Coming of Age Ceremony

Hey everybody, last weekend was pretty boring so I decided not to post. But this weekend we had a Taiwanese coming-of-age ceremony so I thought I would write about that. Yesterday was the ceremony, it started with us washing our hands and entering the temple (this signified washing away old habits I believe) We then listened to some speeches from Rotarians and family before doing some traditional dances. We have been practicing our dances for over a month now so finally performing them was really nice. We then had to walk underneath a table, and bump our heads on the edge(this was supposed to signify growing up, I don't know why) we then went to the stage where our host parents placed a hat on our head and gave us certificates. Overall the ceremony was fun, practicing our dances for a month wasn't so much though.

Sorry for such a short post!
More Soon,
Jordan

Busy, Busy

Sorry everybody this is my first post in almost a month, I have been trying to keep myself busy. I'll try harder to post here weekly. I guess I'll get around to updating now, last weekend I went to the Xinbeitou hot-springs with some other exchange students, this was one of the major things I wanted to do while reading through guidebooks. We ended up at a public hot-springs a few minutes walk away from the Metro station. The entrance price, NT$20 or around US$.60 this was a huge surprise to me, I figured getting in would be pricy. But once inside I realized that there was barely anyone under the age of forty, not exactly a raging party but still a nice relaxing few hours. A few weird things about the hot springs: sitting on the edge of the pool with your feet in is not allowed, a guard will tell you this instantly, I have no idea why this is a rule. Another thing is that you are supposed to dump water from the pool onto your feet before you get in, again, I don't know why.

Time here has been flying by, its been nearly eleven weeks since I landed. School keeps getting better (although there are long periods of nothing to do) and I am still enjoying it. My host family has started speaking Chinese to me and to my surprise I understand most of it. I guess between Chinese class and living with a Chinese speaking family I've picked up more than I thought I did.

This weekend has been a lazy weekend (hence a blog post) so I don't really have anything recent to tell about. Again I'm sorry about not posting for so long I'll try to get back on schedule. Talk to ya next week!