Further Adventures

I know, what a title. Like I mentioned last post, English is trying to evacuate my brain. (By the way, after I've posted a blog, could I refer to that time period as post-post?)

Let's see...what is there to say? Too much. I wish I had time each day to write, but I don't, and so I forget a lot of it.
The last day or two I've been enjoying the typhoon. Typhoon is just another word for "really big storm that destroys stuff and is pretty awesome overall." In America, we'd call them hurricanes, but here, for whatever reason, they are typhoons. It hasn't done much except rain, a lot, and there have occasionally been strong gusts of wind. So I've been inside quite a bit.

I should mention that I'm staying with a host family this week - I haven't mentioned them yet, have I?
Well. They're very nice people. I like them. What's funny is that most families with daughters won't allow American guys to stay at their homes, for fairly obvious reasons. When I heard that this family (they're the Wangs, by the way) had a daughter, and that she was the only one who really spoke English, and that she was going to be a student where I was teaching, I have to say, that had me a little worried. I was thinking they might be some crazy Chinese family that was going to try to force me to marry their daughter.
Fortunately, that seems not to be the case, especially as she's only 16. She is a nice girl, very intelligent, with very good English and a lot of patience, but that's a huge age gap (and yes, she probably will read this), and being 'encouraged' to marry someone doesn't sound very appealing. So that's a huge relief. Instead, they just want me to teach her English. Which is more than fine - it's easy. She's a good student.

This family really has been good to me, though. The very first night, without even knowing me, they took me to a really nice restaurant that serves American food (pizza, steak, etc - and it all seems pretty good, and even fairly close to the real thing), and told me to get whatever I wanted. Now, that's nice anywhere, but here in Taiwan, food is really cheap. A good meal rarely costs more than $4 or so (and can easily be had for much less). Many of the things on this menu cost close to $20, for a single, small portion. I wouldn't have felt right to get somethnig that expensive, so I told the parents I'd split a pizza with them. It was a very good pizza, Hawaiin-style (which, strangely enough, is the cheapest pizza you can buy in this country), and it was almost regular sized. I should mention again that it was very good, because it was.
Anyway, it was strange to see pizza being served in a fancy, white-tablecloth restaurant. You know, the kind with waiters wearing suits, or at least really nice white shirts?

Mr. Wang has driven me to several old temples, which I have to say were very interesting (though slightly mystifying and incomprehensible) - Judy (the girl) is a good translator, but she doesn't know everything that I want to know, so don't ask me for a lot of detail on the stuff I saw. I do have some pictures, which I will try to post later.
The mother, Janice (or Janus? I'm not sure, really - names can be different from what you'd expect - the first week I was teaching, there were kids named "Lamp" (though I think it was supposed to be "Lamb"), "Genius", and "Can", so I don't take anything for granted), has obviously spent a lot of effort trying to learn English very quickly. Now, she struggles to speak, and I struggle to understand, and usually we come to some sort of halfway-understanding. And sometimes not.
For example: yesterday, she pointed out the window and said, I think, "Typhoon is not a vegetable." I agreed quickly, since, obviously, a typhoon is not a vegetable, and went on my merry way. As soon as I had the chance, though, I asked Judy what on Earth her mother was talking about. It turns out she meant to say something like, "because there's a typhoon, I can't get vegetables for dinner", which was fine by me. We had lots of meat instead - an excellent outcome.
But I am really impressed by the effort she's putting into trying to speak - it goes far beyond what most people would do.
The family also has a young son, whose name I can't remember just now, but who is called "Xiaozu"...at least, I think that's how it's spelled. He's about 4, and very mischeivious. He loves to run, and tear things up, and generally make trouble for everyone. It's kind of fun to watch, actually. Two days ago, Mr. Wang drove me to a bakery on the way back from somewhere (so that he could buy me breakfast!), and we hadn't been driving for more than about 3 minutes when we noticed that the boy had managed to get into the kleenex box. Most kids would just tear a few out, and be happy with the result - but, Xiaozu (I hope I'm spelling that right) decided he'd better apply a layer of kleenex to the entire back seat of the car. It was kind of funny, and he's such a cute kid it's hard to be very angry with him.