Well it has been awhile...

Well everything in Taiwan is going smooth and as best as I could ask for. School is going very well, I'm definitely learning a lot. It's crazy how fast we are moving through the books, but when we have 3 hours a day of class I guess we will go through the books quite fast. I have vocabulary tests for two days and the third day is a chapter test, so I have a test every single day of school! It's awesome though, I love how fast I am learning and how much I am actually retaining. My teacher is awesome, she doesn't speak any English so my entire class is in Chinese which also helps out a lot. I'll be honest, as much as I love taking all this Chinese, by Thursday I am almost burnt out lol. It's a ton of work and you have to be 100% focused in class to catch everything, so I can't day dream or snooze or anything! Overall, school rocks.

My roommates also rock. We've all become quite good friends and they love it when I correct their English. My roommate Filip probably knows more words than I do but it's hilarious when he actually speaks some of them lol, I am constantly correcting how he says words and we have a blast with that. I'm also learning a little of their languages lol, Tuukka is always telling me how to say things in Finnish and I've learned a couple words in Czech. We hang out altogether quite a bit, and we're having a blast. I never got the "dorm life" at GVSU so I'm living it right now and I'm lovin' it.

A pretty cool thing happened to us last weekend...Filip had found a Louis Vuitton wallet on the ground near the Taipei 101 (rich part of town) and there were business cards inside so he looked up the lady on facebook and we found out that she is a manager for red bull. Filip talked to her and she told him that they were hosting a red bull party at a venue that is very near to our dorm so we ended up going to that and we were basically VIP! We got in for free to see the bands and DJ's and we got all the free drinks and basically anything we wanted. It was awesome! So basically if she is ever hosting an event, we are invited. We thought that was pretty cool.

I went and saw the band The Far East Movement, they sing "like a G6" and "Rocketeer," that was a great time too. The place was PACKED, luckily we got there wayyy early or else there was no way we were getting in. But, that was a lot of fun too.

On Sunday Filip and I made a trip to JinShan which is a town to the west and it is on the coast. We went to check out the beach because Filip and his friend Korona want to have a birthday party on a beach where we can have a fire and everyone can bring their guitars and jam around the beach. So we take a 1.5 hour bus ride to this place and it was a complete joke. I don't know what is in Taiwan but Sunday was like 82 degrees outside and we showed up to the beach and there wasn't a single person there. We thought we were maybe at the wrong place but it was deserted. The beach was the crappiest beach I've ever been to. Filip was worried about where we were going to get firewood for the fire but there were branches and driftwood and crap everywhere. It's hard to explain on here how weird this city was. I don't think they had ever seen a foreigner before lol and here we are walking around in sleeveless shirts and swimsuits and flip flops, we were getting stared at by everyone. It was an adventure to say the least, but we had fun I guess lol.

Anyways, I will try and update a little more often. I hope everything is going well back at home!

Kyle