So we are almost half way through the semester here and I am feeling more and more at home every week. My next post will be all about the classes that we do here and hopefully I will have some photos and videos to go along with it!
This is the just a picture of the view from the cafeteria. It makes it hard to get back into classes when you can sit and have a coffee overlooking the whole of taipei! 
But with the beautiful grounds comes with it, everything that lives in the trees. Like this guy....
He was hanging out behind the water fountain with the sole purpose of scaring the pants off anyone innocently wanting to quench their thirst. Luckily he was 'hiding' inside the plastic holder so I was able to take these pictures without worrying about him jumping straight at my face. *SHUDDER*
(I apologise in advance if these pictures give you the Heebie Geebies.
Wind and Conqueror
The worst show I have seen to date.
The venue for this show looked lovely when we arrived. It was an outdoor theatre set up next to a cafe on the corner of fairly quiet street, although the seating was set up only a few meters from the fence. It all went steadily downhill from there.
This is the stage from where I was sitting. It was quite big, although the roof was kind of low so I wasnt sure what the visibility would be like to the bag of the stage.
When the curtain's opened for the first time however, I realised that that would not be the biggest problem. Three wooden support beams stood Smack Bang at the front of the stage. Right in the bloody middle. The whole of the upstage left corner was taken up by what would have been another room and so there really was only 3/4 of a stage. The whole set up made it very difficult for the dancers who had to keep avoiding the wooden beams, but altogether hilarious for the audience who got to see performers run into, collide with, and ricochet off these beams. And trust me, these brief encounters that the dancers had with the permanent props, were the highlight of the show!
The first solo was a traditional Eastern style dance performed to an Asian remix of a well known classical piece of music. (I say well known because I recognised it but couldn't for the life of me tell you what it's called or who composed it). Not a bad solo, so I was hopeful at this point that the night would improve.
It didn't.
The start of the third piece was when I knew that this was going to be a struggle. A group of female dancers entered the stage dressed in spanish looking dress. Long black leotards and long skirts which were fuller at the bottom. They also had black veils over their faces and one of them (the leader of the pack I guess) had a big wooden stick that she was hitting on the floor. They were dancing to jazz music. After a while of these girls dancing around on wooden boxes and doing moves that were a mixture between spanish dance and something else entirely a group of male dancers entered and lined up downstage wearing brown cowboy pants and black cowboy hats. They performed movement in canon that looked like it was loosely based on something from the Full Monty or Magic Mike and then exited one at a time off the opposite downstage wing.
There were also solo performances from two geriatrics. The second old lady to grace the stage did so with a giant clear plastic inflatable pillow that she carried around like it weight a hundred pounds.
We took a photo of some of our reactions to this Dance Spectacular...
There was the initial confusion:
Followed by the sheer bewilderment when shirtless asian cowboys came onstage and danced infront of crazy spanish witches dancing to jazz music
And finally the acceptance that this was going to be the longest and by far the worst show we had ever seen.
We were still a bit delirious on the bus ride home... Here's Ashley!
So because our Friday night was such a disaster we decided to salvage our weekend with brunch in the seaside location of Danshui :)
We knew we were off to a flying start when Eve spotted her two favourite people at the train station. I am not lying when I say that Eve gets very excited at the sight of this beautiful couple! If you don't believe me, check out her ear to ear grin in this picture. (You can see Tsai and Tank on the opposite platform)
The next sign, that it was going to be a good Saturday was this beautiful cup of fresh coffee that I was so looking forward to :)I seemed to be a woman possessed that day, but I can happily say that I do not regret anything I bought and that is the sign of a bloody good days shopping!
This is a very cute shop in Danshui that sells hand made soaps and other little things for your bathroom and home. It smelt gorgeous in here and the the decorations were so cute!
This picture is taken from the outside of the Shilin markets looking in. It is hard to comprehend unless you have been there just how packed it is. I like it more and more each time I go. 
Last week I had my first session with my Language Exchange buddy. Her name is Verna and she is studying Museum management at TNUA. Her degree sounds so interesting! She only has about 3 classes a week as well as opposed to my 15 classes.
I don't think it will be much of an exchange either. She has already done an English and French degree at another University but wanted to do this Language exchange because she is planning on moving to London next year. She wanted someone to practice having conversations with and says she also has problems understanding different accents.
My solution? To bring every season of Black Books and Doctor Who that I can find on my hard drive and watch them with her! Genius :)
In return she will help me with my basic understanding of Mandarin and each week she promises to bring a sample of traditional Taiwanese food. How delightful!
It's hard to believe that at the end of this week we will be half way through our semester here at TNUA. At times it feels like time is dragging on, and others if feels like it is going by all too quickly! I still have so much more that I want to do and see here before I go.
