Another day in seclusion. This morning I had my Spanish class, which went quite well – a bit of reading (Primero estaba el mar by Tomás González), some conversation about dogs in prams. A brief chat with the GF last night which was pleasant, and the start of the third of The Wire which remains […]
A simple pair
We were a simple pair at our Chinese lessons. It must have nearly driven the teacher mad. My most unfortunate moment came when we were practicing sentences and she asked us ‘what is your teacher’s name?’ and we had no idea. After staring at each other wildly for a few minutes I said “Liu”, trying […]
Return to Spanish
I have just come out of my first Spanish lesson in months. There were some shameful shortcomings, but still a good session despite having to do it over Skype. I was a bit startled to see my teacher, the one from Medellin, had blinding white hair, partly thanks to lockdown perhaps. Their lockdown is in […]
Terrible error, perhaps
I have take a step that I might regret, which is that I have arranged for, and paid for, Spanish lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So on Mondays and Wednesdays it’s Chinese and then a switchover to the other language. I am more worried about the Chinese suffering than the Spanish; since I know the […]
The only way to visit a museum
The GF and I returned to the National Palace Museum, using two-for-one tickets we’d purchased a month or so ago when we went to its southern outpost in Chiayi, on the way back from Alishan. Social distancing measures have been imposed in Taiwan, and this mean that only 100 visitors were allowed into the museum […]
Better deal
We went to our first class at the city school today. I was relieved that it turned out to be very good; the textbook remains as dire, but the teacher was genuinely good and made excellent use of its exercises so that perhaps for the first time I was confident I was listening and understanding […]
Fish soup
We took our bags to Chinese lessons today – it was the other teacher who is much, much better than the one on Monday. She took our Line accounts (which I created only for the purpose of Taiwan travel as I don’t use it otherwise), and has been sending up pictures and videos all day. […]
Hmm
I was not pleased with my Chinese lesson today, and neither was the GF. It is guided entirely by the textbook, which is not very good, and the teacher didn’t do a great job of actually teaching. I do understand that reciting and memorising is an important way of learning languages, but it’s not the […]
Nostalgia
We had our second Chinese lesson this morning – I don’t think it’s going nearly as smoothly as the Spanish lessons and I’m feeling rather nostalgic about them now. Here we are three people in a small windowless classroom, poring over a textbook and shouting out seemingly meaningless syllables in unison. There, I sat in […]
Grim
In the morning the GF, the Woodland Creature and I took the MRT down to Shilin for the first of our Chinese lessons. Shilin is in the next ring in towards Taipei, a proper city neighbourhood, with a mix of international shops/ department stores and small hip cafes on the other. We stopped first for […]