Mandarin overload!!

Yesterday, I had absolutely the best day since arriving in Taiwan. I mean, really, it was spectacular.

So, as planned on Thursday, Cleo and I had lunch today at her mom's house over on the other side of town. Cleo and her husband, Jason, came to pick me up at noon, and soon we had arrived to the apartment. I walk up the stairs and am immediately greeted by two things: Cleo's absolutely adorable mom and a FEAST already spread out on the table. I have no idea how the Taiwanese are not all the size of sumo wrestlers. These people eat more than anyone I have ever seen in my life. Little old Southern church ladies having the pastor over for lunch don't have anything on the sheer quantity of food prepared by Taiwanese mamas. It's insane. For six people today, she had prepared a vat of beef and potato soup she learned to make for me just in case I didn't like Chinese food, an entire side of some flaky white fish with pepper and lime, spicy squid, Chinese sausage, some kind of sauteed chicken, pork, beef, traditional braised vegetables with tofu, rice, tea, and a basket of fruit. I don't think I am ever going to be hungry again. It was all very good and very different from the stuff we get at home. I need to get the recipe for that fish from her, because it was the best thing on planet earth.

As we are eating, Cleo is playing translator for both me and her mother. Her brothers, Ben and Ou (I have no idea how you spell it) and her husband, Jason, all speak some English but mostly speak Chinese with each other, but her mom and I were pretty much getting every hundredth word the other person said. After a little while, this evolved into the "teach Rebecca to speak Chinese" game. The basic idea was that everyone spoke a lot of Chinese and then Cleo would say "What do you think this means." Over the course of the day, I learned a LOT of Chinese. Whether I can remember it all is another thing entirely, but only time will tell with that.

Now, in Chinese, there are four tones, or accents that you can put on the word. They are the first tone, which is kind of a light, conversational pronunciation. The second starts at a lower pitch. The third kind of makes a check mark with your voice, and the fourth is a forceful, flat pitch. For a better example, click here. If you click on the Chinese characters on the page, they will play a recording of the tones. Now, yesterday, while I was learning all of this Chinese, Cleo was showing me which tone it was supposed to be by signaling where the pitch should be in the air with chopsticks. We came up with a whole sign language for the tones. Her brother and husband were almost on the ground laughing at us drawing tones with chopsticks.

After lunch, Cleo, Jason and I went down to the beach. It was SO much fun. The water front here is really vibrant and full of vendors and restaurants and fun stuff in general. And BOATS!!! There were millions of fishing boats packing the harbor. The sidewalk was packed with fish stands, and I saw some of the biggest fish I have ever laid eyes on. Everywhere we looked, Cleo and Jason asked me, "What's the English word for that?" There were squid and sea sails as big as my palm and shrimp longer than my hand span. I am glad to say that I am getting over my "EWW GROSS" when it comes to the ridiculously fresh fish here, though I still don't know how to cook it. I ran around on the beach and put my feet in the (very cold) water and generally acted like a five year old. It was lots of fun.

As we were heading back to Cleo's mom's house, we stopped by the temple to the Water Goddess. This is the largest temple in Jhunan and is absolutely beautiful. Cleo took me inside and explained to me the worship of this particular goddess. Religion here is very odd. There are some Christian churches, but for the most part it seems to be a polytheistic mix of Buddhism, ancestor worship, and a whole slew of gods and goddesses, each with their own story and symbology. It is very interesting to see the traditions of such a completely different style of worship than the way I was raised.

After the temple, we went back to Cleo's mom's, where she decided that it was officially time for me to learn to cook Chinese food. I will say, there is no faster way to learn a language than to learn to cook in it. Cleo's mom speaks the international language of "Mom": Here, let me show you; no, try it this way; see, it should look like this; oh, be careful! It's funny how some things are so universal, despite major differences in culture. She decided to teach me to make chiang yo bien, a kind of insanely work intensive scallion pancake. It's REALLY good. So the first thing you do is make the dough, which she and Jason had done earlier, then you let that sit for about 45 minutes. Then you portion it off and roll the dough out into thin circles about 8 inches across. You spread oil, salt, pepper, and scallions across the circle and roll it up into a thin tube, squeezing it to make it thinner and to make it hold together. THEN you curl the tube up like a cinnamon roll, sprinkle it with flour, squish it, and roll that out to be about the size of a dinner plate. After that, you fry it like a pancake and serve it. So, kind of a pain. Good, worth it, but kind of a pain.

This process, however, was hilarious. The five of us (Cleo, her mom, Jason, Ben, and I) were crowded around the counter with Jason and I actually rolling out the dough, her mom directing traffic, and Ben and Cleo either "helping", translating, or being a peanut gallery. Needless to say, there was more of the latter than either of the former. Words I learned to say in Chinese over this - ugly (bai), pretty (sui), squeeze (juoa), big (da), small (shao) and probably a dozen or so others. As Cleo's mom was showing me how to pinch the tube together to lengthen it out and get the bubbles out, she would say "juoa, juoa, juoa, juoa, juoa" accompanying the motion. When I started doing the same, everyone found that really funny.

After we spent the afternoon making cakes (and a huge mess) and generally just having fun, Jason, Cleo, Ben, and I headed up to Hsinchu, just north of here, to have coffee with some of Ben's friends. We were in another coastal town called Nanliao, which was completely beautiful and reminded me a little of Kitty Hawk. When we arrived, there were literally hundreds of people flying kites of every shape, size and color. The absolute coolest thing, though, was these four guys who worked as a team with professional, triangular trick kites. They had them dancing. The men would syncronize the kites, going in vertical circles and drawing pictures in the sky. It was seriously the most amazing thing I think I have ever seen.

At this point, it was starting to get dark, and so we headed back to Jhunan. After making plans to hang out at least three more times, my new friends took me home and I relaxed after my very good day.

So, that said, here's hoping that today is anywhere near as good as yesterday was! All my love, and thanks for reading.