"Wake Me When September Ends"

Where to start, let's see... how about Tuesday. I have the little class called business decision methods on Tuesdays. It has to be one of the worst classes I've ever taken. The professor is of course Taiwanese, like many Taiwanese he is shy when speaking in English. The class consists of him going over a powerpoint (that has nothing to do with the book) spending 5-10 minutes on each slide. On each slide he says "uhm uhm uhm uhm" about every other sentence and makes a joke in Chinese that only the local students can understand. Basically I'm just not enjoying the class at all.

Wednesday is my double day, I have two classes. The first is Project Operations Management which is taught by the same professor that teaches Project Management. I enjoy both of his classes, though I was distracted this week by Sara. She was writing a case study for some sort of symposium the IMBA is putting on later in the month, so I was helping as a contributing writer. The second class is Managing Information Systems, which is basically a free credit for me. I feel like I know more about what the teacher is talking about than he does at times. During class on Wednesday we were talking about The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. I was the only person other than the professor who had read the book so I was able to fill in the gaps that he couldn't when people were asking questions about it. If I don't make an A in the class I'll scream foul play.

Now rather than go day by day which is what I've been doing (and honestly I'm tired of the format). Let's just talk about certain things and people around me here. In the Phillipines they speak two languages, tagalog and english. Due to this they generally speak a combination of the two kindly referred to as tanglish. I only know one tanglish word, ate which means 'older sister.' In the states I have two sisters (though since one works for Delta they might not be in the states at the moment). Here I have one ate, not by blood of course. Now I realize I've only been here for three weeks and it's kind of outlandish to say that I already call someone an ate but in the abscense of my real sisters, she's knocked some sense into me with regards to some things I've found myself doing over here. She's even writing a biography about my life, I'm excited to find out what it's going to say! Alright... that's not true but we've joked about the idea. In reality she's a nice person whose easy to talk to and is willing to help me however possible.

We've had two typhoons hit Taiwan in the last three weeks. One, which was a super typhoon, hit yesterday. Now I know that when a hurricane hits in the states it's usually a big deal, just look at Texas. Here in Tainan though it's a common occurance and not a big deal. I'm not sure if I've talked about it yet but the entire eastern side of Taiwan is mountains. So when a typhoon comes in the mountains take the brunt of the storm before it comes here. The worst part about the typhoon is the sounds the wind makes as it rushes into every possible crack it can find.

I can honestly say that my experience over here so far has been one of the greatest I've ever had. I am sure it will only get better as time passes. Tonight we are celebrating a birthday, which means a cake. It's tradition that the person takes a bite from the cake and gets the cake shoved in there face, good times.