dalai Lama at one point.  In December I accompanied her on a translation retreat run by an international Buddhist women's association.  It was a very cold but enlightening weekend.  The ladies I met were of all ages and walks of life, and had taken refuge in Buddhism for different reasons.  I participated in workshops where mostly Chinese was spoken, and got to know them over the course of

Because of her connections and my limited options, I decided refocus my project.  I love languages (not linguistics--yuck).  I was intrigued by something my resident director had said: when the Buddhist sutras were translated from Sanskrit to Chinese, the translators had to come up with about 100,000 new idioms to convey the ideas the sutras were proposing.  The concepts did not exist in Chinese, and so the language itself had to change in order to allow a new religion to take place in a different culture.

My project is seeing if Taiwanese students under 25 still use these centuries-old idioms today.


I'm in the last stages of drafting a questionnaire that I will be using to ask Taiwanese students around my campus.  I already did some interviews and ran into some preliminary glitches, so it's back to the drawing board.

And no.  This questionnaire does not include all 100,000 of the idioms.  That would be overdoing it just a hair.

See you Thursday.

Honesty and Doubt

Since the rapture didn't happen, it means we all have to get back to our responsibilities and commitments.  I'm actually kind of happy about that.  I'm in the middle of a lot of interesting things, and if the world had ended, I wouldn't have been able to go to Hong Kong to see my mom.

Time to be honest about some things, I think.

I haven't been completely happy here.

That's a bit of an understatement.

I really hated it here for a long time.

It's no one's fault.  I'm not blaming my program, the friends I've made, or even Taiwan.  But this experience for a long time was none of what I was expecting.  I complained pretty extensively to my mother and close friends and left it at that.  I had work to do, classes to go to, and projects that needed to be completed on time.  Making deadlines has historically been difficult for me, and when I leave here, I leave.  That's it.

So, I figured if I didn't have anything positive to say, then say nothing at all.  I beat myself up about not posting because not everyone gets to travel, so I didn't have the luxury of being unhappy.

This is not to say that I spent every moment of my time in abject misery.  There were moments where I found satisfaction, and I sucked those moments dry to find the strength to keep going.  And I threw myself into my research here: working with my advisor, refining my topic, working on my proposal, and steeling myself not to give up.  I could have.  The temptation was there; there were a lot inconveniences and obstacles, not the least of which was that I couldn't take books out of the library, and I needed a bibliography.  So I needed to get creative.

And then, like magic, everything came together for me.  The end is in sight, all I have to do is complete my research, take a final, write a couple of papers, complete my online job training, and I'm on my way.

Life is glorious.  Living often isn't.  But the unromantic moments (or days, or weeks, or even longer) help us enjoy those romantic moment when they hit us over the head.

I'll talk more about my research project on Tuesday.  Enjoy not being raptured.

L is for Love Yourself A Little

Hi!  Marjorie from Upwards Over the Mountain here, back from a much needed break.

I know I kind of just vanished for a minute there without explanation.  Trust me, I had a lot of things going on, not the least of which was that I was very sick.  When your body gives out the way mine did, that's a sign you need to scale back from life and re-evaluate where you're spending your energy.  I'm in the home stretch of my time abroad.  I have eight weeks before I get on a plane and leave this lush island behind.  Sometimes when we get close to the end of a journey we can doubt ourselves.  This past week I was suddenly unsure about so many things.  Do I really want to be a "big time" blogger with a horde of followers?  How is being a writer going to factor into a career?  What classes do I want to take next semester?  What path should I take after I graduate?

I don't have a concrete answer to any of these questions.  I've scratched my carefully thought through battle plans for the next few weeks.  I'm just going to focus on doing what I love for the rest of the time here.  And I love blogging.

No matter what phase of life you are in, I encourage you to love yourself a little.  You might be surprised at the results.



Here's an acapella cover of one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands, Counting Crows.

Happy Thursday!

C is for Colds and Chinese Medicine

Taiwanese cough medicine.  It looked and tasted like dirt--but it worked

I took a couple of days off blogging because I was on the tail end of a Taiwanese Cold: Deluxe Edition, featuring chills, fatigue, sore throat, and compromised breathing (I have a bit of asthma).  I had no voice for three days.  I'm much better now.

On the second day of the cold one of my intrepid Taiwanese classmates named Maggie accompanied me to a local clinic.  After the doctor listened to me breathe through a stethoscope, he explained that my asthma was aggravated by my cold.  Lots of people have been getting sick because it's been warm during the day and cold at night, and the humidity is as high as always.

I got a special nebulizer treatment while Maggie pounded my back.  Man, Taiwanese girls have so much strength in their hands it's not even funny.  The mucus in my lungs didn't stand a chance.

The kindly doctor came over to check on me.  "Is okay for you?"  He asked, in English.

I nodded.  The doctor told me I could come back to get the nebulizer treatment whenever I needed it; it was free.

I spent the next few days holed up in my room watching Disney movies, sleeping, drinking tea and taking meds.  I went to class but didn't talk much.  Today I sound just about normal.  I'm going to karaoke in a few minutes.  We'll see how that goes.

Whew!  Glad that bit's over with.  Now I can get back to my life.

B is for Butterflies and Brunches

Took this on a walk near my university.

Eggs Benedict at my favorite diner in Taipei

A is for ARC

Image forthcoming.  Need to charge my camera battery.

Today I picked up my Alien Resident Certificate (ARC), the identification card that goes with my resident visa, from the immigration office.  This is a replacement ARC; I lost my original and had to reapply for it.  Ugh.

This visa thing has been a mess from November.  I originally got a three-months visitor visa that was extended to six months, with a February expiration date.  But when I applied for my Resident Visa, it turned out that the visa processing office in New York had given me the wrong visa type.  They had given me a visa for exchange students, but I'm not here on exchange; I'm here with a program.  My resident director threatened the people at the consulate in Taiwan to use her political connections because she was so exasperated with the entire procedure.  I asked her how screaming at a service person fit in to her Buddhist way of life.  She replied that the Buddha appears to people in the forms most needed to "wake people up", so if yelling was what it took, then so be it.  (She's kind of my hero.)

But then I lost my ARC a couple of weeks ago.  It didn't even came home with me.

I'm kind of an absentminded person, so things easily slip my mind.  I'm going to try to use this experience to be more careful with my stuff.  Because going back and forth to process these loose ends of my visa have been a huge hassle, and I'm glad it's all over.

Happy April Fool's!

5 Minutes Left--Taiwanese Tuesday

I almost missed the deadline!  Phew.

It just occurred to me yesterday that I am going home it two and a half months.  My subconscious is blissfully unaware that I am not going to be here forever.  I haven't told it yet.  No need to traumatize it at this point.

Went to the Red Cross last night with my "host mother" a lovely Taiwanese woman who I will be staying with this weekend.  I believe going to the hot springs is on the agenda.  I spoke Chinese the entire time, and my head didn't hurt.  I made some mistakes, but I can understand about 85-90% of everyday conversation and respond appropriately.  Oh, language proficiency.  How lovely you are!

And now, class!  (It's noon my time.)

See you Thursday.

Taiwanese Wednesday

This week has been hectic so far.  Someone seems to have pressed the fast-forward button on my life.  I'm starting research on a project I really like; I love my new Chinese teacher and classmates; new followers on this blog are trickling in; I got a summer job; my novel's trajectory is clear.  Even though I lost my Alien Resident Certificate last week after waiting for weeks to pick it up, reapplying for it has not been terribly strenuous, as my increased language skills have made life here much smoother.  All of these things, by the way, have happened within a few days of each other.

So I've been feeling a little like this:

This was taken after attempts to wake me failed.  My classmates are interesting people.

But, most of all, this place is finally starting to feel like home.

After almost seven months of culture shock, disillusionment, homesickness, loneliness, boredom, and frustration, suddenly Taiwan has become familiar to me.

And when I mean suddenly, I mean a couple weeks ago I was dragging myself up the mountain to go to class.  I bemoaned that Chinese was impossible.  I fantasized about having my bedroom back and seeing friends and family.

Now I'm running around trying to organize the last three months of my life, and it looks like I'll have just enough time to get everything done.  I'm even considering getting a research grant to come back here after I graduate.  I'm doing research in Chinese and I can read most of the characters.  All the suffering is paying off.

I'm cycling between exhaustion and contentment, and I'm grateful and honored to have you all along for the ride.

See you tomorrow!

A Word About Japan

A few of you have been asking me if I've heard about the earthquake in Japan.  (Also, thanks to those of you who've asked if I'm okay.)  I'm on this side of the world, and I'm twelve hours ahead of most of you who read this, so, yes, I have.  I've steered clear of the news this weekend because I knew it was bad, and I didn't want to focus on how bad it was.  I was in New York on 9/11, and people talking about how unthinkable it was that someone would fly planes into buildings didn't help any: nor did repeated news clips of the Towers buckling underneath plumes of smoke.  You know what helped?  People who sent their thoughts and prayers our way and found ways to actually help.  For a few brief moments, the city came together in a spirit of mutual solidarity that transcended any religious sect or political agenda.  Then the media stuck its big nose in it and we got back to our paranoid bickering.

Japan's got it way worse right now.  So instead of watching the news on the Internet and getting sucked into the morbid voyeurism, donate.  And send your thoughts and prayers.  I don't care if you're an agnostic, atheist (I won't tell if you won't), Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, Christian, or Sikh.  This is not about religion; this is about the people of Japan.  They need our help.  As much as you can spare.  Sending a little unselfish love in their direction, no matter what color, class, or creed you are is the least we can do as human beings living together in a world that can go bananas at a moment's notice.

Which brings me to another reason I'm not watching the news: the media is generally not good at representing the massive amounts of love that emerges when a disaster strikes.  For every news story about the mother who can't find her children, there are many, many more about someone who sacrificed his life for someone he/she didn't know, or someone who against all odds survived beneath the rubble while volunteers dug him/her out.  There are volunteers on the ground right now, and more on their way.  Some of their stories of courage and selflessness will pop up here and there; others won't.  But it's important to remember that while the damage seems colossal--and it is--we can either focus on how much has been lost, or we can pitch in with the ones who are actually fixing this mess.

Let's stop talking about the problem and be a part of the solution.  For Japan's sake, and for ourselves.

Why I Don't Do More Extracurricular Activities

I'm already embarrassed enough that my three-hour nap prevented me from picking up my Alien Resident Certificate (ID card that goes with my resident visa) and returning a loan to my program director.  I don't need the added guilt of forgetting about your club and making your shiny hopeful face crumble into a crestfallen visage of despair at my lack of commitment.  I really don't.

Taiwanese Tuesday: What American Culture and American Media Taught me about China/Taiwan

1. Chinese has a completely different alphabet than English, which means the Chinese are not American, which makes them...foreign.  Even if you're living in their country and they outnumber you six billion to one.  They're still foreign.
2. China and Taiwan are totally the same place.
3. Yes, I have in fact read that Time/Forbes/Newsweek article that says the Chinese are going to take over the world one day.  IT'S ALREADY HAPPENING.  HIDE YOUR CHILDREN AND STOCK UP ON AMERICA.  IT'S OUR ONLY HOPE.
4.  There is only one reason why Chinese children are so good at math: they are little dormant robots awaiting the instructions of The Supreme Master Chairman Mao to destroy America.  I'm brushing up on my Chinapocalypse vocabulary.
5.  If you use your fingers to pull up your eyelids, you will not only succeed in blending in, you will have mastered how Taiwanese greet each other.
6. The only reason why an American girl would ever want to learn Chinese is to get a Chinese boyfriend.
7. All of the American expats in China and Taiwan know each other.  It's not just a Facebook group; we're all totes besties in real life.
8. Tiger Moms eat their young.  With chopsticks.
9. All Chinese people secretly want to be Americans.  If they're staring at you, it's because they're trying to learn how to be Americans.  It's not because you don't fit in or are screaming in English for a taco.
10. You can see Kim Jung-Il's house from The Great Wall.

So Apparently I Can Post Pictures on This Thing

DUH.
My descriptive powers are no match for the beauty of Hualien, so here you go!  Enjoy.

Look at that blue!

A really scary awesome bridge you had to get a government permit to go on because of the risks.

This was why we could go on a trail for only half an hour at a time.

I have no idea who that is.

seriously cool.

Writing and Traveling: A Match Made it Hualien

I've just returned from a three-day trip to Hualien, the east coast of Taiwan.  I wasn't planning on going, but I changed my mind at the last minute.  I was so glad I did, because it was one of the best weekends I've had since coming to Taiwan.  We visited Taroko Gorge National Park and the surrounding beaches, where I saw some of the most breathtaking scenery in my entire life.  I mean, I saw shades of blue I didn't know existed.  I also got to bond with the new CIEE students, which was really eye-opening, because my Chinese is (finally) at a level where I can appreciate more of the language's nuances.  Many of the new students are American-born Taiwanese, so we spoke Chinese almost the whole weekend, and (huzzah) my head didn't explode.  Was I proud of myself?  You bet.

I've also gotten The Stylish Blogger Award from Michael Offut and Devin Bond.  Thank you both very much!  I'm super flattered. I'm required to answer a few questions about myself and award other bloggers, which I'll do next week.  I'm a bit tired from the trip.  It's not going to be a long night.

I assigned my second post of the week to be about writing.  I've been reluctant to talk about writing-- specifically my writing--the same way I've been a reluctant blogger.  This is a bit ironic: a girl who can and does talk about anything and everything at great length is reluctant to discuss herself.  But I'm opening up more (thanks, Taiwan) and I took the time to discuss the writing process with fellow blogger Misha Gericke and the plot and characters of my newest project with a friend back home.  They've been enormously helpful with their suggestions.  Misha asked me if I'm a plotter or pantser.  When I asked her to clarify, she asked if I plan out plot points or if I write by the seat of my pants, an interesting question to be sure.  I guess I do a bit of both.  I plan and then write by the seat of my pants.

I don't write from plot.  I write from character.  Character, character, character.  I create characters, throw them into situations, and watch how they react.  I listen to their dialog.  And then I write it down.  Recently, this process has been tougher than usual, because I usually give up on my characters before I commit a word to the page.  My newest project, however, is forcing me to be both accountable to you, my readers, and develop these characters more.  In turn, they've shown me hues and shades that I didn't see before.  It happened this weekend, while I was taking in the landscape.  My characters deepened and sprouted dimensions that took me aback in a good way.

Characters should be like people: inconsistent, idiosyncratic, and surprising.  Their motivations should be clear, but how they get to what they want shouldn't be.  I believe a proper tension between motivation and character is what makes a literary work interesting.  I've got no problem with the characters. What I'm wondering is if my protagonist has enough motivating him to push the trajectory of the novel in the direction I want it to go.  And there's only one way to find out: keep writing.

See you all Tuesday.

Taiwanese Tuesday

So I've found a decent bagel place in Taipei.  This is a big deal, because bagels were a staple of mine when I was little and I miss them so much.  Obviously, I am in a country where rice is a staple, but I need bread all the time every once in a while.  When I walked into the place, I met a someone who lived nine blocks from me back home who is studying here full time.  I came back the next day and met the owner, who lived in New York in the 80s and offered to teach me Taiwanese.  She told me she has an actual Taiwanese/English textbook, which I'd love to get my hands on.  I think I've found another regular spot for weekend brunch and general chillaxation.  The cupcakes are incredible.

Also, I met a Philipino cab driver today who apprenticed as a chef for twelve years before getting his taxi driver's license.  He gave me his card, and I think I'm going to let him drive me to some good eateries around the city.  Apparently he knows an Italian restaurant owned by a real Italian man with a real Italian chef, which sounds great.  I don't know any expats who have opened restaurants here.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Hualien, the Eastern part of Taiwan, with the CIEE group.  At first I wasn't going to go, but Carol (resident coordinator)'s face looked was so crestfallen when I told her my plans to stay in Taipei that I changed my mind.  We're going to Taroko Gorge, Taiwan's most famous national park.  I'm really looking forward to it, much more than I thought I would.  I don't think I'll be able to post on Thursday, but I'll be back on Friday!

Happiest of Tuesdays.