 2024.04.23> Another earthquake wakes me up around 2 AM, but I get back to sleep eventually to still wake up on time. > At class, though my handwriting suffers terribly with my left hand, I figure out that I can still draw pretty decently, right up until I suddenly can't. I then realize that I can move my thumb painlessly enough to hold a pencil again with my right hand, so the world is restored to order. > At lunch my French classmates try to convince me that I should probably see a doctor about it, but it's already nearly better so I think they're a bit silly. > When my parents get home in the evening, we go out to the Big City shopping mall to eat dinner--conveyer belt sushi and milk tea from one of the two tea shops that claims to have invented bubble tea. The milk tea is pretty good, even as someone who doesn't usually care for it, but the bubbles are too soft for my tastes and they give it to me in a tiny teacup with a spoon instead of a straw because I forgot how weird fancy restaurants are about ordering bubble tea warm instead of cold. > We also go shoe shopping, where I am indecisive about colors and have to keep reminding myself that the incredibly cute lightly colored shoes will not survive rural New York. Though I've been being better about not getting to caught up in my anxiety, I put off saying that I think the brown version of the shoes I end up deciding on would actually probably be better than the black pair until we somehow ended up already checking out, so I end up with the still nice pair of black shoes instead. 2024.04.22 > For the first time in a long while, I race Taiwanese Simon from the station to the school. We tie pretty evenly, but he waves to me which means he actually knew it was a race this time. > I make it to fourth period before disaster strikes, aka, as I set the volleyball (in a very good set, I might add. I could barely set at all at this time last year) my right hand isn't at the exactly right angle, so the volleyball smashes my thumb into the joint. I can move it, so it's not broken, but it hurts an awful lot when I do, so I am reduced to my left hand for the rest of the day. (This is unfortunate, because Xie An sends me a giant paragraph about Rodrigo of Caledon and I need to respond with an equally giant paragraph, but doing so takes far longer with only one hand.) > At home, I mourn the fact that the one day I had a million art ideas lined up to draw once I got home, I can't actually draw at all. We get a couple small earthquakes, too, and I realize that they get a little more scary when you're on the 8th floor of a building. 2024.04.21 > In the morning, my host parents take me to an old street I didn't catch the name of somewhere near Taoyuan, where we try famous rice pudding (the brown sugar pudding isn't so good, but the savory one topped with soy sauce and dried radish is really yummy) and boiled tofu (that I would've never tried on my own since it looked like actual meat before it was cut up), and then go on a nice hike in an agriculture-leisure area. We're a bit late to whatever flower season it was, but it's almost more beautiful to see the heavy coating of white flowers across the ground than it is to see the few flowers that are left on the trees. > Instead of working on writing the dialogue for a game jam I've had all month to work on and have only written ~100 words for, I decide to write some interactions between Castle Country guys that I haven't written interacting before. I get the really satisfyingly moment when writing Tawanema and Medes where the interaction goes surprisingly awful, which means I've done a good job of characterizing these guys if they can surprise even me. Then, in a follow up scene with Kimea, a moment of equal satisfaction is broken by the fact that I suddenly perfectly understand David Feintuch and a very similar scene he once wrote. I take a break after this because I don't actually want to relate to David Feintuch that much. 2024.04.20 > I digitize my new evil alien emperor design in MS Paint in the morning, along with a couple of extra Funo-Shika doodles. > For lunch I get to eat my host mother's wonderful congee, and learn that horror movies are scarier if you eat foods you don't like (oysters) while you watch them. By the time I get to the end of Saw I've finished my lunch, though, so it's back to being ridicilously stupid. Altogether a nice movie though. 2024.04.19 > In my cooking class we make rice balls, but each group also makes an extra "joke" rice ball with the weirdest ingredients we can think of to trade to another group. Ours just had the Tawianese equivalent to Pirate's Booty, which probably tasted better than our rather bland serious rice balls. The group across from us does mayo and salmon for their normal ones, and mayo and strawberry pocky for their evil one. > I get to finally draw during my 1st Year Art Class, and while I would pretend to be offended that everyone in it still just calls me "the foreigner student," I realize I don't actually know any of their names either. I have Gym with the same class, and though I definitely lose my team a point in volleyball by failing to set a ball that would've gone out anyway, I decide it doesn't really matter even though my brain tries very hard to make me feel embarrased about it. > In English class, my group unanimously selects me to present the discussion questions to the class, which once again, my brain tries (and does a better job at succeeding than last time) to make me nervous about, but I remember that I'm fluent in English and none of my classmates are. > While I pretend to pay attention in Earth Science, I end up finally stumbling upon a haircut that I think properly suits my evil alien emperor from Funo-Shika who I haven't thought about in a while. 2024.04.18 > Before class, I catch up to another book in the series that's among the top 10 longest pieces of English literature, which I had read two chapters of months ago, thought it was lame, and gave up on, until I heard someone discussing some of the latest chapters and then immediately bingeread the entire thing. It's probably my second favorite of the books I've read so far. I then spend all the time between class explaining the plot to Xie An.  2024.04.17> Finally back to school. I do my Chinese homework during the first period of Mandarin class, but we go to the special Mandarin classroom on the top floor to watch videos of Chinese opera in the second. > I stumble over my words asking the guy at my favorite restaurant if I can order and then come back later to pick it up, and then realize it takes a lot longer to get from the restaurant to my house and back than I thought (I needed to buy dinner but didn't have any money on me). In any other circumstances, I'd probably be terribly embarrased about it, but I got my abalone congee so I'm happy enough. > Before bed I also finish "The Artist's Way," which was probably a good book to take your time with, but I don't have time for that. 2024.04.16 > I spend extra time trying to make my hair look nice so I can impress the mother of my nemesis, who is visiting our class today, and I even leave 10 minutes earlier than usual to make sure I'm on time. It starts pouring 10 second after I'm out the door, so I show up looking more like a wet rat. To add insult to injury, the rain lightens to a sprinkle after 5 minutes, so if I'd left at my normal time I would've been fine. > At home, I learn about the cheese caves. The wonders of the US government and the dairy industry never cease. 2024.04.15 > Rotary gives us a vacation in the morning for all our hard work, but not the afternoon. I consider various ways to convince my host parents to let me skip, only to fall asleep after a delicious lunch of my best alphabet soup yet. My host parents don't mind, so I enjoy a full day break. > I do finally finish Hyperion on my second try, which I decently enjoyed. It's set up in a similar way to the Canterbury Tales (a group of pilgrims agree to tell stories to eachother on their pilgrimage), though they have a Grendel problem with no Beowulf to kill him for them. Also, none of them are particularly keen on the religion they're doing the pilgrimage for, but despite inital appearances are all deeply involved with the evil ancient alien murder tree they're going to visit. It ends on an unsatisfying cliffhanger, though, and out of honor I'm not sure if I'll pick up the next book. 2024.04.14 > It's the day of the Rotary Conference. I initially felt bad about how little I contributed to our table, but the girl from the other group who did most of the set up doesn't help with the presentations at all, so it evens out. Some guy finally takes the 12 pack of American pencils I brought as a joke, and I manage to get rid of most of my pins and all the soap (except the last bar I've saved as a gift for my final host family). > The dance goes fine, even if the lunch they give us tastes awful. I spend most of the afternoon eating the Polish table's latkes and borscht (made from a powder, but tasty nonetheless). > I do accidentally run off with the third American's money (we got $500 NTD to split between ourselves) because she isn't back at the table for the last 30 minutes and I need to run to catch the bus. I promise her I'll get it to her next time I see her. 2024.04.13 > I end up deciding to rig the design sketch I did in MS Paint yesterday instead of actually making proper model art, and end up decently satisfied with the result. > In the afternoon today, we actually have dance class. I argue with a classmate about how real cheese actually sucks. I may love seafood but vegan cheese has forever won me. 2024.04.12 > We have the day off today for setting up our booths for the Rotary conference in the afternoon, so I spend the morning reading the manga "MW" and contemplating hypothetical designs for this year's inevietably never-to-be-finished vtuber model (the final sketch ends up as a midshipman in an unspecified space military). > I didn't actually know we were setting up our booths--I thought it was a dance practice--so I have very little to do when we actually get there, but I walk around the building a bit, which houses the home game stadium for the city's basketball team. Like my American home town, the mascot is also a purple and white lion. When one of my classmates shouts "Go, lions, go!" I get the distinct feeling that the universe is incredibly unoriginal. 2024.04.11 > It turns out those boots I bought totally don't fit at all, so I spend the day in a moderate amount of pain, but somehow avoid any blisters when I finally take them off at home. > I read the manga "HITS" and listen to a guy talk about vtuber drama before bed. 2024.04.10 > After classes, I decide today is finally the day. I will walk home (10km) instead of taking the train. > I find the park next to the river pretty easily, but I can't find my way down to the riverbank to access the stepping stones. I eventually find my way under the highway bridge, which I have to walk halfway across the river (it's dry enough that I only really cross the river once here) and then walk upstream to the rock. The only place the water is actually deep is around the rocks, of course, but I manage to jump between some tiny rocks until I am able to climb up between the gap of two of the giant stepping stones. > I draw a bit in my sketchbook before moving on. I originally planned on walking to the closest train station and taking the next train to either of the stations I know, since there are buses that I know go by my house, but I realize it'll be just as fast to just keep walking once I get to the train station, so I do. At one point, Google Maps takes me down a road so narrow that no car could actually take it, and that at one point goes through a family's covered seating area, but the road continues on the other side so I keep going. > I get home only an hour and half later than usual, and though my sister is home before me for once, she doesn't ask why I took so long. > In the evening, I do a Zoom call with my parents to figure out the financial aid thing too, where we realize the CSS profile was never actually completed, so it was totally our fault. At least it's cleared up now.  2024.04.09> I spend most of the morning reading comics and only play Minecraft with my sister for 20 minutes because she was out looking at the eclipse (I am so upset that we have a full totality eclipse the one year I'm not in the country). > I draw plenty in class, though, and we have our first TOCFL prep lesson in the afternoon. We have a new teacher for it, who seems very nice, and we work through a practice test which doesn't seem terribly difficult but I'm right on the edge of A2 instead of fully secure in it, so I suppose I need to work a bit harder. > I finally get a chance to wear my new tangzhuang too, which is very cute and comfortable and I only get the side slit, which is sewn together at the very bottom, caught on a door at the end of the day, which breaks the tie at the bottom so I snap the other side too and won't have to worry about it again. > I stay up later than I intended, waiting for Neo to see some art I posted while he was asleep, and am punished by the universe for this by getting the worst possible email I could get right now. Last week I had gotten an email from my university saying that my financial aid application wasn't complete, which was strange because I was pretty sure it was. Stranger yet, when I checked the status page, my to-do list was definitely empty with nothing else to submit, so I sent them an email. Instead of giving me a nice, short "oh sorry your application is totally good" email, they finally replied with a "we tried to pull up your information and there was nothing there. did you even do the fafsa and css profile????" I stress out about this for a while until I finally go to sleep. 2024.04.08 > Luckily I feel better today, because it's back to school. For once, I even get up at my first alarm. > School is as uneventful as always, though I learn what I thought was a crashed flowerpot in the courtyard last Wednesday was actually a chunk of the wall plaster from the top of the building, because it's still there. In the Musical class we do an activity I don't understand, but it's rather nice to sit in the dark room with the light of cellphone flashlights like candles while my partner whispers stories about gods I can neither hear nor understand. 2024.04.07 > I spend most of the morning on the floor. I had hoped to make some pasta, but I barely feel well enough to stomach the takeout my mom buys instead. Luckily my friends are playing DnD this week, so I listen to them play and then eventually transition into talking about whatever is on their mind (in Neo's case, mostly Homestuck). They talk a little bit about my original characters too, which is unexpectedly pleasant to hear (I knew Neo liked them, but I didn't know he talked to Simon about them haha). > When they finally go to bed, I spend the rest of my afternoon reading low quality comics. 2024.04.06 > We're going home today, but only after a visit 鹿港老街 (Lukang Old Street). One last temple, some streetfood, and one incredibly cool shirt later, it's back to the car. > When I wake up, we're in Hsinchu again, but instead of going directly home we stop at a restaurant for lunch. I'm a bit miffed, since I'm still rather full from the morning and would really just like to go home, but the place is so good I forget all my complaints. The vibes of the place feel relaxingly effortless, even if there was clearly a lot of effort put into it. All the furniture is old and wooden, the hanging lamps are made of hand painted cloth, and the interior ceiling is made of bamboo. The food is just as delicious and is entirely plant based, while the tea is unexpectedly a nostalgic licorice flavor. 2024.04.05 > After breakfast (me and my host mother walk to the convenient store for this, which I'm a bit sad about), my host parents take me to more temples. > The first has two giant pagodas, while the second has a free cafeteria (monks eat better than highschoolers, it seems). From what I saw, non-monks were the ones cooking, but there's one female monk doing the dishes in a rather terrifyingly efficient fashion outside. Our third stop is the 水火同源 (Fire and Water spring?), where an ever burning fire (courtesy of a vein of natural gas) rests above a hot spring. > I take the time in the afternoon to walk around the neighborhood a bit. It's garlic harvest season, so there's more workers out in the fields than last time and more garlic than I've ever seen at once piled in bags near the roads. Some of the rice is taller too, though there are still plenty of fields that are just sprouts, so I assume there's a near constant rotation there. I find a place to sit and draw next to an overgrown irrigation ditch on one side road, where I only get a weird look from one passerby (mostly because he was the only passerby, but nontheless). > We eat dinner at another restaurant with fresh seafood out front, and the seaweed soup is so good that it's started a craving that still hasn't gone away. > For a reason I'm unsure of, I fall asleep thinking about Frog Hill. 2024.04.04 > We have a four-day weekend for 清明節 (Qingming Festival/Tomb-Sweeping Day), so back to my host father's hometown in Yunlin we go. > I spend most of the car ride sleeping, though we stop around lunch time at a street market whose name I've forgotten, but ended with "green street" because of the trees covering it. Without them, the intense midday heat would've been utterly unbearable, but at least I can count my blessings that I'm not one of the people who has to stand in it all day frying food. I try a mungbean smoothie (good flavor but it's too hot to drink something so thick, even if it's cold), a fried taro ball (yummy but again, too hot), and some strawberry tanghulu (this one actually tastes better because of the sunsoaked heat you find when you bite into the middle). > Once we arrive at my granparent's house, there's food waiting there too. Runbing, aka Taiwanese springrolls (though they're not terribly close to what I imagine when I think of spring rolls) are waiting to be put together, the fillings prepared by my grandmother in advance. I'm a bit skeptical of the sweet peanut powder, but I realize that without it, the rolls would be practically tasteless. I like these a lot, but only eat one because I'm still full from earlier. > Once the rest of the extended family arrives, we go to a temple to pray and meet even more family (featuring my host granduncle (?) who has the coolest eyebrows I've ever seen and will now spend the rest of my life lamenting that I will never have), though I wait outside with my host mother and one of my aunts who married into the family while the rest of them do the actual grave cleaning part. > Afterwards, we return home to rest a bit before dinner. Somehow my room here is the one that feels the most like home out of all the rooms I've had in Taiwan, though for reasons I'm not quite clear on (there's nothing in it except two matresses on the floor and a small stool in the corner). > We go to the same restarurant we went to on my first visit here, though this time they have their famous Shan Yu Mian (eel noodles), which are quite good even if I'm a bit disappointed in how different eel tastes from my expectations.  2024.04.03> I'm on my phone before class starts, reading "Luck in the Shadows" when a presidential alert covers my screen: Earthquake warning. I have about enough time to wonder when they started doing warnings for those, when the earthquake starts. > Since I've arrived in Taiwan, I've been witness to two rather small earthquakes, both of which happened while I was sitting in my room at my first host family and just large enough to be felt. This one does not merely rock me back and forth a little, but gives me a good shake. I follow suite when my classmates duck under their desks like we learned to do in the once-a-semester earthquake drills. No one ever taught me to grab my waterbottle on the way down, though, so several into the shaking in comes crashing down on the floor next to my desk (this is the first part of the prophecy). > Once the quaking stops, we file out the door to line up in the field. Other than my waterbottle and what looks like it used to be some potted plants from an upper floor, now deposited onto the floor of the courtyard, there's not really any damage. It's the biggest in the country in 25 years, though, although we're far enough from the epicenter that it's between 4-5 in magnitude. > While sitting in the field, we get the first aftershock, but after a mere twenty minutes they tell us to get up and go to our first period class. I feel a bit uneasy being under a roof again for basketball, but the heat makes me forget that soon. Next period, during Classical Chinese, we get a couple more aftershocks, but after the first one the teacher doesn't even pause in her lecture. During third period, we get a larger one, so we duck under the desks again, but when it's over we go right back to class. I get over my excitment after the first couple, but they keep going throughout the day with increasing softness. Even now as I write this, I'm accompanied by a very soft rocking. > During club time my favorite politician lady gives a speech about something, followed by the two candidate speeches for student council. Only after the two hours are over do one of my classmates tell me I totally could've left whenever I wanted to. > I finished the aformentioned "Luck in the Shadows," which was quite enjoyable and also served me right for laughing at people in the book reviews for seemingly arbitrarily assigning a genre to a book that never claimed to have that genre, because they were all right. The library doesn't have the next book in the series, but it does have the fourth. Not sure if I want to skip right to it or not. > I try to find the bus stop I found yesterday and only suceed in finding the other American. I buy myself a bottle of apple soda from the train station convenience store, but when I go to open it, I spill it all over the floor because there's too much built up carbonation (this is the second part of the prophecy). > Once home, I find the meaning of my prophecy, and the only thing in the entire house has fallen over: the bottle of ramune I bought on New Year's Day, saved for a date yet unkown. Luckily the glass didn't break when it hit the floor, but the plastic cap flew apart, leaving most of the soda on the floor of my room. The little bit left in the glass is long decarbonated and tastes rather similar to a melted gas station slushie. At least I finally have a ramune marble, safely seperated from it's bottle.  2024.04.02> We don't have Chinese class today, so after some Minecraft with friend and family, I spend the rest of my morning doing absolutely nothing. > I wait too long to take a shower and don't have time for lunch before I have to rush out to catch the bus (I miss it anyway), because today, I am doing the classic teenager thing of Going to The Mall. I walk 4km in the heat, somehow ending up on the side of the street that doesn't have a single convenience store, so it's not until I get to the station and meet up with 2 of the 3 invited friends that I get a chance to buy a drink and cool down. > While Igor checks the KFC menu for smoothies, I realize we're right next to one of the bookstores I've been wanting to check out, so we walk through it and, lo and behold... I find the Chinese translation of Volume 25 of Fujisaki's Legend of the Galactic Heroes manga! I've been looking for anything LOTGH related every chance I get here, but after over six months, my prayers have finally been answered. I skim through it later at home, and realize it contains a lot of my favorite character moments (Eisenach's tea scene, Bucock's death, and one of the sweet Emil and Reinhard scenes), which is even better. > Since Owen doesn't seem to be showing up, we make our way to the mall, though we are (read: I am) temporarily waylaid by a shoe store we pass. I've been wanting to buy a new pair of fancy men's dress shoes since my last pair fell apart last year, and when we went shoe shopping for the wedding months ago, I saw a whole bunch of nice and not insanely expensive ones. The shoe store we pass turns out to be mostly sneakers, but along with the only four pairs of men's dress shoes, they also have CAT workboots, including the most beautiful brown and green pair I have ever seen. The display pair is size 8, which I'm pretty sure is too small, so I stumble through my Chinese and ask the guy if he has any bigger sizes (I say 10, he says they have a 9, I forget to factor in the fact that men's sizes are different from women's sizes) and the pair he brings fits pretty well (the ankle is perfect even if there's a bit of wiggle room for my toes--I figure I'm wearing socks far thinner than I usually do, so hopefully that will help too) so I get them. They're $2900 (roughly $90 USD), which isn't the cheapest, but I've just found that the CAT website lists them at $140, so saving $50 is pretty damn nice. > Finally, we get to the mall. The first stop is the Indian place in the food court, which has heavenly chana masala, even if everything else is mediocre at best (the naan is clearly reheated frozen stuff, the dahl is too thin and salty, and the yellow rice has no flavor, not even that of rice. the mango laasi is also too thin for my taste, but that one is a personal thing I think). We wander around for a bit more, but all the clothes shops are too fancy and expensive (I find a cool leather vest, but it's price tag informs me it is over $15000, so we move on rather quickly). We get boba at one point, and when Owen finally messages us to say he's arriving at the station soon, we tell him we'll meet him there because me and Igor are planning to skip out on him. > I find the starting station for one of the buses I occasionally catch on the way to the train station, which leaves 10 minutes earlier than my usual bus and even stops at the stop directly across from my road, though I learn I need to be up at the front of the bus AT the stop or else I'll have to wait until the next one and walk back. 2024.04.01 > I talk to Youren for the first time in a while on the walk to school, where he tells me about an upcoming test he has to pass to be able to study abroad (not Rotary) in Germany next year. I wish him luck, and am rather impressed with myself for how much German has become intelligible to me since I've come here (I've picked up a minimal amount of French and Portugese too, but German is my best non-studied language). > During my library period I listen to Bruce and Neo talk about depressed Japanese authors and Will Wood while I do calculus in my notebook. > We're onto our basketball unit in Gym, which reminds me why I used to be unfond of Gym. > I get through Acts 3 and 4 of Homestuck too, though I've stopped trying to understand absolutely anything that's happening at this point. 2024.03.31 > Today is much the same as yesterday, though I have a simply cup of Shin kimchi instant ramen for lunch instead of three courses of fine dining. > I read all the freely available 'Dykes to Watch Out For' comic strips on Bechdel's site, and make the mistake of promising Neo to read Homestuck in return for him promising to finally read Rodrigo of Caledon. I get through the first two acts, which I begrudginly find incredibly fascinating, especially the different fetch modi. > For dinner we have a Rotary gathering where I get to hang out with my two best friends (they are small children but they are undefeated in their holding of the title) even if the food isn't particularly good (except the dessert course, which is this delectable soft bread, hot and steaming, with an incredibly thin glaze and crushed peanuts on top, so delicate I can't bring myself to try another in case the delight of my mouth becomes too commonplace.) > I remember Lent is over, so I reinstall Instagram and post some art there too, though the algorithim expresses it's displeasure in my long absence. 2024.03.30 > I spend my Saturday drawing (MS paint redraws of Gundam screencaps and paintings of my Castle Country guys), thinking about rereading the Seafort Saga (I never finished it in the first place), and learning how to haggle at the local vegetable stand. > I wanted to make alphabet soup again, so I went down to the stand to buy an onion and potato (if he has garlic, I can't find it... this would surely increase the quality of my soup but until then, the pickled garlic from a glass jar will have to do). Last time I bought this it was $45, but I apparently pick out a larger potato and/or onion so when the old man weighs it, he says it's $55. I thought I only brought $50, so I tell him this, and he says it's fine. I fish the coins out of my pocket, hand them over to him, and he counts.. $55. He gives me back the extra $5 anyway, and I go on my way. > When I'm almost done with my soup, my host parents return. With soup of their own that they bought for lunch. I don't want to be rude, so I eat the food they bought for me, and take my ominously large bowl of alphabet soup back to my room for an afternoon snack. Two hours later and halfway through said bowl, my host father knocks to bring me "afternoon tea," another bowl (of delicious spicy noodles), which tastes very good but was certainly three times too much lunch at this point.  2024.03.29> The Taiwanese rice krispie treats we make during Home Ec are tasty, although my Gym teacher makes me participate in the jump rope test with the rest of my class. > My current book is really fascinating, but I shall wait until I finish to talk about it, although I found the world's funniest bad review on it's Goodreads page, which makes me sad because it wasn't even a Feintuch book. > Once I make it back home, I finally have time to watch the final Bravern episode (I totally could've watched it this morning, but I had heard somewhere it was going to be extra long, which it wasn't). It was okay. I had already gone through the 3 stages of grief (what do you mean there's more than that) about ****'s final death so I was a bit miffed when they brought him back again, but I probably would've been just as upset if that hadn't. > One of my favorite Taiwanese artists posted a draft for a Bravern charm bracelet, so I'm hoping they finish it before I leave so I can save on shipping! > I finally got Owen to hand over the Discord of one of his classmates who is always messaging him weird things because I don't think Owen appreciates them enough, so we talk about what books we've been reading for a little bit. They seem pretty cool, even if I'm pretty sure I've somehow found myself inbetween the world's stupidest unrequited romance based on some of the questions this guy is asking me about Owen. > While rereading the Nero manga, done by the same guy as the Jesus manga, I realize that at least part of my intrinsic dislike of Char (Gundam) is because he looks eeriley similar to Nero. I made a joke about this to Xie An, and then remembered the other day when I was looking for pictures of Garma and came across a Gundam manga illustrated by the same guy. I went looking for Char images from that manga, but he actually looked farther from Nero than the animated 0079 Char did, so I was about to give it up until I decided to check the author's Wikipedia page. As it turns out, the creator of the Jesus manga is in fact significantly more well known for his work as the character designer and animation director of the original Gundam, and not his incredibly obscure historical mangas. The more you know. 2024.03.28 > I've started watching the original Mobile Suit Gundam instead of just finished the last LOTGH Gaiden, and I've been really enjoying it so far. > For our afternoon class, we get to visit the library and watch a movie. The teacher gives us two options, neither of which are horror, so I go along with the class deciison to watch Your Name Engraved Herein. I've had the theme for this movie on my music playlist for ages and it was a nice watch, but I feel it could've benefited from a vaguer ending (eg. ending directly after the beach scene without specifying that they didn't talk again) even though I liked seeing them as middle aged men. > For dinner I buy myself my favorite abalone congee which I haven't had in ages, because I have to attend a Rotary meeting of my sponsor club tonight. I'm a little awkward at the beginning, but by the end I think I did a good job talking about my exchange so far, especially because they didn't give me a chance to tell them I only know 5 of my classmates names and that I've read 50 books in the last three months alone.  2024.03.27> Instead of club time in the afternoon, we spend the fifth period learning a dance (by we, I mean my classmates; they have to preform it on their graduation trip, which I'm not attending, so I spend my time reading instead) and sixth period having a jumprope tournament with the other second year classes (again, I just watch, and my class gets 4th place, meaning they still have to take the jumprope test). > I do get to finally witness one of their English classes afterwards though, where I get to finally do well on a test in (I got one multiple choice wrong because I was reading too fast, and two write-in answers because I didn't write in the exact vocabulary word since I had no clue what their vocabulary words were). > I finished my book from last week too, Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains. The main character was cool, though I wish we could've seen more of Archeth because she was clearly the best character. The amount of incredibly well written freely available works of literature on the internet that I've been consuming recently have raised my expectations for this genre too high, I fear. > I need to get my hands on unsalted butter for my cooking class on Friday, so I get off the train a stop early to walk to the scary grocery store, where I also buy a single can of tomatoes and feel a little silly as I stand in the check-out line. 2024.03.26 > After Minecraft with my family (for once I get both my sisters, my neighbor, AND my father all playing at once), I speed through our Chapter 12 test and work on designing new side characters for Castle Country. > We have to register to take the TOCFL (Chinese proficiency test), so I try to take the practice tests to gauge my current level. The listening part glitches out after I've already put half an hour into it, but the reading test places me at B1 (upper intermediate), which I'm pretty happy with. > I also spend more time than necessary looking through every single club offered by my university, finally settling with my top four being the Historical European Martial Arts (German longsword. they just use longswords) Club, the slightly vaguer Medieval Club, the Ethnobotany Club, and the Astronomy Club. 2024.03.25 > DnD part two is just geography quizzes and no DnD, but I manage to finish the Julian art, which I'm quite proud of. I haven't fully rendered a piece in over a year, but it took less time than I remembered. > I don't have to go to school today because it's the first day of Midterms, so instead I play one of the games I downloaded last week (Eloquent Countenance, free on itch.io) which was short but enjoyable. 2024.03.24 > When I wake up, my American friends are playing DnD in the voicechat for the first time in ages--the musical is finally over, so I forgot that they had time again. I listen to their session and then we take geography quizzes afterwards. It's been a while since I've talked to any of them, so it's a good way to wake up. > I eat lunch with my host parents while we watch a surprisingly interesting British TV show. It's interesting enough that even after I finish eating, I decide to do my homework on the couch instead of staying in my room like usual, so I talk a bit more with my host parents too. > In the evening I start working on my birthday art for Julian Mintz tomorrow. 2024.03.23 > I spend the morning reading and try my hand at alphabet soup again, which this time actually is a soup and tastes delectable (thank you mysterious seasoning I could not read the name of). > After lunch I have to go to Zhubei to practice the dance for the Rotary conference with my classmates, where I learn that my fellow American Owen has apparently never heard of Mormonism. (I also get to show off all the beautiful new Chinese vocabulary I've learned thanks to the Taiwanese Bravern fandom.)  2024.03.22> More practice tests at school: Of the seven questions I was able to get an answer for on the Math one, the only correct answer I had was the one I crossed out because I was sure it was wrong. I answer more questions than last time on the second Earth Science test, but get even less right (in my defense, astronomy involves a lot more reading Chinese than the last unit). > I keep seeing intriguing screenshots about Bang Bravern, and because all modern anime is the same to me I ask the modern anime guy (Owen) if he's seen it. He has, and he enthusiastically recommends it, so I assume the screenshots I've been seeing must be from the latest episode that he hasn't watched yet (a foolish assumption to make). He did warn me about the "gay" ending theme where the main characters sing in the rain with the shirts off, so I went in completely unprepared for how our dear sentient robot, Bravern, talks. With a newfound respect for my Owen, I watch all 11 episodes that have been released so far in a single night. > I also talk more with my host sister, who forgot her key so I had to go down to the lobby to let her in. 2024.03.21 > I spend the morning going down the rabbithole of old LOTGH games, specifically the NES game but also poking around to see what I can find of the SNES and Sega Saturn game. There are 6 different official games all simply titled 'Legend of the Galactic Heroes,' which is incredible marketing on their behalf. > After class, I actually go out for once to play video games at Yang Jie's house with Xie An and Owen (my fellow American doesn't get to be referred to with his Chinese name). We get boba on the way, spend an hour and a half yelling at each other over Overcooked, followed by a bit of Mario Kart and then Super Smash Bros, which I do decently at despite not knowing the controls.  2024.03.20> I finally remember to record one of my days, but I'll probably put off editing the footage for a couple weeks. > More singing in Music class, though the afternoon is boring because it's class study time instead of club meetings, and I already did my homework in the free period our Chinese teacher gave us for studying in the morning. > We're onto the jumprope unit in Gym now, which is fun. (Last semester we had running, but we don't have a Sports Day to prepare for this time). > After class I decide to play around a bit with Decker, which I've seen used in some pretty cool interactive fiction games and would put all my MS Paint practice into good use, but I realize that if I want to make a Castle Country game that requires actually thinking of a Castle Country plot. No work gets done. 2024.03.19 > Ignoring the fact that my dreams are getting increasingly insistent in their attempts to prove that they are apparently a The Man Who Folded Himself type timeloop where the reoccuring character who features in my dreams in elementary school is actually me now while the character reoccuring in my dreams now was me then, I treat myself to half a loaf of bread with my morning congee. > Before class I play Minecraft with my sister again (and my neighbor instead of my father this time). I haven't actually been playing much of my Beta world recently, because resource gathering is too daunting for the projects I want to make. > I download a bunch of new games, ignoring the fact I haven't started any new games in months now. I'll get to them someday... 2024.03.18 > In Earth Science we have a practice test, since the midterms are next Monday (I won't have to take them, of course). I hesitate to ask the teacher if I'm allowed to use Google Translate, since I can't read 80% of the characters, but I figure it's easier to power through. It's the first test I've ever taken where I actually ran out of time in my entire life, and also definitely my lowest grade (16%), but out of the 5 questions I answered, I get 4 correct (I definitely could've gotten the last question had I gotten to it too), so I'm going to count that as a pretty good win. > I finish reading Victory City too, which is a fictional translation of a Indian epic that doesn't actually exist. It definitely did a good job of feeling like an ancient story, in both the positive and negative aspects therin, and while it definitely isn't my book of the year, it was a pretty nice read. 2024.03.17 > Today, I finish the first LOTGH Gaiden series. I really liked getting more Kircheis content (although the real highlight was more Blumhart in the last arc...). I suppose I shall be appreciative for the clarification that while Reinhard and Kircheis always sleep in the same room, they sleep in seperate beds with the possible exception of the vacation arc, where the hotel room definitely only had one bed. 2024.03.16 > Another lazy weekend. > In a single afternoon, I draw a short four page comic (in MS Paint, of course) of the first scene I ever wrote with the Crete guys. > I find out that my favorite Thai girl idol group had an event in Taipei only after the fact :'(  2024.03.15> It's a day full of coincidences. Me and my host sister open our bedroom doors at the same time in the morning (I take the tactical retreat and let her use the bathroom first), I actually see said host sister for the first time at the school we both attend (yes it's been nearly seven months no I have not seen her there before), and I get to the door of our apartment at the same moment my host dad does, on his way to drop of some fruit tea he bought. > I usually dislike Friday classes the most because I have the least classes with the 214 class, but today was probably one of my favorites so far. > In the Home Ec. class we're making chawanmushi (savory Japanese egg custards). I'm tasked with bringing the eggs (4), but realize as I go to retreive them from the refrigerator this morning that there are only three left. I stop by the old lady's vegetable stand, although her husband is the one running it today, and he lets me have an egg for free. The chawanmushi turns out really good, especially since we put significantly more shrimp and mushrooms in than restaurants do. My group mates even talk to me more this time, and they're really nice. > Math is fun too, I feel like I actually learned something and get really into the flow of problem solving, which I hadn't done before in this class. > It's the final swim class, which I'm glad for too. I've decided that swimming is actually pretty fun, but my classmates in the first year class don't talk to me and it's a pain to change and dry my hair afterwards. > (For lunch, one of the sides is chawanmushi again lol). English class is as fun as always and one of my classmates offers (in a message passed through the girl I sit next to) to teach my mahjong which I accept but he gives no follow up. I even get through Earth Science without getting bored. > On the way to the station, I run into Joyce, who talks to me about her dream to study mechanics because of her love of Formula One racing and expresses her disappointment that the legal age of driving is higher in Taiwan than in the US. 2024.03.14 > Before class I draw another Reinhard piece (as unhappy as the last) and a quick Wakaba sketch, because it's her birthday too. > I've learned how to order coconut jelly with my boba in Chinese, but I forgot I kinda hate the black tea from usual tea shop so I don't enjoy it as much as I could've. It seems I'll go back to my passionfruit QQ once again... > On the walk home from class, I finally poke around one of the university book stores. If they had a foreign language books section I couldn't find it, but I do get an art reference book about medieval Europe. > Also, in honor of Reinhard's birthday (aka complete chance) I finally stumble across the actual source of a comment I had seen once and assumed the person mentioning it had made it up. But because it is actually true that the author of LOTGH said Annerose only ever saw Kircheis as a brother, I have in fact formed the winning argument for the debate about the relationship of Reinhard and Kircheis (they are actually just friends. In the words of Boswell, of course, "no relationship was more emotional, more intimate, more intense than friendship," the phrase itself "just friends" does a disservice to their clear love for each other). No one who genuinely argues that they're just bros would use it though, because it would also been having to denounce Annerose and Kircheis' relationship. Not quite sure what if anything was accomplished here. 2024.03.13 > On my way to school I watch an old man cut down a single bamboo from the grove that grows along the wall across the street and walk off with it. > In Music, we practice singing a song I've never heard before, but I get one of the harmony parts so there's not too many new characters I need to learn. Making music with other people is something I've found I decently enjoy, though not enough to seek it out on my own time. > It starts raining in the afternoon, and I watch a different old man sing a folk song as he bikes by with an umbrella. > Reinhard's birthday is tomorrow, so I work on digitally redrawing a sketch I did a couple months ago of him (it's not a happy birthday by any means).  2024.03.12> I play Minecraft with my sister (we got lost in the Nether) and father (he is disappointed that mangrove trees don't burn easily) before heading to class. > Xie An finally recieved the birthday present he ordered me in the mail: a tiny book pendant of the Still, except he took the liberty of using the fake cover I drew once and have hated ever sense. However, I've decided that it actually looks pretty nice in inch-tall form, so it works out. (The colors still lack enough contrast so it looks stupid wearing it, but I like looking at it). > It's an even nicer day than last Tuesday, which was just a tad too hot, so though I didn't bring my notebook, I take a walk through the memorial gardens at the unviersity and play a bit of Atelier Resleriana before a group of students comes looking for their own place to sit. > I walk a bit around my neighborhood again, though I have not the courage to walk through the riverside garden in case someone yells at me. There's a large peach-tiled building that has the remarkable quality of looking abandoned despite the quantity of motorcycles parked outside it, and the fact that this time a group of business walk out as I'm walking by. I think it has something to do with the dusty tiles and the incredibly reflective blue-green windows that don't let any light from inside escape, but I'm not certain. The otherside of the river comes out next to it, but there's more people around than usual because everyone in the not-abandoned building is getting off work, so I don't want to look suspicious poking around. 2024.03.11 > Monday classes, I spend most of the day bored. > I do finish Kevin Chen's Ghost Town, which was really good. I read a bunch of Taiwanese novels (translated into English) while I was planning my exchange last spring, but this was my first Taiwanese novel I've read since I got here. I actually heard about it on the radio (something about it getting a stage adaption), and was able to find an English copy on the QLL. It builds up to the specific details of an event that it's been hinting to since the beginning in a manner that would make Mary Doria Russel (The Sparrow) jealous and goes off on beautiful tangents that would do the same to Amitav Ghosh. I enjoyed it a lot, would recommend! 2024.03.10 > Another lazy day: I watch more Gaidens, do more MS Paint art (this time screentone redrawings of LOTGH endings with Rodrigo of Caledon characters), and watch a 3 hour video essay on an Italian movie about a book I never read, but is nonetheless the best use of three hours I've had in a while. (you should check it out too, if you have the time).  2024.03.09> I sleep in, watch another arc and a half of the Gaidens, and fiddle with some code on this site. > I do a bit more MS Paint art, including a piece of Kircheis I really don't like, but got a comment from one of my favorite LOTGH fanartists on, and a screenshot redraw testing out the MS Paint screentones that I do really like. > Still deciding on the format of the Links and Buttons page here, but I put together the Gallery page in a rather rough format pretty quickly. > My host dad buys me fruit tea with boba and coconut jelly which is really good, and I drink it while eating lunch and watching a movie with him that combined both the 'oppressed magical/mutant lower class' and 'robot cops' tropes which was decently fascinating but not enough to stick around and watch the entire thing. > I think about going outside, but it's really cold today, so I don't. I've reached the ultimate level of fluency (reading memes) though, so here's an image I found that describes the seasons here (translation: title is 'Taiwan's four seasons', character on the right is 'summer' (May-November), bottom is 'fall' (doesn't exist), left is 'winter' (December-January), top is all four seasons (Feburary-April)). > In the evening we have a Rotary party, so I get to hang out with Eli and my second favorite sister while eating mediocre food. 2024.03.08 > Friday classes. I catch the later bus, which, according to the bus clock, arrives at the station exactly one minute after my train departs. I don't even bother running, since I know it won't be there, except when I walk through the gates, it is, because the bus clock was 5 minutes fast. I'm not late to school. > In the Home Ec class the teacher presents our next project, Japanese egg custard. I fail terribly at the Kahoot, mostly because I can't read the answers fast enough. > Math continues to be more stressful than it should be, because while Taiwanese teachers generally just lecture the students and don't randomly call on them to answer questions, my dear math teacher has made an exception to this rule for me. > I gain context for the conversation practice I did with one of my classmates last week in my English class, and this time ace the Kahoot because it's in English. My deskmate appreciates my presence and I appreciate being appreciated. > I finish Boswell's Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, which I enjoyed greatly with only two things to nitpick (he describes Elagabalus' heterosexual relationships as 'less genuine' with no supporting evidence--my guy Elagabalus did NOT deflower the vestal virgin just to get called 'disingenuine' for it and also bisexual people exist, and there was a later anectode that seemed to dismiss the idea of transgender people existing but I don't know enough about the specific case to know if his conclusion about it was right or not), but to be fair to his many detractors I'll also put the time in to reading some of their negative responses at a later date. > I do a quick digital piece of the Crete guys, so they now exist in color!  2024.03.07> It's the first Advanced class of the semester, which goes about the same as the old ones. I manage to eat my entire spicy rice ball for lunch while explaining Byzantinian emperor Basil I to Xie An. I'm pretty sure he starts tuning me out when I get to Serge and Bacchus, but I like the sound of my own voice so this doesn't matter. > In the afternoon class I design another character for the Crete story, the third guy's sister, who is already carrying the story on her back. The German exchange student gives me a notebook with a cute drawing of me on the inside cover as a late birthday present, since she remembered how nice I thought the notebook she had brought with her to class a couple weeks ago was. > After class, I finally get around to redoing my about page on this site, apply to a webring, and spend 10 minutes struggling to open a can of olives. 2024.03.06 > Wednesday classes. Still happy about yesterday's weather, I wear the uniform shorts despite the temperature my phone's weather app tells me of. Wishful thinking doesn't change the weather, as it turns out, so I'm cold the rest of the day. I've been helping one of my classmates with his English homework recently, and I get the distinct idea that he doesn't believe me when I try to tell him Area 51 definitely is a real place (there are probably no aliens, but it definitely exists) when we're discussing the article on conspiracy theories that he's reading. > It's the first Manhua club meeting of the semester, so while half the club plays Gartic Phone I draw more of my Crete guys. > I stop at the same tea shop as yesterday, and get my first warm cup of boba (brown sugar ginger tea) since I've come to Taiwan. > After dinner, I start watching the Gaidens, a series of pre-canon LOTGH shows. 2024.03.05 > The weather has been on the uncomfortable side of cool lately, but today is perfect. I've given up on accuracy on my Chinese test and do not think about tip 71 of the School-Stoppers Textbook. I read yet more Boswell (it's a very long book, alright?) and doodle two guys from ancient Crete. I want to make a story about one of the anecdotes he mentions, but I can't figure out a way to make either of the guys I'm drawing interesting enough. Right as the teacher calls on me, I figure out. The answer is to introduce a third guy. My genius is unmatched. > The old man at the bubble tea shop in the cafeteria mishears my order and I get my passion fruit tea sans the boba. I decide to try a new bubble tea shop on my way home, and the tea is both nicer and cheaper than the other place I walk by, even if it takes the two ladies working there at least five minutes to get the computer to work. > I take another walk today, and end up finding my way to the park near the highway, which is as nice as it looked from the bus I used to take by it, although it is still right next to the highway so not as relaxing as it could be. There's a large swath of woods next to it, which I consider trespassing in but eventually decide against it. > I finish The End of the Dream, the 110th and final episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I am fine and normal about the fact that Reinhard's final words are to Kircheis (dead) and that Oberstein's final words were "Larbenard is my butler." 2024.03.04 > Back to school. My old lady is travelling so I spend my library period doing homework for Chinese class. I read more Boswell. I learn English sayings I've never heard before from my classmates. > While working through a bunch of short PDFs I've saved in the past, I find one about Taiwan! The village it talks about, Smangus, is actually in the county I'm living in now, but because it's deep in the mountains it's still a several hour drive. An indigenous Christian anarchist collective is probably worth it though, so I finally have a place in mind the next time my host parents ask me if there's anywhere I really want to visit. 2024.03.03 > I work a little more on the animatic before realizing that maybe I should finish watching LOTGH before trying to make a very cool and meaningful animation about it, which turns out to be rather hard when you don't know exactly how things end. > More Minecraft and a Multiverse post that I'm decently proud of the finished look of. > I don't usually read much on the weekends, but I read another chapter of Boswell's Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe because this guy is crazy and so am I. He talks a little about Catullus, and to my great dismay I realize that one of the lines of Catullus' poetry I had previously laughed at actually makes complete and utter sense after considering a line from my favorite paragraph of Rodrigo of Caledon. > In the afternoon when my parents are out, I walk to the park and write in my journal a bit before walking around the block. I realize I've inadvertaintly walked into the very hypothetical question I had just posed to myself in my journal when I take a new turn, and decide that though I am now a new person, I also would've been a new person had I just went my normal way too. 2024.03.02 > It's the weekend! I play Minecraft (I've started a new world in Beta 1.7.3, where I have an ugly house with a beautiful view of a very long fake aqueduct I made out in the ocean), listen to music, and realize that 'I Can Talk With My Eyes Shut' would make a really good LOTGH animatic if it wasn't 7 minutes long. I am bad at being reasonable, though, so I start planning one out anyway. > For dinner we go out to eat xiaolongbao and have to wait two hours for a table. 2024.03.01 > It's finally time to meet my Friday classes. I manage to find the classroom of the class I have Home Economics with in the morning and awkwardly stand outside the door until someone who knows I'm supposed to be there invites me in. I'm in a group of four other girls, who are nice but not particularly interested in talking to me. It turns out my kiwis weren't actually needed, but they use them anyway in our fruit and cream sandwiches (they taste bad) with a side of dalgona coffee (too much milk, also bad). > Next is Math, which goes normally. I have Gym with the same class of first years from last semester, but I wasn't sure if we had swim or not and didn't bring my swimsuit. I get to sit on the side and read (Afrofuturism by Ytasha L. Womack). > After lunch I have "Art & Life" with the same class of first years, where the teacher talks about the difference in street signs in Japan and Taiwan. Then we have English class, which I realize is actually with the second year class I had music with last semester. The English teacher talks exclusively in English, so I can follow along pretty well (haha), and I write a couple of sentences on the worksheet she gave us about how I think the saddest ending to the story I didn't get a chance to read would be the man marrying the beautiful woman instead of getting mauled to death by tigers. When she makes me give a self introduction, I finally get a chance to use the Chinese sentence I've been holding on to since September (我的中文還不好，但是我希望我們可以成為朋友) and get a satisfactory amount of approval for it. > I get to end the day with my beloved Earth Science and get to go home. |
