I have returned!

I am back in Taiwan for two months to do some job training. This was my first time flying by myself on this route, and, surprisingly, it was overall very comfortable this time. (I bet it was because of my new pillow). I slept well for part of the first and longer flight, but going from Tokyo to Japan I felt like my body just crashed and I couldn't get comfortable sleeping no matter how much I tried. This seems to be at trend for me, though. 

Here are the movies I watched on the plane:

Justice League: Eh... but it's what I expected

Phantom Thread: An unbearable movie about unbearable people and disfunctional relationships. I kept waiting for it to get better but it didn't.

Star Wars Last Jedi: Pretty good. I love the porgs! What I didn't get was how some characters could survive exposed to space without some kind of suit.

Half Girlfriend: I always gotta watch a bollywood movie on my way to and from Taiwan. I picked this one because I wanted a fluff movie, but I am interested in seeing Rangoon which looks more serious. 

I watched a trailer for Alifu on the last flight and I really want to see it. It's a Taiwanese movie about a boy in one of the indigenous tribes here who is exploring gender and identify. 

I've been really curious to see whether I'll experience culture shock again coming back here, and if I have it it's super super mild. I've noticed some things about myself in the 1.5 days I've been here so far:

1. My Chinese listening skills are the same (yay!) but my speaking skills have gone a little down, which makes sense. I feel like my fluency is what's lacking (meaning I have everything I want to say in my head but doesn't flow out well). It's hard to string together multiple ideas, keeping a good rate of speech. This is only when I speak to anyone besides Albert though. For some funny reason I don't get this problem with him.
2. Speaking of language, I find my mannerisms with Albert have also changed now that I'm here. I'm using more of a Taiwanese accent (substituting s for sh, etc.) but it's a subconscious choice, and I'm acting cutesy. It feels a little annoying but it's interesting how it seems like my behavior shifts here.
3. My chopstick skills have gone down a little. I drop random pieces of food all the time. 
4. I'm not used to drinking watery soup instead of water at meals anymore. 

My training starts tomorrow and I have a feeling I will be so busy over the next months, but my goals for this trip are, first, to practice Chinese as much as I can and try reading newspapers; collect a bunch of children's books in Chinese to bring back for future use in my language learning and (hopefully teaching), collect recordings of different Taiwanese speakers reading these picture books out loud for the same purpose; and have fun going to my favorite places on my days off. 

I'm pretty jetlagged! More later!