Sincere Hotel Kaohsiung

Yesterday we woke up and went to a little place that made western-style breakfast sandwiches. They were fairly good and incredibly cheap. After that we went to the zoo and saw a crocodile that recently bit off it's care takers' arm. We also went to an incredible little area called Lotus Pond that has a number of pagodas and temples. While we were there we happened to witness a ceremony for the 10/10 celebrations. It consisted of lots of money burning, music, dancing, people ...

... meditation, 15 minutes of walking meditation, and a 10 minute break

Yeah, so... that's for 7 days, completely silent, no eye contact. Hmm.. It will be a hard week, no doubt, but people keep talking about the amazing super cool experiences they have by the end.. I'll believe it when I see it. Also, we live and meditate in one room, and leave only for meals and to get stuff out of our rooms. Needless to say, no computer access nor blog for the next week. see you then!

... Friend found a dead worm in her soup... hopefully it's in the pureland now.
7. Continued browsing the monastery, found that the high school has relocated and so the old building is now an activity center... a bit like a ghost town.
8. Went into the Pureland (google) Cave, which is like the Buddhist version of It's a Small World. Although it was closed, the lady there pitied us and let us go in anyway. Extremely creepy and someone ...

... We walk in the door sit down, and I look behind the counter and kafe jojo is back there. Hilarious. The store is small – with all of the coffee beans still green. You order it, they roast it, then you come back and pick it up. The shop is clean and interesting with all types of coffee instruments for sale. We are going to taste 3 different coffees. As we are tasting them and I say – hao huh (tastes good) – kafe jojo looks at ...

... It was a bit of a walk to the other side of campus, and boy was it hot out today. When we arrived there was some debate as to where in the bookstore we would find souvineers. Turns out, unlike at American Universities, students wear no clothes that advertise their university. There was a paltry selection of polo shirts to choose from (I skipped buying one) and a lot more business related gadgets with the NCKU logo, like business card holders, expensive pens ...

Taiwan hat sein ganz eigenes Profil und es gibt einige Charak**istika, die jedes einzeln, ab** vorallem in ihrem Mix ganz eindeutig das Bild dies** Insel zeichnen. Also mal d** Reihe nach... Anshinban ist die Nachmittags- bzw. Abendschule, die hi** so gut wie alle Schuel** besuchen. Urspreunglich von Japan ueb**nommen, findet das System hi** grosse V**breitung ab** sehr wenig Beliebtheit - zum mindest unt** d** jueng**en Gen**ation lehnt es jed** ab. Die Schuel ...

... has a sense of humor! We had tea with Dr Hwung and exchanged minor pleasantries before heading out to take a campus tour of National Cheng Kung University. The campus reminded me of older state run college campuses in the US. Many of the buildings were in some state of disrepair, and there was construction going on in several places. It is a shame that the sun was not shining, because on the campus there is a beautiful lake with garden and arched footbridge so ...

... sehr schoen, wenn man z.B. symbolhafte Geschenke ueberreichen kann, aber manchmal kann es auch nerven, wenn die Leute mir raten, jeden Tag Hochsprung zu ueben oder mich jeden Tag fragen, warum ich bei schoenstem Sonnenschein kein langaermeliges Shirt und nen Hut tragen will. Manche Leute nehmen es sehr ernst, die meisten glauben wirklich an die gaengigen Mythen und es ist immer ein nettes Gespraechsthema, be idem die Leute mit leuchtenden Augen dabei sind :) das ist typisch Taiwan.

... es, naechste Woche wuerde ich eine Familie besuchen. Am Samstag habe ich dann erfahren, dass ich in 5 Tagen meine Sachen gepackt haben soll und abends umziehe. Aber, ich bin ja "jung und flexibel", wie mein Tanztrainer zu sagen pflegt, und von daher war das weiter kein Problem. Mittlerweile habe ich doch mehr als ich erwartet hatte, aber in ein paar Stunden war alles wohl verstaut. Als Gastgeschenk habe ich allerlei ...

... or two tonal sounds are used, Chinese employs four. This means that even if you have a Chinese word written in English, the phonetic sound is different from how you or I might pronounce it.

For example, in English-translated Korean, my subway stop is spelled Sindang, but pronounced "Shin-Dong". Multiply this by any number of variations, and that, from my limited understanding, is why learning Chinese is so difficult.

Easier to comprehend is ...