Random News Articles

Sorry, not much time to post what I've been doing lately but I wanted to share some more Christine-in-the-news happenings~ we sang at a press conference the other day and this is the piece done in the news on us ~
http://www.ctitv.com.tw/news_video_c13v22036.html

And this is a recording of the whole song me and my friends did at the press conference. It was a little bit high *wince at the high notes* but still fun!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBSHEH7ItKk
:D Enjoy !!

Lots of Concerts!!!

My favorite thing to do in Taiwan (apart from karaoke-ing with friends :) :) ) is going to see concerts!! Although many of these end up being in Taipei, which costs me $100 American dollars round trip to get to (on the super fast high speed rail) I still end up going very often because I love concerts that much!!

If you remember, this a picture of the first concert I went to Taiwan  this year ~ one Taiwanese band (this one) and two Japanese bands~ they were ok :) It took place at the Wall in the art district in Kaohsiung.

This is a picture of Da Zuiba at the Charity Love Concert, for the orphans and old people's home. Me and my friend Patrick went to this one. Da Zuiba is a really cute hip hop group. Their name means "Big Mouth" This one was in Taipei at a place called Legacy. 

Me and Ashley and Liz went to see Wang Leehom at the Dream Mall in Kaohsiung ~ but he only sang one song, "I Need Someone At My Side" It was still cool to meet him :) His poster is now on my wall! 

Here is some new stuff! A couple weekends ago, there was a festival in Kaohsiung at the Lotus Pond, the 10,000 Years Festival. Several popstars performed, and it was pretty cool. We also saw the Kaohsiung mayor there. The group that is picture is of is Da Zuiba again (I guess I really like them, I've seen them twice already this year). They are exciting cause they dance and sing. 

Then, the same weekend, I found out that there was to be a huge concert in Taipei to mark the opening of the Flora Expo that is being held there this year. I saw it on the internet at 4, was on a train to Taipei by 5, and got there at 6:30 in time for the 7 oclock concert!!! It was definitely worth it!! This is a picture of Wu Bai, a famous rockstar here. He's old but still kicking ~ his songs were pretty rockin' 

You can just see the ridiculous amount of people at this. Thankfully, as each artist performed, people left, so we got closer and closer to the stage. I met my Taiwanese friend Amy here and we hung out in the crowd :) 

Next was Yuzhou Ren, or Universe People, a really cool band who plays funky music. They were so sweet! They are now probably my favorite band, and I'm going to sing one of their songs as a duet with one of my friends at this press concert for the Kaohsiung Ministry of Education next week. Heeeeeeee. 

This is a picture of Wu Yue Tian being interviewed. They are like the most popular artist in Taiwan ~ a really cool band who sing some Taiwanese songs and some Mandarin. They are getting oldish too but are still rockin as well. I really like their songs !! In English, their name means Mayday. They have really funny names, like one means "weird animal" or "monster" 

This is a picture of Magic Power, a kind of hip hop/rock band. They kept the audience pretty excited, and were fun to listen to, even though they weren't as good as the other bands (in my opinion). 

This is Guo Jing, a female popstar. 

And this is a picture of Lin Zhiling, who is Taiwan's most famous model. She is beautiful and very tall~ but after this she sang a song and it was soooo bad. She got ripped for it in the papers for days afterwards hahah. 

This is Tank, another of my favorite popstars. He wrote some of the songs from a few of my favorite idol dramas. I think he's had a drop in popularity lately~ but I still think he's a good songwriter. 

And this is SHE, the most famous girl group in Asia (probably, there might be some Korean groups more famous, but I don't really care about them haha). They were really good! I especially like Ella (the one farthest to the right) who is the star of some of my favorite dramas, including the one that Tank wrote songs for. Too bad this picture is really bad. And also that one of the other ones now has 3rd degree burns all over half of her body and is in the hospital screaming for people to put her out of her misery ~~ :( Sad

On a happier note, I had lots of fun karaokeing this weekend, and we also had a Halloween party/birthday party for my friend Maia, which was all way fun. Yay!! I miss everyoneeeee~ Love you!!

A Massive Update from the Land of Typhoons, Palm Trees, and Stinky Tofu

Haha hello everyone!!
What has been going on lately?
Well I think what comes foremost to mind is that I was randomly on the news a week ago, so here's a link to that.
http://tv.sohu.com/20101015/n275773503.shtml
What else what else?
Well, I got a scooter and have been zipping around on it! Its so much fun! I've carried people on the back with me and stuff too. It's really handy for when I need to go up the mountain to school on Wednesday, or go to the other side of the mountain for language partner meetings!

It is black with red highlights and a blue floormat. Very patriotic! You can open the seat and put stuff underneath there, but it's not really conducive to carting large amounts of things around. 

What else has happened lately? I've been bothering the 7 11 guy downstairs to come hang out with us, so I think that will actually happen tonight, yay! His motorcycle is way cooler than mine. 

I've also been teaching. I took some pictures of the outside of my school. It's very nice looking, but there's no air conditioning, and its still hot here (almost November...? ) like 88 degrees every day so I wish we had it. 

Apart from this, a few weekends ago we were invited to a diplomatic party on National Day. There were so many people there! I never knew there were so many important people in Taiwan haha. I saw the president of Taiwan (he walked right past me, along with a retinue of bodyguards) and fireworks and met some interesting ambassadors and government workers and American lobbyists and their Taiwanese counterparts... I enjoyed the ice sculptures and the live music... It was a nice night, although I felt much too unimportant to have been invited haha. 

 Ice sculptures at the Taipei Guest House, an old Japanese building used for entertaining important guests... Now used by the Taiwanese government

 Fireworks (kind of, they were prettier and more obvious in real life haha)

 More ice sculptures! This was the 99th birthday of Taiwan so it was pretty important. In Chinese, the word 99 sounds like "forever" so it's very auspicious.

 The outside of the guest house.

A pretty arch thing outside.

Yep so that was some of the highlights of my last few weeks! I also went to a TON of concerts, but I think I will leave that update to the next blog... I will do a special post just on concerts, and introduce some of the more famous ones. As always, I miss everyone, come visit me soon!! :) 

^-^

Christine

Christine Was In the News Today

So there I was minding my own business... haha when apparently I was on Taiwanese TV all day!!!
Here is the link:
http://www.tvbs.com.tw/NEWS/NEWS_LIST.asp?no=blue20101015114458
explaining the situation:

Soooo I sometimes record myself singing Taiwanese songs on youtube cause it's fun to see what people think of my music and share what I'm learning. Also, I really miss a cappella and this has kind of become replacement time for me. :)
Now I shall attempt to translate this article, which was apparently also a few minutes' blurb on a news station today that played several times, and now is circulating onto msn news and yahoo and stuff.

Ahem ahem.

It's not easy for foreigners to learn Chinese, and singing Chinese songs needs even more study, but there is an American-born blond girl named Christine who likes to sing, and likes Chinese even more, and listens to the songs on idol dramas every day, studies each day, then looks online for the guitar tabs, looking at her screen singing and playing the guitar, including Wang Leehom, Rainie Yang, and Fish Leong, these popular songs, the  more she sings them, the smoother they become. Christine records them as she learns them, then posts them online for everyone to share, attracting a lot of web-users' attention, and their viewing rate is ever increasing.

:: Quoting me singing a song ::

She takes up the guitar, looks at the computer screen, this blond girl sings a song. :: Quotes me singing again::

It's really Chinese! Blonde haired jade eyed foreign girl, with a mouthful of a western accent, her favorite is to sing popular songs, does she sound a lot like Wang Leehom? :: Quotes me singing::

Listening carefully, it actually does sound a lot alike, and not just Wang Leehom, she even sings songs by Fish Leong, and plays guitar while she sings. ::Quotes me singing::

She sings the pop songs that she has learned, and these songs have one thing in common, they are from movies or tv shows. This girl Christine from America, she learns Chinese as she watches the TV, now she is in Kaohsiung, and started posting videos this March. Her videos are being watched more and more, running more than 3 blogs, and posting videos, whose background is almost always alike, a love seat sofa, sometimes with a striped towel, and on the wall there are often pictures, her elegant signing skill doesn't depend on others, no matter how simple, it all works.


~~~~~~~~~


So that was fun to translate, and really really really weird. ?@#@!$#%#%@#$%#

Humidity 94% and Climbing

Hello everyone!!

For this update, I just wanted to share a few things that I might have skipped over in the last few posts.

This is a picture of the practice area when I got my scooter license. I went around this course about four times before I was ready for licensing action!!

Later we went to a Japanese restaurant with live music... aka this guy! He was actually pretty good and his hair was hilarious. Not too cute though. 

This is the rest of the table at the restaurant, diligently discussing important matters. 

This is me at the BIGTOM ice cream shop across the road from my apartment building. Some of you might recognize it from one of my favorite Taiwanese dramas-- Hi my sweetheart. This is the ice cream shop where they filmed a part of it. Thus I like to come here to pretend I am in the drama haha. Really good ice cream also. 

This is a picture of where you order. 

This weekend I went to Taipei again!! Big surprise. It is my favorite place in all the world. First I hung out with Patrick and his friends again. I found mangos along the side of the road which made me extremely happy. My favorite thing!! 

The next day we headed off to a charity concert. One of my favorite groups, "Big Mouth" was there and I was really excited to see them perform!!! We were the only foreigners there and there were a lot of people present whom the concert was benefiting... orphans and mentally challenged people. We paid 30 dollars for our tickets but it was worth it to help the charities, and what an interesting experience!!

Look at all of us wearing our red tshirts!!

Me and patrick... I look really scared for some reason haha

Da Zuiba, or Big Mouth in English. They're so coooool!

This is them getting interviewed, talking about how awesome it was to support the charities and stuff!

This is an actress who is also a singer who also performed, among like 30 or 40 other pop stars. She is one you might remember from Dan Chaofan Egg Fried Rice, with Da Dong!!

Me with my host family!! I've gone out to celebrate the Moon Festival with them, and they are super nice. Their daughter Peggy is especially adorable :) 

This is us allll eating dinner at this all you can eat Japanese restaurant. SO amazingly good and only like 12 dollars a person. Such a good deal!!!! It was so good I ate it twice last week haha. And now I can scooter there!!!

Look forward to pictures of my new scooter in the next post!!!

Signing off...

Fulbright Conference

Last weekend was the Fulbright Orientation Conference! This was fun and all, but not really picture worthy, so I didn't really take pictures of the conference ... Basically we heard all the researchers and other ETAs present on themselves! It was very interesting to hear what the other researchers are doing!

This is a picture of Jess and Liz at the Fulbright Party after the Conference. 101 is in the background!! We were in the World Trade Center building.

Me and Jess at the party

After the party, we went to a sake bar and had really really good, interesting tasting sake!! Way better than any I've ever tried before. It almost made me like it!!

This is a picture of Mia, Ashley, and Liz at the sake bar!! 

We stayed at a really nice hotel, as you can see. This is the view from the breakfast room. My favorite part was the showers though!! The shower in our room had HOT WATER and drained properly, unlike my shower in my room in my apartment. That is always the thing I miss most, I love hot water showers. Oh well.... What I give up to be in Taiwan!! 

This is Mia, Liz, and Ashley, all of us at the breakfast room, right before we left. After this, on Saturday, we went to more meetings and then to the National Palace Museum. I didn't take pictures of it though, because I'd been there before. I'm definitely going back too, it's awesome. 

This is the view from outside the museum though!

Then, we checked in at our ridiculously sketchy hostel. Scary!! They wouldn't turn on the ac before 11 so we went to Shilin Night Market. Then Liz got lost, so we went to go find her and on the way found the cutest little cafe! We went in and had coffee with some of the Fulbright researchers and their friends. 

Yes that picture definitely needs to be extra large. Here is a researcher, her British friend, and Ashley. 

Sunday, we all split up. Me and Liz went to Maokong, which is basically a mountain to the south of Taipei. It was AWESOME. 

To get there, you first take the metro to the end of a line, right next to the zoo. Then you get out and walk a block to the gondola station. Then you wait in like for a while until you get into this little gondola car, which seats about six people. Then you fly up the mountain. Whoooo. Here are some pictures from the gondola window. It felt like an amusement park ride. 

Look, you can see 101 in the distance!! 

Overlooking the zoo.........

Looking straight down.

We got off at the second to last stop, at a temple area. It was beautiful: the temple, the view over Taipei, and the art and landscape. Here's a few pictures of the area!

It's kind of cool how plants grow on the temple roof. 

The incense burner and Liz. People here were both burning incense, praying, and taking pictures with enormous cameras all at the same time. Very odd. We just took pictures, no incense or praying. 

The view! Kind of hazy, but still beautiful. The very farthest you can see is where the ocean is. 

A hand painted walkway down to the less touristy, 100 year old temple farther down. 

View of the temple from farther away.

Next, we took the gondola to the end of the line, to a road lined with tea shops of every variety and age. It was kind of intense. Before sampling these though, me and Liz walked down the mountain a ways to a stream with interesting rock formations that was labelled the "pothole," not the nicest name in English. The Chinese was pot (like teapot pot though) and "cave" or "hole", but it sounded nicer. Like, teapot holes or something. It was pretty anyway. We climbed all over it and ruined nature a bit. 

Christine looking sweaty after hiking down to the pothole, pondering the rock formations.

Pretty cool though hunh. Lol.

The hike down looked like this, it was probably the best part. The bamboo trail was very pretty. 

Later, we sat at a teashop overlooking all of Taipei and had tea and waffles. Awesome combination and it felt great to rest after all that hiking. 

This is where we sat!

And there's my drink, all gone!! So yummy :D

As a side note, as we were walking back from the pot hole, we saw a GINORMOUS spider. I don't know if you can see it in this picture, cause i didn't want to get too near, but it was definitely the size of my had. Eek!! Scary!!!

Bad picture, but it's that thing in the middle! Scary!!! 

Anyway, a great weekend! This weekend has been boring, and a typhoon is coming tomorrow, so nothing special going to go on, but next weekend I hope to go see a fun concert in Taipei, and Wednesday is moon festival, which im going to spend with my new host family, so stay tuned for more adventures from Taiwan!!! 

:D