My Several Worlds

Saturday nights rarely get this exciting for us.  We ended up lucking out over the weekend with a last minute invite for some fantastic music, some serious boogying and a whole lot of friends at China White for DJ Megan Murphy’s birthday bash. 
BIRTHDAY GIRL: MEGAN MURPHY aka DJ MEGAN

Photo by: Karen Pavor
The party was held at [...]

Banciao on a sunny day in Taiwan is beautiful.  This is what we normally see outside our windows every day.  I snapped this first photo to give you an idea of the amount of water we had dumped on us last weekend.  It’s been a week since the fury of Typhoon Sinlaku swept through Taiwan, [...]

Are you looking for a private Chinese teacher with over ten years of teaching experience and a flexible schedule?
If so, why don’t you give Kirk Shu a call?
Kirk offers classes for basic to advanced level learners.  He’ll work with you one-on-one or in a group.
Kirk taught at the Mandarin Training Center before he decided to [...]

The wind sounds like a howling animal outside my window.  It moans with shrill, harsh cries with stirring regularity; its strength and power increasing with every hour.  You can smell a typhoon coming.  The air is charged with electricity and fresh with the scent of ozone.  The skies are an inconceivable blue studded with fluffy [...]

MJ Klein aka The Bushman isn’t a stranger to readers of My Several Worlds.  Not only are he and his wife, Hui Chen, good friends of ours, but his blog, The New Hampshire Bushman is wildly entertaining and guaranteed to get your salivary glands pumping with his culinary expertise.  John and I try to take [...]

Imagine miles of bare, unspoilt golden beaches. Imagine a place that is unpolluted. No garbage litters the white coral and sand beaches of Penghu. There are no flagrant displays of commercialism or hordes of camera-toting tourists here. In some places, you can still walk down to the water’s edge to search for raw, fresh oysters [...]

I thought that my first blog back from vacation would be about Penghu, but after sitting down to write this morning and receiving two threatening phone calls, which have set my teeth on edge and have me angrier than hell, I guess my Penghu posts will have to wait.
Last week, I posted about some problems [...]

Hey folks.  Vacation time is here again and this time, I’m heading to the islands of Penghu for a few days.  This will be my first trip without John in awhile and also, coincidentally, my first trip with just Taiwanese friends.  I’ve committed myself to using Chinese for the duration of the trip.
I’m looking forward [...]

1. Review. I know it’s boring, but it’s absolutely essential to language learning. Don’t bother to learn new words if you aren’t going to review. It’s a waste of time if you aren’t committed to reviewing your material.
2. Listen. The more you listen, the more you’ll remember.
3. Use your new [...]

A few months ago, John decided to buy a second-hand car. He found one on Taiwan Yahoo auctions after several weeks of searching and contacted the owner in Taoyuan to go and have a look at it. The owner had an English-speaking friend who was kind enough to translate for John.  When John arrived, he [...]