Summer Break

Many of the past few weeks have been quite draining (which is part of the reason why I separated my writings on my struggles with Taiwanese bureaucracy into several posts; I simply did not feel like writing, and even if I did, I do not know what I would have written about). Classes ended three weeks ago, and I have mostly been studying for the LSATs while reading Czech poetry – Svatopluk Čech, K.J. Erben, Petr Bezruč, Jan Neruda, and Vítězslav Hálek. It is quite embarrassing, to be honest, to only have read some of their works in their entirety at the age of twenty-three, but I suppose that’s just the plight of students at international schools. At the same time, I have been working on poetry of my own, but I have not the faintest idea whether it is any good. Time will tell, I suppose.

In other news, I have been trying to spend some quality time with friends (that is, outside of my recent trip to Hualien with Alison and Lane). The first Thursday of break, I visited the National Palace Museum with Jacob and Alex. It poured all day, so much so that the outside stairs of the building turned into veritable cascades. While Alex had cleverly wrapped his shoes into plastic bags, Jacob and I splished and sploshed around the museum like a bunch of watermen. 

Meanwhile, boardgame club has survived even the departure of most of our members. Although we have not been able to assemble enough people for a good game of bang, Kayleigh taught us how to play Mahjong, which is a game for four people. That same Sunday, several of us ICLP students met with Zhang Laoshi for a vegetarian buffet meal. We spent about three hours there in pleasant conversation (thus besting a record we had set earlier during our dinner with Kuang Laoshi).

On the Saturday of second week of break, I joined Yale alumni Andy and Vernon – and the much bigger alumni club of UC Berkeley – volunteering at a dog shelter. The shelter was located at a rather distant corner of Taipei, south of the southernmost station of the green metro line, which meant that it took quite a while to get there. On the other hand, the dogs did have more space for walks along the winding forest path, where we were practically undisturbed by traffic.

Volunteering at the shelter entailed much more paperwork than I had ever expected. Dog walkers filled in detailed questionnaires about the behaviour and apparent health of their dogs after walking them for half an hour, with topics ranging from friendliness towards people and other dogs to appetite and stool consistency. The first of the dogs I walked was an old black dog. Since people were nicknaming their dogs – some receiving disturbingly human names – I settled on the name Barbara. I think it suited her quite well, since she was warm but not outgoing, as well as decidedly aged, which of course are all qualities intrinsic to the name Barbara. After bringing Barbara back to the shelter, however, I realised from her form that she was, in fact, a boy, so I had to rename him to Boybra. Barbarossa was also in the running, but I thought it not very fitting. Boybra was sweet and obedient until the very end, when he refused to go back to his cage, so he had to be carried like a little baby.

The second dog I walked was a black and white dog who was blind in one eye. He had markings on his back that looked like the back half of a dog – with both legs and a torso. For that reason, I nicknamed him Healfdene. Healfdene was a good, energetic dog with quite an appetite. He pooped three times.

During my last week of break, I saw Jacob and Lane a couple times, since both of them were set to leave on the Monday of the 15^th. We visited a museum dedicated to former comfort women during the Second World War, and we ate Indian takeout while watching Tiger King at my apartment. The day before they left, we ate lunch at a nearby Mediterranean restaurant (I can’t remember the last time I had Mediterranean food).

 Buddha statue at the National Palace Museum

 A set of carved ivory balls at the National Palace Museum

Inkstands at the National Palace Museum