My Home On The ROC

As Chinese New Year festivities are about to go underway, this would be the best time to introduce where I live and who I live with.

This is my host family. This child is my little brother Gan Jiapeng (甘家朋), the man to the left is my host father Peter Gan （老甘), and finally the woman in the middle is my host mom and best friend Cay Chang （老媽). I got to know them through the "Chinese way," ie I asked my Taiwanese teacher if he knew of any families that would be open to host, who asked his friends, who asked their friends, who asked their friends who asked my host family if it was okay or not.  

In most Taiwanese apartments, when you first walk through the front door you will enter into a small room that is used for storage of umbrellas, recyclables, etc. However the most important use of this area is for shoe storage. Taiwanese people are against wearing shoes in the household. They believe (and are right in their belief) that wearing shoes within the household will bring in dirt and germs from the outdoors. So they are adamant about taking their shoes off and putting on slippers before entering the household. 

After you take off your shoes and enter through the sliding glass door you walk into the living room. Their living room has three couches, a table, computer, fish tank, a television and a floor pad. During the wintertime, the floor becomes especially cold. This is mostly due to the fact that there is no heating in a average Taiwanese household (I am not kidding). To accommodate for the cold floors, every winter my family puts a giant foam pad on the floor. This foam pad is around one inch thick and provides warmth and comfort to everyone in the living room. 

My host mom is currently using her computer to surf the internet and might be watching Korean soap operas. 

While taking pictures, my little brother was drawing in a pretty "expensive" coloring book. After my host mom noticed that he was scribbling rather than drawing in it, she asked him what he was doing. Afterwords, my little brother honestly responds, "I am painting him blue, just like the picture above." (My brother sometimes is so freaking cute that you can't help but laugh >_<).

This is the kitchen in our home. This kitchen has absolutely no oven and the stove top is gas-fired. There is no automatic dishwasher as well. My host mom gave me the explanation that dishwashers are too expensive and wastes too much water. In a sense, she is completely right. Dishwashers are a product of convenience, not necessity. They also waste large amounts of water per wash. However, for people who live fast-paced lifestyles, dishwashers lifts a great burden from them. One complaint that I have is that their faucets lack hot water. So every time I wash dishes my fingers turn into icicle pops without the fruity taste!!

This is the balcony. The machine in the front is the destroyer of many outfits, IE the Taiwanese style washing machine. What's a Taiwanese-style washer machine? Well, its probably not only exclusive to Taiwan, but it's the type of washer machine that has a extremely high speed cycle to wring out your clothes. This causes many clothes to stretch to the point that they are unwearable. The reason why the spin cycle is so high is because most Taiwanese families do no use a dryer. After washing their clothes they hang them up on the clothesline and dry them that way. Most Taiwanese people believe that dryers are too expensive to buy and useless since you can use the much more cost friendly method of wind to dry one's clothes.

Finally, the moment everyone has been waiting for.... my room! My room has a bed, a dresser, a desk, a bookshelf and a storage shelf. It's pretty small, yet cozy. After living in Taiwan, I realized that a person really doesn't require that much space to feel comfortable in. On my desk as an amazing collection of Chinese material that I am currently studying at my University. These include my books to the left, dictionary to the right and behind my computer has a newspaper article that I still have to translate for class (>_<). My bookshelf contains books, CDs, my flute, school supplies, calligraphy kit (Yes, I am a nerd) and various jewelry. My storage shelf contains all of my "life" supplies. These "life" supplies are basically goods that you can not buy in Taiwan. The top shelf contains all of my medicine and vitamins that I brought from the States. The second shelf has all of my hair necessities for a black woman with natural hair. The next two shelves have my hair and fashion accessories (sunglasses, hairbands, belts, scarves, etc). Finally, the last shelf has all of my (important) electronic accessories.

When leaving the house, you will see my neighbor's door. My neighbor's are also a Taiwanese family that has three children (two girls, one boy). I usually call the Mother and Father "Uncle" and "Aunt." Their children usually come over to play with my mother's son and the father often uses that excuse to come over and gossip with my mom. I will talk about them more later, until then 再見！ Zai4Jian4 = Goodbye!