Mishaps with Mandarin

This week’s special: I lock my host mom and I out of the house!!

Everyday, I hear my favourite type of music through the walls of my house: angry piano music. I asked my mom about it, and she said our neighbor plays piano very well. We went over to say hi, and as I walked out, she said “bùyào guān shàngmén”. I closed the door behind me, and she said (in English) “Do you have the key?!”. I didn’t. It turns out “Bùyào guān shàngmén” means “Don’t close the door”.

While I apologized at least a million times and cried a little inside, my host mom went over to the neighbors. We tried to call my dad with the neighbor’s phone, but he didn’t respond, so with no options left, we resorted to banging on the door and yelling for him. We were probably only out there for 15 minutes before he finally opened the door, but it felt like a lifetime to me. My mom seemed to find the whole situation funny (thankfully), but I will glue the house key to my hand to make sure that never happens again (or maybe I’ll just learn more Mandarin. We’ll see).

On Saturday night, we went to the much-anticipated Rotary Moon Festival dinner that I had been hearing about all week. (Later I learned that there’s another Moon-related holiday next week – apparently that one has barbecue?)

At the party – I mean dinner, the Rotarians performed more karaoke and saxophone, again. I told my host mom that I can play the saxophone, and she said, “Can you play it or can you play it?” I knew in my answer I had a choice to make: did I want to be asked to play the saxophone in front of the whole club?

              I decided to go with yes, I can play it. I told her I played saxophone in my school band for three years, hoping that this new skill would open some doors for me. Sure enough, she hurried us over to the club president and told him the news. He assured me that at the next event, I would be able to play sax for them. Since there have been two of these parties in one week, I should probably start practicing.

              The women of the club did more dancing, and I joined in again. As the night went on, the Rotarians drank more and more, and I eventually excused myself to go to the washroom and escape. On the way there, I saw another party – with students my age! (No, I didn’t ditch the Rotary party to go to that one.) I watched them for a bit, and either Taiwanese students are really good at dancing or it was a party for people who can dance. They formed a circle, and kids took turns showing off their skills in the middle of it.

              I wanted to watch more, but I didn’t want to be noticed missing from the Rotary party, so I went back and danced and listened to karaoke renditions of Chinese ballads sung by drunk Rotarians.

              On Sunday, my counsellor Tom took me to pick fruit on his farm. I was introduced to even more fruit that I’ve never heard of – did you know that figs are the same size and almost the same shape as grapes? I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual fig, and I’ve only ever eaten them in the snack Fig Newtons. For some reason I’ve always assumed they were some sort of leaf. I couldn’t have been more wrong about that.

              My second week of school was better than the first – I went to classes that actually did things, and I learned how to gut a fish!!! In hair-styling class I attempted to learn a fancy braid that somehow was supposed to turn into a flower, but mine ended up looking more like a picnic basket. Still, it’s a new skill – if anyone wants their hair to look like a basket, I’m the person to go to.

              My classmates are amazing. I feel like I’m in the Nice Olympics – my classmates who take the same bus as me give me a drink or a snack every morning, and at least one classmate gives me something (almost always food) every period.

              I joined Cajun (an American exchange student)’s class today, and immediately someone gave me two little candies. I gave them a pineapple cake (a much-loved snack in Taiwan) in return that I bought specifically for this purpose.

              Later, I returned to my class, and again someone gave me some sort of stringy candy. I didn’t have any pineapple cakes left (Taiwanese students are just too nice, I bought seven pineapple cakes, how were they all gone before lunch), so I gave her the two candies that I had received earlier (regifting is terrible, I know). She looked at it, and then asked where I got them. I pretended that I didn’t understand her (regifting is terrible, but only if the receiver finds out), and she went over to another friend. They both returned with a giant bag of the same candies – and gave me a handful.

              I have since learned that in the Nice Olympics, my Taiwanese classmates will come in first every time. There’s no way to beat them – or even come in close second. I’m still trying to learn all of their names.

              I’m not ready to give up just yet, though – as a Canadian I do know something about niceness, and I might still have a few tricks up my sleeve (tune in to next week’s post to see my results!).

              Today, Cajun and I left school after lunch to go to our first day of Chinese classes at the university in Miaoli. On the way to the train station we ran into Cajuns host mom. She insisted on buying us bubble tea (it’s not like I was going to say no), and then we continued on our way. When we got to the train station, the Rotarian who would be taking us to Miaoli gave us a honey flavored tea and some sort of Taiwanese donut. One thing I’m quickly realizing is that Taiwanese people love to give away food – and if you don’t accept, it’s seen as almost a personal offense.  

After taking the train and the bus, and stealthy re-gifting one of the teas to another exchange student, we arrived at the university.

I thought I was getting better at Mandarin, but the placement test they gave us knocked my socks off. I realized about 10 minutes too late that I was answering the listening questions in an entirely different section of the test, so I guessed randomly for all of those. There were some written questions that I didn’t even try to answer. The speaking section was the only part of the test I understood.

              It was a bit frustrating; I recognized some characters, and knew a few, but when there’s a whole sentence and you only know “can” and “you” and “ma” (the word indicating you’re asking a question) there’s not much to work with.

              After class, some exchange students and I went out for dinner at McDonalds!! McDonalds is everywhere, apparently, even in small-town Taiwan. Except in Taiwan (and from what I’ve heard, Asia) McDonalds are a lot nicer. The sitting area upstairs was large and well-kept – it felt more like a restaurant than a fast-food place.

Talking to other exchange students, about everything from school to Mandarin to host siblings, makes everything feel more manageable, because even if it’s hard, at least someone else understands what you’re going through. It’s also amazing to be able to learn so much about countries from all over the world – we talked about politics for a while, and I learned more about Spanish and Brazilian and Japanese politics than I ever would’ve learned otherwise.

Not every exchange student speaks fluent English, so sometimes it’s hard to communicate, but I think I found a way around the issue – my friend Luiza didn’t understand me in English, so I switched to Chinese, and she understood perfectly!! I hope that someday communicating in Chinese is easier than English for us.

Another (luckily more minor) mishap with Mandarin: when I got home today, and told my mom about the bubble tea, she exclaimed, “Bubble tea?! So many calories!” and said I should go on a walk with my dad. I go on a walk with him almost every day, so even though I felt exhausted from being out and about for 14 hours, I said I’d go.

As it turns out, we were going for a run, not a walk!

I am not a runner. The run today definitely proved that. However, I didn’t want to slow down my dad, so I ran and ran until we came to a stoplight – even though we’ve walked the same route before, and I knew we didn’t need to cross the street, I conveniently “forgot” and luckily we walked the rest of the way home (which was about 5 minutes away. If only we had passed a stoplight in the first 5 minutes of the run).

I collapsed on the couch as soon as we got home, thankful that tomorrow is the Mid-Autumn Festival (the other Moon-related holiday) and I don’t have to go to school. My host dad chose that moment to tell me that tomorrow morning (why must everything be done in the morning?!) we’re going to climb to the top of a mountain in Hsinchu.

Hopefully thinking of all the barbecue we’ll have for dinner (apparently barbecue is a staple of the Mid-Autumn Festival) will be enough motivation to get me to the top of the mountain.
              Thanks for reading!!

~ Serena

P.S. Go to my Facebook to see pictures of the aforementioned mountain… and another one we climbed today!