Voices…

I’m only now recovering from over a week of having a running nose and from some pretty obsessive tissue-blowing. I thought it had something to do with my Jessie-Irene constant-rain visit to the Taipei Zoo, where I ended up touring the place with my shoes soaking wet, but walking into class in the mornings you can’t help but feel that even the mightiest western immune systems would not be able to counter the viruses that must be flowing in the air. Everybody’s holding a sack of tissue papers close at hand, everybody’s staring around blindly with hopeless looks suggesting sleepless nights and everybody’s moaning about their Taiwan weather misfortune. It couldn’t make sense that people coming from the UK and Canada would complain about the Taipei 10-20c winter, but when you’re sick - you don’t care about stuff like that. Somehow, none of the teachers - nor any of the classmate’s Taiwanese partners were ever effected by this phenomenon, and that has to make you wonder…

The foreigners that I meet here range from some extremely good boys to some pretty nasty folks. I like to listen to both, knowing which camp I feel more comfortable with, though at most times I’m not sure I’m into neither. As Christmas came I went for a small - what Taiwanese refer to as a - “gathering” at Sam’s house, not being sure that I’m up for a Christmas party.
When I got there, it was pretty obvious that the only person to have his Santa hat on was the weird tall Israeli guy and that everybody there was nice… very-very very nice. There were drinks floating around - sure, but people there - Taiwanese and Japanese mostly - were admitting and enforcing their inability to sustain more than a beer bottle. I also felt like I’m the oldest guy there - which is not a feeling that I enjoy. I had me my usual “you’re so tall, do you play basketball?” talks and got endless stares - which couldn’t be about me being white anymore. I had my own fun giving them the “alllookthesame” website test and drilling into Taiwanese people and behavior peculiarities. I seemed to be a nicer more of a social guy than I expected myself to be.

Nothing new I can say about my routine. It is still the exact same one. Only thing that keeps changing is the way that I feel about it, but even I get tired of trying to discuss with myself whether I like it or not. Chinese lessons are getting harder and harder and I’m now coming to a point where the vocabulary I need to master is way too extensive for my brain capacity, which results in me forgetting the first lessons while learning new ones. I completely worship people who study Chinese and teach English here at the same time, since I can hardly get along with one of them. I thought of the possibility that having an occupation might distract, in a good way, from the mess that happens inside your mind when you’re faced with a new language, but I just don’t know. Some days I’m thinking there’s nothing to Chinese and I’ll be really good at it in no time. Other days, I’m thinking this whole thing is hopeless. Same old voices are struggling within me again and, as always, I think I know which side is winning, though I admit I probably enjoy seeing the fight. If it would just be simple then it wouldn’t be worth it, right?