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.


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