i climbed a mountain

I climbed a mountain and it may be the last one I ever climb.

Let's be clear: by "climb a mountain" I mean "walk up a million narrow stone steps." Really steep staircases, is what I'm saying. They twist and turn, some are lined with ropes, and the steps vary in thickness and actual similarity to steps.

I went on this field trip (which was actually a lot of fun, except for the stairs) with my Chinese tutor and some of her other students. We met at Yongning MRT station at 3:30 and walked to the foot of the mountain. The first portion of the climb was easy, as it was on a paved road. This street lead up to a large Buddhist temple, which was absolutely gorgeous.

After the temple, we left the road and began the hike up the steps.

I am not out of shape. Just that morning I'd gone to the gym, where I had biked AND jogged for a solid hour. My legs are not noodles. But apparently, when faced with anything slightly uphill, they are. Every ten steps made me out of breath. It was frustrating, because if we'd been walking on a flat surface or biking I'd have been like, "Yeah, keep going, I'm not close to tired, let's go!"

Gravity is my kryptonite  is what I'm saying. I think all those years in the pool, in weightlessness, has made me unable to cope with gravity on its own terms.

Fortunately, there was another member of the group who found gravity equally difficult to cope with, so she and I opted to lag behind and make our way to the top on our own terms (which involved a lot of stopping for rest). We were also both interested in taking lots of pictures, though, so we used our stops to catch our breath and take photos of whatever was around.

At long last we finally made it to the peak, from which you could see everything. You could literally see a mountain in Dansui, which is on the other side of the city. Really far away.

I tried to do a panorama and my camera, for some reason, said "LOL how about half of one?" You can see where it cuts off and starts again.

Taipei 101 from really far away.

About five minutes later we had to leave, because it was getting dark, but I'm glad I made the walk up, because the view was totally worth it.

However, the next morning my calf muscles were so tight they felt permanently cramped (they still feel that way today, Tuesday) and for some odd reason I developed a sore throat that has completely eaten away at my voice. Maybe from all the harsh breathing I did in the hot, humid air. Who knows. At least the lack of voice and the need to get well has prompted me to stay in bed and type this out. :)

Until the next adventure!

I'M LEARNING CHINESE

Let's be clear: I've only had two lessons so far and I can barely count to ten reliably. If pressed to put together all but the most basic of sentences I'll need at least three minutes to remember the right words. I still am not quite sure about grammar, either. But yesterday I asked someone about buying tea, and today I ordered milk tea (twice) and an omelette using the few words and sentences I knew. I was even able to imagine what words and phrase I could use to order some of the foods being sold on carts along the sidewalks.

After nine months of stumbling blindly through Taiwan without being able to interact, I'm at last able to communicate, albeit barely. Learning Chinese is frustrating, although I'm pretty sure learning any language for the first time (at my age, no less) would be frustrating. There's all this studying and repeating and memorizing that has to be done. My method is to take small chunks of time (bus and MRT rides, mostly) and force myself to learn a little bit more, then push just beyond the point of "I hate this, it's too hard" and then stop. Usually at least one or two new lessons will stick.

I could do this with just a book, but I'm glad for my tutor. She points out things I wouldn't have figured out on my own and it's a relief to have a native speaker listen to me while I'm learning new words. She can tell me "Yes, that's right," or "No, it should be _________," so I know for sure I'm not going to go around mispronouncing things or using words the wrong way.

It was only this winter that Nicole told me that when you say "two hundred", you don't say "er", the word for two, you use "liang," another word for two used for counting in higher amounts. E.g., "liang bai" (two hundred) not "er bai" (also two hundred, but the wrong word for two). It'd be like saying (in English) "My birthday is on December three." Everyone knows what you mean, but it's not correct.

Having my tutor around cuts down on those mistakes and makes me feel more confident about the accuracy of what I'm learning. Especially when it comes to tones. Speaking Chinese is like singing a song, your voice has to go up or down or hit a high/low note depending on the tone for the word, and without someone to listen to me and explain tones in detail, I'd have thrown in the towel long before now.

It's a bit sad that I'm only just starting to learn Chinese with only three months left on my contract in Taiwan. Additionally, I want to move to Japan next, and learning Japanese is one of my major goals. But I don't think I'll put Chinese permanently on the shelf, just put it away for a bit. After all, I like Taiwan a lot. I could come back, either to live or to visit, and either way the language skills would be useful.

My tutor asked me why I'm learning Chinese when I'm only going to be here for another three months, and I told her that I don't consider any learning endeavor to be a waste of time. Even if I never need Chinese again after these three months, I'll never look back and think that investing time in learning it was a waste.