It's Been One Week!...

Barenaked Ladies is going through my head right now...

Let me take this opportunity to state some unexpected advancements in my lifestyle:
1) I have only had coffee twice since getting here, half a cup on the first morning and a little more than a cup today. I have been having tea (sometimes caffeinated, sometimes not) most mornings, and the days I do not consume caffeine, I have managed to get through without migraines. Success!
2) My room has remained clean.
3) I've made my bed (almost) every day.
4) I've even done a bit of laundry out of my sink!
5) I can now walk in front of mopeds without feeling like I'm risking my life. Although, it was only a matter of remembering the "Cairo-technique" of crossing streets.
6) I can identify 50% more of the food in front of me.

I'm really most proud of the coffee thing, but thought I'd turn it into a time to reflect on other changes I've noticed too.

This morning we all enjoyed a 2-hour session of qi-gong (pronounced chee gong) at Fu Jen University. It seemed like it would be no big deal. I was told it was very similar to Tai Chi, but slower and more refined. Man..."no big deal" is the last ways I would describe the experience! That probably had to do with the fact that I hadn't taken the 90+ degree weather or 70% humidity into account. But I did enjoy it! It was very meditative and flowed, once you got the hang of it, that is. It was taught by a man in his late 50s who wasn't confident in his English, so we had a woman translating as he was speaking. The stretches were very obscure, and focused on warming up joints more than muscles, which was something new. We learned one complete motion that invovled slow breaths (hard in hot, humid air in the first place, much less for 10 seconds at a time), twists of all kinds in all kinds of places, and intense flexibility in many different joints. We all came out of it sweating, and kind of puzzled as to how much we sweat.

Then one of our leader/advisor people took some of us to a French fusion cafe near the University that she went to a lot last year. They had French-style coffee, a few different gormet sandwiches, and classic bubble and other milk tea. The coffee gave me the jitters (or maybe it was my new sense of qi from the gong?) and my hand has been shaking a bit all day. But it was excellent!!! 4 stars. For the French fusion cafe.

This afternoon we had our "History of Taiwan" class, which turned into a Q&A of a few different topics that were of particular interest to the class, intermingled with some things about the East and West India Companies, the Dutch in Taiwan, Han Chinese immigrants... The professor was very interesting, though! His name is slipping me now, but he went to graduate school in Germany and studied the Japanese colonization of Taiwan. Although you wouldn't have thought because he seemed like he knew pretty much the history of Taiwan (as a country) AND all the countries that had come into contact with the island during colonization, trading, etc. He also used some really obscure English slang, which gave him major brownie points.

It looks like I'll be leading a series of worships with a couple (yes, Rod, I mean that by your standards) of others. I was kind of appointed to the role after revealing my future ambitions, but I'm also excited for the task! I'm going to try to make the worships as interfaith as possible, but the fact that I'm working with another UU might make that harder. Hopefully the ex-Methodist will keep us in our place...although she's expressed interest in UUsim, so that whole not-necessarily-UU idea might fail...

Another thing: we have a free week in Thailand before classes there. In Thailand, we're going to be expected to do some type of external community service for academic credit. A bunch of places around Bangkok and Chiang Mai offer week-long volunteer opportunities to work with elephant rescues. Hmmmmmmm...!

Sorry! This came out much longer than I anticipated. Kudos if you made it this far. I owe you a cookie when I get back!

B(ee)

FY'allsI: I'm usually on Skype between (all EST) 7-9 pm, and 7-11 am on weekdays. By appointment on weekend. I'm currently exactly 12 hours off, which makes things nice and dandy!