Then, you have to wake up very early...

Dragonboat practice begins for our team at 6 AM. Other teams are already on the water when we start, and the jazzercise class that meets nearby is already in full-swing. But waking up at 5:30, rowing for and hour and a half, then teaching, then going to Chinese class... It can be pretty exhausting.

But the practicing has been going well. Our coach speaks only Chinese, and is kind of a grizzly teddy bear of a coach. And we haven't had the same team on any one day of practice so far. But we're learning. One of our runs this morning actually yielded a "very good" from our coach, even though it wasn't even half the length of the race (400 meters total). I have overcome my tyrannosaurus-rex proportions and have a new, powerful, though slightly awkward and "uh so I'm dangling off the boat", posture. It's kind of entertaining.

And today, I totally flaunted my "guns" (aka rippling biceps) to some of the competition (see the picture of the team here). And they told me I should switch to their boat. I bet it's more about me being cute than about me being the super powerful rower that I am.

Weekly Mandarin: 42

42nd edition: Hou zi

I love the Taipei Zoo. I love most zoos, almost as much as my boyfriend does, but I seriously love the Taipei Zoo. It has outstanding visitor services (free bug spray, cheap vending machines, even provides toilet paper in its unusually clean bathrooms!) and has some really lovely animals. So this weekend, since I didn't have anything else inspiring to do, I planned an early morning trip to the Zoo. Unfortunately, the Zoo only opens at 9, but I still got to see the animals doing their morning frolic.

And most importantly, I got to see monkeys! (hou zi!) I love monkeys. I think I should go back to school to get lots of degrees in biological anthropology and primate morphology, so that someone someday will pay me to look at monkeys all day. But here's what I saw at the Zoo!

In this video, you can see the itty bitty baby Japanese Macaque and her family. Last time I went to the Zoo (two weeks ago), she was totally fuzz-less. She was so tiny that we didn't see her until about 15 minutes of watching the enclosure. Now she's a little more grown up and mama monkey lets her do a little more.

...More baby monkey. Awwwwww. "Let's go this way, mama!"
Here are the white-faced gibbons. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a decent shot of their baby. What was really awesome, but blogger won't let me upload, about the gibbons was that they were calling like crazy in the morning. I'm pretty sure they were calling to some of the other primates in the zoo!
And the siamangs. There were three of them and they were calling to each other too. You can see the big sack under their throats, which helps them be louder. They had an interesting vocal range, too. Send me an email and I'll send you the audio clips:)

(Not the brightest bulb on the tree, I just realized I wouldn't hit 50 Weekly Mandarin entries. :sigh: )

Weekly Mandarin: 39

39th edition: Yan Ki Shi

This one is out of order, sorry. But I forgot that I had selected a Weekly Mandarin for week 39, but slacked terribly in posting it.

Before it gets painfully hot, most elementary schools host a kind of field day event for their students. Usually, these are just little weekend events at the school's campus, where the kids do a their bi-weekly workout dance together and run races. But, because my school at the time had more students than the high school I attended, it was in the local soccer stadium.

It was MESMERIZING to watch over 2,000 children do roughly the same dance at the same time (the younger students have a simplified form of the dance). And the kids more than filled the soccer field they were placed on.

My job for the day was to sit in the stands and watch their little backpacks. Challenging, I know. But I'm a Fulbright Scholar;) But luckily, the art teacher I've become friends with brought her son to practice his English on. And his wide range of knowledge related to... the Yan Ki Shi.

This kid knew his baseball inside and out. He knew facts about different players, and the logos of the teams, and probably learned all of his US geography (because Taiwanese students learn some of that, unlike American students) relative to baseball teams. But this kid was a rabid Yankees (Yan Ki Shi) fan. He absolutely went above and beyond the usual "I'm from Taiwan and so is Wang Chien Ming, so you bet I'm a Yankees fan" thing. Beyond watching the YES channel with Mandarin subtitles. This kid was like Raymond from the Rainman as far as baseball trivia was concerned. We had a great time.

Yes, within a few days, I'm hoping to replace that plain blue baseball cap with a proper Yankees cap. (Thanks to my Dad!)

First, you have to wake up the dragon...

So the top three festivals in Taiwan are the Lunar New Year (Spring Festival), the Moon Festival, and the Dragon Boat Festival.

I'll be racing in the Dragon Boat Festival, so I'll give you step-by-step coverage of exactly what it takes to race. This is part one in the series.

Naturally, before racing your dragon boat, you need to wake up your dragon and pray that it will keep you safe. Let me walk you through the ceremony:

1. Bring your dragon boats...
... and your chicken.
2. Have a priest spit water on the dragons.
(As you can see from the angle of this picture, I was absolutely in range for the spit. Mmmmm)
3. Pretend to kill your chicken. Then rub its head on the eyes and mouth of your dragon.
(Return chicken to cage.)
4. Have someone important paint the middles of the dragon's eyes.

(Don't get intimidated by the competition...raaaarrrr. He's not scary, he's just confused what on earth a handful of foreigners are doing here. Actually, the foriegners team traditionally does VERY well. No pressure.)
5. Push the boat into the water for it's maiden voyage of the year.

Happy Sailing!
(First practice is tomorrow, at 6 AM! I'll keep you updated on our progress.)

Weekly Mandarin: 41

41st edition: Di zhen

Earthquakes (di jhen) scare me. Having never had one growing up, they're even worse. Living on the 13th floor of an apartment building, they're eeeeeven worse. And when they wake me up in the middle of the night to the sense that someone is shaking my bed... yeah, you get the point.

Last night, at 3:45, we had a di zhen. The center was about 65 miles from where I live, and the magnitude on the Richter scale was 5.6. It wasn't my first quake, but it was my scariest so far mostly because it was late and I was home alone.

But, I suppose the earthquakes and typhoons are just part of the once-in-a-lifetime aspect of living here. Consider me pretty much ready to go home now.

Kids.

For learning phonics, the first graders learn to say the letter's name ("A"), the letter's most common sound ("aaah"), and the vocabulary word for the letter ("apple!").

But we had one kid who reveled in a word he'd learned somewhere else, and instead of U-uh-umbrella, we got:

U-UH-UNDERWEAR!!! hehehehehe

Weekly Mandarin: 40

40th edition: Nanpengyou!!

Boyfriend!! Brian came to visit last week, so last week's word is boyfriend!!

We had a lot of fun. We went to...
hot springs (where Brian loved the doctor fishies)
school (which was much like visiting the zoo)
Taroko Gorge (where we hiked SO many steps)
the ZOO! (which was a wonderful, if very hot, free choice learning environment)
a dancing club
and a REALLY nice hotel.

It was great:)