Jottings

So the weather is doing this crazy thing where it's reverting to summer again. I've taken to walking to school recently, partly for exercise, and partly to save money. I figured since it's been getting cooler recently, it wouldn't be too bad and I wouldn't arrive at school too sweaty. However, the past two days, it has been unbelievably warm and humid in the morning and afternoon, and only cools down after sunset. Everyone's saying this is really weird and that it hasn't been this warm at the end of October in a long time. I don't think it's quite as bad as it was in August, but it's a bit uncomfortable, especially if you do any sort of exercise.

I played football with the guys again today, and it was really fun and a really good way for me to let off some stress and tire myself out enough that hopefully I'll sleep well tonight. It's interesting, the Taiwanese guys, after some initial uncertainty about me, seem to take to me as well, or even better, than some of the American guys I played with back in LA. There was this one guy today who seemed to make a point of passing the ball to me and to get me involved in the game, and there was another guy who was playing keeper and was giving me instructions just like he would to any other player, which I thought was cool and showed that he respected me at the level of a player. Football isn't that big here, and though there are some pretty skilled players here, I can more than hold my own with most of the guys.

Also on the football front, Liverpool beat Chelsea last weekend, snapping Chelsea's 86-game unbeaten streak at home. It was an amazing game for Liverpool, and I think it really showed that Liverpool are ready for a title challenge this year. They didn't just eke out a win or win ugly, they dominated the second half, made Chelsea look slow and disorganized on defense, and they played some amazing one-touch football in the attacking third that was just superb. And the really awesome thing is, Torres wasn't playing. The fact that Liverpool now have players that can step up and really fill that gap, even when players like Torres and Gerrard are out, is going to be key in making a title run. Right now, Xabi Alonso is really on form, absolutely dominated the midfield against Chelsea, and is really showing why keeping him instead of bringing in Barry was the right choice. I know it's only the first part of the season, but I can't tell you how excited I am that Liverpool are not only winning games, but are playing some real quality football as well.

I literally just stepped away from my computer because the doorbell rang, and guess who was at the door? Two young men from the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. They were very polite and a little bit bashful because they were trying out their English on me, and I felt bad for sending them away, but I had no interest.

Things are a bit up and down at the moment, the semester is winding down, and I'm definitely in that end-of-term slump that I remember all too well from college, but I'm just trying to slog through and get to the end of the semester with good grades and good standing with my professor, who I'm planning to continue on with next term. We just found out today that we have a fairly long break in the middle of the winter term for Chinese New Year, so I don't know if I'll travel then, or just hang out here and explore the city. Apparently Christmas isn't really celebrated here, which I'm kind of surprised about since Christianity seems fairly prevalent here. But Chinese New Year should be fun.

So that's that. I played football, got a visit from Mormons, and now I'm off to hopefully get some quality rest before my exam tomorrow.

Liverpool v. Chelsea T -4 hours and counting

Well it's the biggest game of the weekend, and the biggest game of the season so far for both Liverpool and Chelsea. Currently Liverpool and Chelsea are tied at the top of the Premier League table, with Chelsea ahead on goal difference. Liverpool are without Fernando Torres, though Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso are fit. I think most Reds supporters are just hoping to escape from this one with a tie, as Liverpool's record at Stamford Bridge isn't great. Torres finally broke the scoring curse last year during the Champions League, but Liverpool still ended up losing that game.

Chelsea look very, very good at the moment. There's no denying that, at the moment, they're the ones everyone is pinning to win the title. Manchester United are off to a bad start, and Arsenal are looking good, but not great. So basically, regardless of how premature it is, whoever wins the match tonight will probably be considered the favorite to win the title. And if I were a betting person (which I'm not), I'd put money on Chelsea, despite my very real desire to see Liverpool win it all.

Chelsea just have too much depth and too much strength at every position, whereas I feel like Liverpool just aren't quite at the peak that they need to be in order to sustain a title challenge. Torres hasn't looked quite as devastating as last season (which isn't a dig by any means, every player has ups and downs), Agger needs some time to get settled in the back, and Keane needs to start scoring. Gerrard has, at times, looked excellent, and other times just looked really tired or jaded or just plain old apathetic.

Of course it's way too early in the season to be speculating about anything. There's plenty of time for Liverpool to find their form, and tonight is just one measure of whether they have what it takes.

On another note, I watched West Brom v. Hull last night, and was really impressed with what I saw from both times, but especially Hull. Whereas the upper-tier teams tend to play a lot of long ball and like to slow the play down by passing it around the back, both West Brom and Hull played more of a pass and move game, with lots of pressure on both ends and a lot of quick, one and two-touch passing. It was really fun to watch, and a really open game, and though it was clear there was a little bit of a lack of finesse on the final cross/finishing, Hull still managed three goals out of the deal, and well taken ones at that. I also liked that the players weren't going down as often as players in the top 4. Obviously there was some tumbling and playacting, but much less so than when Manchester U played Liverpool, and I wonder if it has anything to do with these teams having just been promoted from the Championship and being more used to rough and tumble play and no protection from the refs.

In any event, credit to Hull, they're currently tied on points with Liverpool and Chelsea, third in goal difference. I think it'd be pretty cool if they manage to make a big splash by finishing in the upper half of the table this season, cooler still if they broke top 4 (only not at the expense of Liverpool please, thank you).

So. Fingers crossed for a good game tonight and a Liverpool win to move to the top of the table.

Weather and the weekend

As a native Minnesotan, I never thought I'd say this, but it was 28* C (about 82* F) here today, and I thought it was cool. Proof that I've acclimated, at least in some respect, to the weather here. I still think back to the first couple weeks here and how absolutely brutally hot and humid it was. Walking outside was like walking into a wall of heat and humidity. Now, finally, it's starting to cool off, at least by Taiwan standards. So basically it's finally getting comfortable.

I didn't do much today. I did a bit of homework, but mostly just lazed around the house. I did a quick grocery shopping trip, got some olive oil and fruit. Olive oil, by the way, is super expensive here (by Taiwan standards, I mean). I think most people here cook with grape seed oil or sunflower seed oil, and olive oil is considered a slightly more precious commodity. I noticed prices are finally starting to come back down after the last typhoon. Vegetable and fruit prices tend to go up after typhoons.

I did go for a run. I'm trying to build some sort of routine for running, though it's hard with my weird class schedule (12-3, M-F). I leave pretty early in the morning to study at school, and often don't get back until after dark. There's actually a really nice park a five minute walk from our apartment, it's just a matter of finding a suitable time and sticking to it. At the moment, I'm hoping to switch my class time for next semester to the 8:30 AM time slot so I'll have the whole rest of the day to do whatever I want/need.

A fun little anecdote. There's a doujiang (soy milk) place near our apartment that's open 24/7 and sells soy milk as well as lots of small snacks and dumplings and such. Mom and Dad, if you come and visit, I have to take you there. But anyways. I've been there enough times that the workers know me, and one morning, I went there to grab a fantuan (a sort of rice ball with fried bread and vegetables inside) before class, and one of the workers asked me if I wanted "heifan" because it's "bijiao haochi." Heifan literally means "black rice" and bijiao haochi means "better tasting." I agreed because she was really friendly and I think was sort of suggesting it to me because I was a foreigner and wouldn't know otherwise. I don't know exactly what's in heifan but the worker was right, it was definitely better tasting, and when I went back the next day, she asked if I wanted the same thing as before. It was kind of cool that she remembered, and so now I try to get there at least once a week for some sort of snack, even though I know they aren't struggling for business.

Lauren just came back and told me there's a Costco trip planned for tomorrow, so I think I'll tag along and maybe get myself a few goodies. We'll see though. I'm a bit concerned about my money situation, with rent and tuition payments all coming up in the next couple weeks. But the scholarship for November should come through relatively soon as well, so assuming there are no problems like before, I should be okay.

Why I feel like a hypocrite

So it's no secret I love football. I love to play, and I love to watch. I get up in the middle of the night to watch European matches, I scour the internet on Saturdays for streams of EPL matches, and I could talk for hours on end about the game, the players, the managers and so on.

But sometimes I feel like a hypocrite in loving the game so much. Because like it or not, European football is an inherently sexist institution, a realm exclusively run by and for men, and the only space for women is as objects to be admired and lusted after.

Check out this video. Great footage of skills from the Euro Cup 2008. I love highlight reels like that. But what I despise about this video is that it makes women look like dumb bimbos who are just there to be admired for looking good and dressing in really skimpy clothes. On the one hand, it's just sexist. Men are allowed to be skillful and creative and score wonder goals for their country. But women are simply objects for visual admiration. God forbid a woman should have football skill or creativity, and horror of all horrors should she actually show it off in public.

And on the other hand, it makes it that much harder for women who actually know a little something about the game to be treated with any kind of respect when trying to discuss the game with men. I mean, in some really screwed up way, I kind of understand why a lot of guys think women don't know anything about football, because so many women just like the game for the hot guys and don't know the difference between offsides and a corner flag.

But seriously. At times I seriously question why I should support any football club, let alone a big one like Liverpool, if all it does is lend my tacit consent to an institution that reinforces such degrading stereotypes.

Good Day

There's something to be said for just sitting on the library steps and watching the campus revolve around you. After we ate lunch/dinner today, Alex, his Japanese classmate (Sang Ye, I think is how is name is pronounced) and I went over to the library, and then instead of going in, just sat on the steps and took pictures and chatted. Alex is really into photography, so he's got super-nice equipment and all these advanced settings on his camera, but I got some pretty decent pictures as well. The weather was really nice this evening, cool, but not chilly, and just enough breeze to be comfortable.

The library at National Taiwan University

Alex taking photos

This girl walked by with her dog, and when she saw Alex wanted to take a picture, she walked over so we could pet the dog. His name was Kyukyu (say: QQ), and I snapped this picture just as he looked right at me.

Liverpool = Comeback Kings

So say the pundits. Liverpool had to come from behind twice to beat Wigan 3-2 at Anfield yesterday, and it was more than enough to give me a heart attack. I really didn't know how the match was going to turn out when halftime rolled around and Liverpool were down 2-1. All credit to Amr Zaki, who scored an amazing second goal just before the halftime whistle. I'd put money on the fact that Zaki will not be a Wigan player by next year--if he keeps playing like he did yesterday, all the big clubs will be lining up at his doorstep (and I keep my fingers crossed that Liverpool are one of them).

In all honesty, Liverpool's defense looked pretty shaky. Daniel Agger was clearly at fault for the first goal, though he redeemed himself exceptionally well by setting up the first equalizer. Jamie Carragher was probably the only real solid link at the back, and by the end of the match, Rafa threw on two attacking players in place of both outside backs, leaving only Carragher and Agger in the defense.

Something that has come up recently is the issue of fouls on Xabi Alonso. In the past three league games, he's been the target of tackles that resulted in the opposition player getting sent off (and deservedly so, none of them were soft fouls). In some ways, it's a compliment, the fact that opposing teams feel they have to take him out to stop him and/or they can't quite get the ball off him and so go for his ankles instead. The problem, of course, is that if this keeps up, he's going to end up with a broken ankle or something, and then Liverpool will be in serious trouble, because Steven Gerrard is always an up-and-down player, and Torres is already looking to have some injury problems (hamstrings seem to be a particular problem spot for him).

Someone on RAWK suggested that some of it has to do with how Alonso handles the ball, turning it away from opponents to more effectively shield it, and I definitely saw that in evidence yesterday. It's the mark of a good player to be able to sense pressure and turn away from it, but the problem is that it exposes the back of your knees and ankles to the opponent, and less experienced tacklers can't or won't stop themselves from going in anyways.

In any event, I hope Alonso stays healthy and I hope opponents stop trying to take him out. To be perfectly honest, the best way to slow him down isn't to take him out, but to put consistent and constant pressure on him, not allow him to turn with the ball and have time to pick out a runner downfield. Manchester United made that mistake, and it cost them.

Despite his defensive lapse, Agger showed flashes of brilliance, especially the assist on the first equalizer. Showed how good he is getting forward and looked rather like a winger with his little juke around the sliding defender. It's worrying how nervous he looked, but then again, he's still quite young, and he's been off the pitch since last September. I guess the good thing about this is that Rafa can't just drop him from the lineup, because he doesn't really have a replacement. Sami Hyypia is class, but no one's going to deny that he's not as quick as Agger, nor as good at advancing the ball forward. Other good points from the match:

*El Zhar came on and made an immediate impact. Quick, sharp, a bit like Theo Walcott in the sense that he adds that bit of pace and spark down the touchline.
*Dirk Kuyt seems to have hit his scoring stride, which can only be good for Liverpool. When Torres gets fit again, it would be nice to have two strikers who are in the habit of finding the net.
*Yossi Benayoun looked very good as always coming off the bench. Quick and sharp as well, really good touch and skills on the ball, can get right into the box seems pretty comfortable handling the ball in tight spaces.
*Riera played well again, perhaps not his best game, but I like how he seems to win a lot of 50-50 balls. Where other players have the ball knocked out of bounds or get shouldered off the ball, Riera seems to come out on the other end of the tussle with the ball more often than not. Nice to have a player like that in the squad.

Next up is the Champions League match away to Atletico Madrid. There was a huge fiasco with the stadium arrangements, as UEFA had originally banned Atleti from playing in their home stadium for the next two home games due to fan behavior in their match against Marseille. But they reinstated it over the weekend, and now Liverpool are set to play the rojiblancos at the Vicente Calderon on Wednesday.

Of course, Torres came back from the international break injured, and I think everyone's pretty disappointed that he won't get the chance to play at his old stadium. I think Liverpool fans wanted him to be able to show his old supporters that he made the right decision and that Liverpool have really accepted him as their own, and I think Atleti fans wanted to see their former captain, who was never really able to rise to that top level of stardom while at Atletico, now considered one of the best players in the world.

Oh well. I'll still be up at 2:45 on Thursday morning, as StarSports is picking up the match from Madrid. Liverpool seems to get a fair amount of coverage here, which rather surprises me. But I'm not complaining.

First illness

Well it had to happen sometime, I suppose. I've come down with something of a stomach virus, nothing too serious, I think I probably just ate something weird and I'm a bit nauseous, plus many trips to the bathroom. It's been about two days since I came down with it, and it seems to be getting a bit better today, though I'm still feeling nauseous and just generally icky and unhappy because I haven't been eating much and only drinking water.

Unfortunately, I had to spend most of today in an orientation for our scholarship. I don't really understand why they decided to have an orientation nearly two months into our study terms--for the kids who are only on three-month scholarships, it's completely useless, and for all of us, two months is more than enough time to have figured out basic things like money, living, transportation and so forth. To be honest, the whole thing was pretty much just ceremony and a chance for Taiwan to kind of pat itself on the back for attracting so many foreigners to its education programs. The distinguished guests were all ambassadors/ministers from various countries, mostly smaller nations that have actual diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and the speakers were all older men in high leadership positions at various institutions or organizations.

I actually wanted to go out tonight, there were plans to just go to a sort of lounge/club called Copa, but I think it's best for me to just stay in and rest up. I don't know what this stomach thing is, but I don't want to aggravate it, and I haven't been sleeping well in general, so rest is probably the best thing I can do for myself at the moment.

Midterm results

Well all that hardcore studying I did for the midterms paid off: I scored the highest grade in the class by a long shot. 92% on my written, and 96% on my spoken. After a month with our teacher, I've come to really appreciate and respect her, but never, in a million years, did I think I would ever see anything over a 95% from her, especially as she's super picky on speaking and pronunciation. So, to put it mildly, I'm over the moon at the moment.

I also sent in my absentee ballot today, which was a relief and also felt a bit like an accomplishment, participating in possibly one of the most historic elections in US history. I didn't get to watch the debate today (it was on early this morning, and I didn't sleep well last night), but it wouldn't have changed how I planned to vote anyways.

I'm coming down with a bit of a cold as well, which I guess I should have seen coming, as almost everyone in the center, in both our program and the ICLP, are headachey and sniffly and coughing like crazy. So I'm going to try and take it easy this weekend, not go out too much, even though there are a lot of plans to. The last thing I want is to get sick and then to have it hang on.

So not much else to report, other than my utter relief and happiness at having done so well on my midterms. I know I'm not getting any credit for it, but it's just nice to have that validation that I'm actually learning something and am improving my language skills.

Election time (and more on the Chinese language)

Well I received my absentee ballot in the mail today, which was both exciting and a relief. I wasn't sure if it would get here in time, and as I've been watching the time to the election tick down day by day, I've been getting more and more nervous; this is one election I don't want to miss, and Minnesota has recently become something of a swing state, so I feel like my vote really could make a difference.

Interestingly, the address on the front of the envelope read "China" at the bottom, even though I specifically remember writing in "Republic of China" on the absentee ballot request form. I was told repeatedly by other expats to make sure that anyone sending me anything be sure to write "Republic of China" on the envelope or package, or else there's a chance it'll end up somewhere in the backwaters of mainland China. Oh well. I'm just relieved the ballot made it here with a bit of time to spare.

On the language front, I was talking with Alex a couple days ago when he dropped his pen and cursed. In Spanish. I remembered he'd said he lived with a Panamanian roommate in Beijing a few years ago, and had picked up a few words, but I couldn't help laughing when "puta madre" came out of his mouth in the middle of the entertainment district in Taipei. We started talking about the, er, grittier aspects of the languages we speak, and we both agreed that Spanish is the best language for cursing.

Which leads me to a recent irritation I've found with Chinese, and, more broadly, East Asian languages as a whole. It's probably partly due to culture shock, but I think part of it is just what sounds good to my own ear.

Mandarin Chinese is a language that really lends itself to a sort of whiny, high-pitched tone, especially among women. Across the board, when I hear women on campus talk, their voices are really high and often a bit whiny-sounding to my ear. Some people say it's "musical," and I agree in the sense that sentences are often "sung," with long vowel sounds at the end to punctuate certain sentiments, but when I hear it, it just sounds really whiny and irritating. And like I said, maybe it's a bit of culture shock, but I hear plenty of older women speak Chinese in a much more solid, down-to-earth tone.

Korean is the same way, perhaps even more so. Listen to some Korean girls talk for a few minutes and I guarantee you'll think they're doing nothing but whining. And it's even worse if they're talking to guys. I'm sorry, but that's what I hear, and it makes me glad in some ways that I don't speak Korean.

I think maybe Spanish is just better suited to my personality, especially Mexican Spanish. There's something very crisp and sharp to Mexican Spanish that appeals to me. The staccato, almost commanding sound every sentence has just sounds good to my ear. It sounds stronger and more substantial than Chinese or Korean, and truly, there is no better language for swearing than Spanish. Curse words in Spanish just have a certain fire to them, a certain bite and venom that doesn't exist in a language like Chinese, which relies more on context and tone of voice to get the point across. For instance, if you ask someone in Chinese "ni zuo shenme?" it can come off as a polite "What are you up to?", or it can be, "What the hell are you doing?"

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy studying Chinese and I hope I become proficient by the end of my nine months here. But I most definitely will not be speaking like a cute little four-year-old, and when I want to say something slightly less savory, I can assure you I will revert to Spanish.

Mainland versus Taiwan

One of the biggest adjustments I've had to make living and studying here in Taiwan is in terminology. While Mandarin is the official language in both China and Taiwan, there are just enough differences in everyday terms to throw a student like me off.

The one that got me in trouble right off the bat was "taxi:"
China:　出租汽车 (chu zu qi che)
Taiwan: 计程车 (ji cheng che)
People here understand the Chinese term, but it sounds really weird to them, and instantly labeled me as a mainlander/someone who'd studied in the mainland when I arrived.

"Bicycle" is also one that I had trouble with:
China: 自行车 (zi xing che, literally: self-moving car)
Taiwan:　脚踏车 (jiao ta che)
Again, people here understand the Chinese term, but it immediately puts you in the category of mainlander

"Potato" is one to watch out for, though I haven't had a problem with it yet:
China: 土豆 (tu dou, literally: earth bean)
Taiwan: 马铃薯 (ma ling shu)
This one has the potential to be bad, since "tu dou" in Taiwan means "peanut" and not "potato."

Pronunciations also differ. For instance, in China, you say "等一会儿" (deng yi huir), which means "wait a minute," and the 'huir' is a falling tone. In Taiwan, however, the 'huir' is pronounced as a third, dipping tone.

And of course there's the whole issue of traditional characters instead of simplified characters. It's a real mind trip, trying to switch back to traditional characters, because so often simplified characters are a sort of shell of the traditional characters, so I know the basic skeleton of the traditional, but I don't know what goes on the inside. And also, with traditional characters, you get a lot of characters that look very similar to each other, and just the addition or subtraction of one line changes the sound, the meaning, or both. Of course, that happens with simplified characters as well, but with simplified characters there are less lines to get confused over. Sometimes looking at traditional characters just gives me a headache. For instance:

鬱

I wish I could make that character even bigger, because it is the most insane thing I've ever seen. It's the character for "tulip" and I don't remember why it even came up in class, but it did, and then all of a sudden my teacher is writing it on the board and I'm thinking "Oh god, I hope I never, ever have to write an essay about tulips."

Concerning the Chinese language

Something that has come up as a topic of discussion among us foreign students here in Taiwan recently is how Chinese is taught in foreign countries, and the fact that skill levels vary so widely even among people who have studied for similar amounts of time.

The thing to realize about Chinese, at least for those of us who use Western writing systems, is that learning Chinese isn't just about learning new vocabulary and maybe some new grammar structures. It requires you to more or less completely re-think how you conceptualize language as a whole. You have to re-learn how to make the simplest sounds before you can even think about learning words, and once you start writing, it's no longer spelling issues, but stroke order and radicals that are most important. A lot of us have been sharing experiences of previous abroad trips to study Chinese, and how, upon returning to the States, we found it hard to write or speak as fluently in English. I think a lot of people who haven't studied a language with a completely different script and/or a tonal system might not believe this, but the fact of the matter is, even after only 4 months in mainland China, when I went back to Los Angeles and started writing my senior thesis, I found writing complex sentences to be quite hard at first because everything had been so focused on Chinese.

I think a lot of us have come to the conclusion that the "right" way to teach Chinese hasn't really been found yet, though I would venture to say that whoever taught Michael, the German guy in my class at the language center, was probably on the right track. A lot of the students in the beginning classes at the center are getting frustrated, and I can totally understand their frustration, because their teachers are kind of starting them all over the place--characters, tones, pronunciation, etc. And at the same time, I can understand the teachers' dilemma as well, because well, where do you start? If you start with characters, no one knows how to read them. If you start with tones, you have no words to match the tones to.

I think it'll be interesting to see over the next few years whether a lot of people actually achieve fluency in Chinese to the point that they can do business/work in China and so on. There are some who will, for sure, but there are so many people studying Chinese right now, and if I was going to place any money, I would say that, proportionally, there will be less of us who achieve proficiency/fluency in Chinese than would do so in a language like French or Spanish. And it's not because we're not busting our butts trying to learn, it's just that Chinese is so different, at least for English/Spanish/French/German/etc. speakers, and the teaching method is still developing, that I think it'll be some time before Chinese language programs are cranking out fluent speakers like programs in more common languages.

Nostalgia

So I'm sitting here in my apartment in Taiwan, drinking a Corona and looking through pictures on Facebook, and realizing again just how incredibly fast time is moving. This picture is from second semester senior year. Chilling out on a Friday or a Saturday night in Newcomb, having a few beers, listening to music and talking away the night. That was life. That was my reality, and it was so familiar and so tangibly real that it seems impossible that it's never going to be like that again. I find myself missing those times terribly, and wondering if I'm ever going to feel that at ease, that comfortable with my surroundings again.

Faces of National Taiwan University's Chinese Language Division

Michael, German, has studied two years of Chinese and speaks way better than I do. This was taken on his birthday, when our teacher bought cake and coffee to celebrate, and we basically sat around and talked about nothing for the whole three hours of class.

Alex, German-Taiwanese-American, speaks all three languages pretty much like a native speaker. Really into photography, and has a really good sense of humor.

Hiro, Japanese, spent some time in the States when he was a kid, so his English is pretty decent. As you can see, he's a goofball too.

Kevin, Chinese-Australian, speaks Cantonese, and also speaks really good Mandarin. We tease him that his accent sounds more British than Australian.

The whole group at an American-style restaurant in Ximen.
L to R: Kevin, Alex, John, John's girlfriend (oh dear, I forgot her name), Ivy, Tammy, Michael and Hiro.

Adventures in the Student Center

A quick anecdote that I've already e-mailed most of my family and friends about:

After class on Thursday, my classmates and I went to the Student Center to grab lunch/dinner before going out for the night. We were all a little tired and dazed from midterm exams, but after we got some food in us, we all perked up considerably. Just as we were finishing up our food, I tried to take in a breath, and suddenly couldn't breathe. It felt like my throat was on fire and had just closed up. I coughed and tried to take another breath, and my nose started burning like crazy. I looked around, and two women sitting at the table behind us asked me if I could breathe. I shook my head, and turned to look at my classmates, and all of a sudden, they all started coughing. For a moment, we thought it was sort of funny, but then we all realized we couldn't breathe at all. So I grabbed my bag and abandoned my lunch and ran for the nearest exit, my classmates hot on my heels. Once outside, we had to sit down on the steps until the coughing and wheezing and tearing subsided. My throat and nose continued to burn for hours afterwards.

Some of the workers in the center told us it was something like pepper from the kitchens, but I don't know how that much pepper could have gotten into the air so quickly and so suddenly. Our first inclination was that it was mace or tear gas or something to that effect, though that would have been more in place on a college campus in Korea in the late 1980s/1990s, maybe not so much in Taiwan in 2008. But in any event, it was a slightly scary experience, having the air around you suddenly become completely un-breathable. As far as I can tell, none of us suffered any lasting effects, so hopefully it was just something benign, like pepper, and not anything chemical.

Liverpool v. Man City - "Shades of Istanbul"

So after trying, and half-way succeeding, in committing all the measure words we've studied so far this term to memory, I decided I should write at least a bit on the match I watched yesterday.

My initial reaction: YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH REDS!

Ahem. I usually hate it when people write as if they're talking on their blogs, but I just had to. Because yesterday, Liverpool's comeback from 2-0 to win 3-2 away at Manchester City was absolutely amazing. Not a few people on the RAWK forum were comparing it to the 2005 Champions League comeback from 3-0 in Istanbul. Of course this game wasn't quite as important as that one, but the drive and determination it took for Liverpool to pull off the win was nothing short of inspiring, and massively encouraging, to us fans who thought it was a loss at halftime, and certainly to the players who scrapped the win out of nothing.

At the end of the first half, Liverpool were down 2-0, and they really deserved to be. They weren't playing well, about the only player who looked like he even cared about the game was Riera. Passes going astray, defensive disarray, and a massive gap between the defense and the midfield that City really exploited well. Going into the second half, I figured it'd be a miracle if Liverpool could pull a tie out of the deal.

Well, Rafa and/or Steven Gerrard must have said something right in the dressing room at the half, because Liverpool came out with a lot more life. Scrappy game, for sure, City played very physical, but Liverpool kept at it, and Torres, who wasn't having a particularly good game at all, slid one in after a clinical build up from Gerrard to Arbeloa. It was eerily similar to one Liverpool scored last season, I think it was against...Marseille? In any event, it was Gerrard to Finnan, who crossed it into the box for Torres. It was just straight out of the book of How To Score a Goal, and the one last night was very, very similar.

Then a header off a Gerrard corner to make it two for Torres. And then, in stoppage time, Benayoun gets free down the left side, beautiful cut back to Torres, who takes a shot, gets deflected, and falls for Dirk Kuyt, who doesn't miss. Unbelievable come back, and a lot of grit and heart by the Liverpool team as a whole.

Plenty of encouraging things. Obviously the fact that Liverpool came back from a two goal deficit and were able to do it with Torres and Gerrard not having the best of games is huge. But also, Alvaro Arbeloa and Fabio Aurelio looked very good at outside back. Xabi Alonso was getting a lot of touches, even though his passes in the first half weren't all that great, he was still doing what he does best, running the game from deep in the midfield. And he had some halfway decent chances on net. Hopefully he'll start converting some of those as the season progresses. And of course, the fact that Torres is still a bit off-form and scored two goals despite that can only be a good thing.

The one unhappy point, as most fans already know, is the injury to Martin Skrtel. Non-contact, looked like a bad knee injury, and they were giving him oxygen on the field, so you know it had to be bad. The "good" thing about it, if there can be anything good out of an injury like that, is that Daniel Agger is the one to fill in the blank, and that's hardly a step down. His fitness is the only question mark, but I think he'll be fine. A bit rusty of course, but he's young and eager to get back in the game, and I think he'll respond well.

Of course it's a little early to be speculating about anything, but this is a superb start by Liverpool in the league, and if they can continue to do this, pull off inspirational wins, as well as killing off the easier games, they will definitely be in the mixer come Christmas and beyond. I don't want to jinx anything and predict about the possibility of a league title.

But I definitely have my fingers crossed.

Midterms

I think this probably qualifies as my first (and hopefully last, but I'm not holding my breath) hell week here in Taiwan. I have three exams this week, one of which I just completed today. This was just a lesson exam, covering the content of one lesson. Wednesday, we have the written portion of our midterm, and Thursday we have the spoken portion. Friday is a national holiday, so we have no class, and I would really be looking forward to it, were it not for the absolute mayhem I'll have to go through to get there.

Let me clarify. My teacher's exams are not easy. She's eased off a little since the first two in that she hasn't made us write a full essay, but even the fill-in-the-blanks and multiple choice parts are difficult. She doesn't just test us on content, she tests us on details and nuance, and in the same way that I respect her for doing it and am glad she pushes us to understand the finer points of the language, I also despise how hard I have to think about every single question, and how absolutely drained I feel at the end of the exams. I don't even want to think about how hard the midterm will be--I started studying for it last weekend, and I feel like I'm not even halfway prepared.

The spoken midterm is actually what's stressing me out the most, however. We have to put on a skit, the six of us in the class, using the vocabulary and grammar points we've studied. One of our previous speaking exams involved using the vocab and grammar points to tell a story, and that in itself was hard enough, just being one person and trying to come up with a coherent story using vocab that were often completely irrelevant to one another (think "Chinese comical dialogue" and "fruit juice"). Now, we have to use all the vocab, all the grammar points, and there are six of us. And, oh yeah, the only common language amongst us is Chinese, the language that we're here to learn. Yeah right.

Of course I'm exaggerating. To be honest, most of our Chinese is good enough that we don't have to worry about misunderstandings or missing something completely. We all get along well too, and that helps matters a great deal. We had a lot of good laughs trying to put together the main body of the skit earlier tonight, and tomorrow we're planning to go out to dinner together to go over the finer details of the thing before going home to practice.

I guess it's just a bit overwhelming to think that midterms are here already, that the term is halfway done. It feels like yesterday that I was moving in here, running all over the city trying to figure out apartments and tuition and banking and residency. And now it's midterms and then I'll be turning 23, and then it'll be the end of the term and some people will already be heading back to wherever they came from and new faces will come in to replace them.

Insanity. All of it.

Jottings

Really, really beat right now, because I got up uber-late two nights in a row to watch Champions League football. And I won't be getting much rest anytime soon either, because next week, I have three exams. Count them, three. One is just a lesson exam, which shouldn't be too bad if the last couple are any indication, but Wednesday and Thursday are the midterm exam, which I'm pretty sure will be intense. I really want to do well too, so I figure I need to start studying now in order to make sure I crack 90 overall.

I did do very well on my most recent exam, a 93.5 average, so that was awesome. I think my speaking has also kicked up a notch, after an initial downturn. My listening comprehension feels like it's still lagging a bit, but then that's always been the hardest part of languages for me, even in Spanish. I know it sounds weird, but I feel like I've always been able to catch on to speaking easier than listening.

There's another typhoon kicking around in the Pacific right now, and the current predictions have it moving across the Philippines, then hitting the mainland before swinging around and hitting us. Of course, no one has any idea what it's really going to do until it does it, but everyone's aware of it, probably because this last one was so destructive outside of Taipei. The weather here is definitely cooling off, and I don't think it's due solely to the typhoons. Before the last typhoon, it was really hot and humid, and now, today, it's cool and windy, on the verge of being chilly (by Taiwan standards, that is).

Football news: I watched Liverpool beat PSV 3-1 at Anfield last night/this morning. To be honest, there were a lot of things that worried me in the match, even though they won easily and could have easily had a couple more goals. There were a couple times that Liverpool seemed really disorganized at the back, with a lot of miscommunication or hesitation between the defense and the midfield. Steven Gerrard, up until his goal, wasn't actually having all that great of a game in my opinion. Some poor passes, some bad touches, and not really the presence that he was against Everton, although perhaps that's to be expected in a European game. I think the thing that frustrated me the most was the poor quality of Liverpool's first touch overall. I think one of Liverpool's biggest weaknesses is their first touch, and it was especially highlighted against a Dutch team, whose style is built around the idea of quick, one and two touch passing. Off the top of my head, I remember Keane and Torres both having some pretty abysmal first touches, and most of the others at one point or another as well.

On the upside, Xabi Alonso overall looked very good, although a few mistouches and poor passes as well. I liked that, even though he was getting a fair amount of pressure throughout the match, he was still able to play some good long passes in to the attacking third, and he even tried a shot from his own half which, considering it was raining, was a halfway decent opportunity. Jamie Carragher also played well, almost 100% passing and just very solid defensive play against forwards who were clearly quicker than all of the Reds defense. Alvaro Arbeloa also looked solid, Fabio Aurelio as well, and Martin Skrtel, minus one slip-up that nearly cost a goal, was a really good aerial presence and also looked very confident bringing the ball out of the back.

Next European match is Atletico Madrid. It will be a big night for Torres, facing his old team, not once, but twice, and once on the pitch where he used to wear the captain's armband. You could see he was getting frustrated last night because he kept losing his footing and not getting the shots he should have. I hope he'll have a better outing against Atleti.

And on Sunday, it's Liverpool v. Man City. Another big match in the Premier League. If the Reds play like they have been, they should walk away with three points.