Twenty-three in Taiwan

Well, I spent my 21st birthday in mainland China, and now I've spent my 23rd in Taiwan. It could have come at a better time, to be honest, as things have been pretty stressful here lately, with landlord problems and school work and real work.

But it turned out to be a really good birthday. In the morning, Michael and Alex came in and brought me a couple little cakes from the bakery on campus. One was fruit, the other was tiramisu. One of my Japanese classmates also gave me a box of Japanese chocolate snacks. Then my teacher took me out to dinner at a Korean hotpot/barbecue place that Michael recommended. Three of my classmates, including Michael, joined us, and it was really nice to kick back, relax and have some really good food.

Tonight a bunch of us are going out to a night club near Taipei 101, and it's sort of a birthday/end of the semester celebration. The thing that really strikes me about the group going out is just how international it is. There's a couple of us Americans, but the rest of our classmates are Japanese, Korean, German, Australian. We communicate almost exclusively in Chinese, and in some ways, I think we're closer than the kids in Lauren's program, who are mostly Americans. I don't know if we just got lucky with the group of students this term, or if it's the international-ness of the group that makes it so, but we also have had no drama, no infighting or cattiness that I would have expected. Everyone gets along really well and is really friendly, really open and ready and willing to chat.

I also talked to a guy in my program today who's English and who, while he's not into football himself, has a couple of friends who are big Liverpool fans and who are probably going to go down to The Tavern tomorrow to watch the game. I told him I might go down there as well, and this guy immediately asked for my number so he could get me in touch with his friends. I don't know if it'll all go through, and I've actually got to work tomorrow until rather late, but since the game isn't on StarSports, I might wander down to The Tavern anyways, just to see what it's like and whether it's a possibility for future games. If not, it's not that important of a game, just Bolton. I'd be much more concerned if it was Liverpool v. Man U or something like that.

Once things are solved with our landlord I'll try to condense the whole mess into a blog entry, but for now I'm just focusing on getting things worked out.