It's Christmas--when do we dye the eggs?

Intermittant DSL connections are making it difficult to blog this week, but that's all right, as I haven't much to say. A few days ago, I sat in on my first meeting in Chinese (real-time speech, not you . are . learning. so . I . will . speak . slowly speed), and I actually understood what they were telling me. I used a lot of context, so it wasn't about knowing all the words, but it felt pretty damn good anyway.

Ever the glutton for punishment, I have started weekly tutoring sessions in Korean, too. If it starts to conflict with my Chinese pronunciation, I may have to stop, but so far so good.

I wish I had an auxilliary brain. Mine feels full.

I've no plans for Christmas, yet. I may go to a Chinese rendition of a holiday concert, but I am not sure about it. Christmas is a fairly popular holiday with the younger generation--I don't know why, since most seem to be forced to wear santa hats at work and must develop a hatred of this time of year--but remains unobserved but most people. It is hard to reconcile the deep cultural and familial resonances that Christmas has for me with Taiwan's "observance" of Christmas, which is almost completely untethered from any social significance. For example, I have Chinese class at 9 o'clock on Christmas morning, during which we will wish each other "merry christmas" in Chinese.

I'm not complaining because they don't do a Western Christmas here--that's not what I want, and I don't expect a Western Christmas--but in the US, the observance seems to be rather socially cohesive. Here, elements of Christmas get foregrounded as if it were a cultural buffet--a little decoration here, a little Christmas music there, and presto, you have a Western Christian holiday. So far, Taiwanese Christmas seems like a lot of American Chinese food. Yeah, it looks similar, but the traditions that lead to different regional cuisines are ignored for the Idea of a singular Chinese food experience. I find it amusing and somewhat endearing. I think I am just experiencing the other side of what my Taiwanese friends feel when I make a gaff and mix my cultural metaphors due to an incomplete understanding of the deeper context of what I am celebrating/saying/eating/...

P.S. I just felt another earthquake. The one last week was a 6.6, and was followed by two 5.something aftershock. I'm feeling a little better about earthquakes. Previously, I felt like an "earthquake" is what happens just before you are about to die, but now I am getting used to the idea that you can survive most, if not all, earthquakes.

Comments

[jackie]

Hi! Nice site you have here. Could you tell me about how you got to teach in Taiwan? Did you live in the US before? I want to get a job teaching English in Taiwan...