Pre-Halloween Taiwan – Fund for Education Abroad

My biggest event this week was the Japanese dance club’s performance this weekend. It was a fundraiser event at the dadaocheng 大蹈呈戏苑 Theater in Beimen 北门. This theater is well known for its more traditional styles of performance such as Chinese puppets, Opera, and more (As I passed by the cases of puppets I noticed a case with the main cast of Journey to the West 西游记— My favorite of the Chinese classics; I should have known that that story would be in puppet form too).

Since our dance group being traditional Japanese dance were of course welcomed by the staff, but it was a bit awkward being the only foreigner in the room for most of the day. I’m not even sure if there were any foreigners in the audience. Because of this I spent most of the day waiting around, trying not to get in the way. I could lend my help here and there, but I was mostly worried about messing up from not understanding what it asked of me.

I’m sure that in the heat of the moment there are a lot of times where learners of a language forget very simple things. I mean I forget simple words in English at times. For example, I had forgotten the word for mirror, and after being told over and over to look at a mirror the person talking to me finally yelled at me while pointing at it. Needless to say I now have jingzi 镜子 ingrained in my psyche.

In other news, Halloween is just around the corner. I’ll be sure to have something to write about once it happens— even before it since It’s on a Monday this year. I hope everyone back in the states has a spooky, but safe, Halloween 平平安安万圣节！

Maybe not surprising to some (but to me it was!) is that Halloween is not as big over here as It in the US, there some trick or treaters, a party or two, but for the most part residences aren’t as full of the Halloween spirit as they would be by this time in the US. In fact, during my work at Fulbright I helped a local intern write an article on Halloween customs in the US. Of course, It was through the lens of an US college students, but that’s beside the point.

My classes are doing a small Halloween event where we can dress up if we feel. This is to hide that fact that we’ll be doing speaking practice, though, since instead of handing out candy we’ll be asking each other questions related to the grammar we’ve been studying. Simple but still a little fun. It’ll be fun to see what people choose to dress up as here.