June 1/13 – It has been an amazing 4 months in Taiwan! And it’s just a “bitter sweet” feeling now. A part of me is excited to soon be going home to see family and good friends but another part of me feels very sad to say good bye to Taiwan and the many new friends I made here. Half of me feels going home soon but the other half feels like I am leaving “home” …. The connection and bonding I feel with this city and the people here only deepened over time. The reality is that for now, I am gonna leave a piece of my heart behind so I can come back for it someday…..
Besides becoming closer with Paul, whom I met 30 years ago and is now like a brother to me, and the new people I became friends with over the last 4 months, obviously the biggest achievement for us here is learning Mandarin. With a lot of hard work and through my very stubborn persistency, I feel so proud that other than speaking, I am now also able to recognize over 1000 Chinese characters which means that I have achieved my goal 3 months ago of being able to READ and TYPE in simple Chinese!! Yeah!!! Of course, I need to give tribute to my local friends who taught me and practiced with me via texting and speaking outside school all this time. Without them, I would never have learned so much in such a short time. “Thank you very much guys/girls” and you know who you are ….(謝謝你們)….
I have also fallen in love with singing during my stay here. I think the biggest reason is that I don’t have to put in so much effort to “memorizing the lyrics” now that I can read Pinyin, therefore learning a new song is so much easier now than before and so it’s been more motivating. Actually I kinda regret not having the desire to learn singing techniques from my X three years ago since he was such an amazing singer and he was also a very patient teacher. But again like everything else, I believe it’s never too late. I hope that by the time I come back to sing in my 2 favorite Karaoke bars, MT7 and 寵愛 again, I would be a much better singer because I am determined to go home to learn more and practice more now that I found the passion in singing.
I am grateful that Deon was willing to take these photos in Taiwan with me. We got a beautiful album and 2 posters from the studio which is supposed to be memories for our “Two Year Travel” since without a doubt, Taiwan is the “highlight” and where our journey ends.
We are happy to join Neil, my travel buddy, onto our last “vacation” in HK, Penang and Sabah before going home on June 17/13.
Originally posted on Amy’s travel blog: TravelwithAmy.ca
Hi! I’ve been reading your blog for a long time now and finally got the courage
to go ahead and give you a shout out from Humble Texas!
Just wanted to mention keep up the great work!
Hello Evelyn. Continue to “go ahead and give” us shout outs from where you are!