Chinese students abound

My Chinese class is comprised of twenty-somethings from India, USA, Korea and Russia and a 14 year old from Japan. Well, it was a sad day last Friday because the Japanese girl, Grace, had to quit the class to go home. (Her mom didn't want to pay for her to make a Visa run to Hong Kong, Manila, etc. and her 30 day Visa was expiring)
Here are the class photos we took to honor her memory. One normal picture and one Taiwanese picture:



And here is a bonus picture from the Chinese Language Center field trip to GaohSiung last Saturday:

This is G and me posing with our new Japanese friends. Their Chinese is bu tai hao, but they were still fun to hang out with (for reasons that should be obvious).

The field trip was good fun, considering we had to meet at the language center at 7:50 am (on a Saturday mind you). Here are some more highlights:
The first five pictures here are from some temples (forgive my exceedingly limited vocabulary and memory of Chinese names). The guy riding the chicken was on top of one of the towers in the first picture. Although my eyes are closed in the last picture, I have to share it because these guys are really funny and I hung out with them most of the day. We're are all in beginner Chinese classes - from left to right we're Japanese, Thai, American, American and Korean - so the only way we can communicate is with our humble Chinese. We continue to persevere and can call ourselves good friends (hao peng you).