Blabberings

Mangos
Mangoes are back in season! Geoff got me some from Costco that were monstrous in size.


I took these pictures to show my dad. From the first pictures you can see one part cut off from the seed...it's definitely bigger than my hand. And in the third, look how thin the seed is! I love mangoes that are all meat.

There are "regular" type mangoes in the fruit markets - these are hit or miss in terms of sweetness but always juicy. And by regular I mean what's normal for Taiwan but nothing you'd ever find in America.

MRT
On my way home from Xiaonanmen tonight, I was waiting for the train to come back from Ximen. A young woman asked me something in Chinese and I couldn't understand. I asked her to repeat and still didn't understand. I told her that my Chinese wasn't that good. Usually at this point, a questioner will move on to find someone else to ask. But to my surprise, and delight, she stuck with me. It turns out she was new to taking the MRT and was trying to get to Chang Kai Shek (whose Chinese name I can never remember or recognize which is why I didn't understand her in the first place). And then I found out she was actually trying to get to Nanshijiao and had gotten on at CKS and realized she was going the wrong way and got off where I was. I've made the same mistake before, getting on going in the wrong direction, so I tried my best in Chinese to make her feel better about her mistake. It's always nice to practice speaking with complete strangers. Turns out she is a junior in high school and planning on studying physics in college.

ShiDa
It's the last week of class and we are slightly behind the school's new schedule. They want us to get through chapter 10 but we're only just finishing 9. Most of my class opted to keep the same teacher and so 6 of them will be together again next quarter along with some other kids they found for the 8 person minimum. My plan is to review and forge ahead while I'm on vacation in June (Grr, maybe you can hold me to this by checking up on me like last time) and then come back and start classes again.

However nothing ever really seems to go to plan, so we'll see what happens.