I just want to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year!
Continue reading 新年快樂! Happy New Year!
My students are pretty creative sometimes.
I was teaching a Language and Culture course recently. After going over the chapter on Nonverbal Communication, I gave my students several questions as homework. One of them was to interpret several situations according to their culture. The question was, “How would you interpret a young man dressing entirely in
Continue reading Awesome student response of the day
I finally broke the 1000 mark on my Hanzi Flashcards on Friday. Feels good, yet I’ve got a long way to go.
I officially started studying Hanzi on Feb. 9 of this year, armed only with Anki, pen and paper, and a book. I learned approximately 300 Hanzi by simple rote memorization (I also learned to
Continue reading Hanzi Milestone: 1000
It’s early December, which means Taiwan is frozen over. All the Taiwanese people have donned their thick winter jackets to protect themselves from the cold. There is already ice on the ground and forecasts call for more snow.
No, actually, I’m just kidding. One of my absolutely favorite things about Taiwan is the weather. When
Continue reading Harsh winter
One of the greatest and most underrated joys of learning a new language is have small victories. All too often, big victories are emphasized – especially here in Taiwan and especially when learning English is the topic. However, I find so much more satisfaction in small victories. Learning new 漢字 and recognizing them
Continue reading Small victories
Last weekend, Mrs. Expatriate and I decided to take a trip to the Gukeng Coffee Festival. It’s a small gathering of people selling coffee, food, handicrafts, and other such things. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and there were quite a few people out and about. If you get a chance, I recommend you go.
Our
Continue reading The Gukeng Coffee Festival
Catherine over at shu flies had a great post a while back about one of her blogging pet peeves – people who generalize and stereotype about every Taiwanese person based on the actions of a few. This also happens to be one of my pet peeves and something that I, being a foreigner, have to
Continue reading Erroneous Taiwan Stereotypes
In Taiwan, it is common to eat sweet foods on and after your wedding day. It is thought that eating sweet food will help the newlywed couple have a baby boy. The reason is a Taiwanese proverb:
吃甜甜，生兒子。 (chī tiántián, shēng érzì)
It doesn’t sound as good in Mandarin, but it rhymes in Taiwanese (jia didi, sei
Continue reading Someone wants us to have kids
Been a while. I’ve been busy. However, I did find time to turn Miss Expatriate into Mrs. Expatriate and thought I would write about the process of doing so here. Like most things involving government in Taiwan, getting married is a very simple process that is muddled in bureaucracy. The process of getting
Continue reading Getting married in Taiwan
In Taiwan, many people don’t eat beef for various reasons; however, religion doesn’t appear to be one of them.
A coworker of mine doesn’t eat beef because her family has always been farmers. I guess they raise cows for milk and think that because the cow has given them so much (allowed to make a living,
Continue reading Random Fact about Taiwan #1481