Happy (quiet) New Year!

你们好！I know I said that my next blog post would be on Buddhism and Christianity, but I didn't think that New Year's here would be so distinctly different from New Year's back home! Like I felt very much like a foreigner last night for three specific reasons: 1) We angered a lot of people, 2) no one that was Taiwanese yelled at us, 3) people were so. quiet.

Team USA and friends!

So I will be one of the first to acknowledge that Americans have many moments where we do some dumb things, especially in other countries. Last night, however, when our group of 12 American students led by 3 Taiwanese teachers and 2 students, sat down at the edge of this sidewalk to get a good view of Taipei 101 (at 10pm), was not one of these moments. For one thing, one of the faculty members found us the spot and told us to sit down; no American prompting necessary. Secondly, EVERYONE WAS SITTING DOWN ON THIS SIDEWALK. To our left, we had some soon-to-be-angry French people, to our right and to our front we had dozens of people just chillin' and waiting to see Taipei 101 sparkling with explosions and New Year's delight. Conclusion: we ain't done nothing wrong. Thus you can imagine our frustration when people started flooding in and getting angry with us in Chinese! I'm spreading my arms and pushing against the crowd trying to knock me over and thinking : 什么！你们应该早点来了！别挤我们！（You all should have gotten here earlier, quit jostling us!) However, this is where I made my first cultural observation-- no one was yelling at us. At all. People may have been talking amongst themselves about the 外国人 (foreigners) sitting in the middle of the walk way, but nobody yelled or said anything super mean--as far as I could hear. In fact, most people said excuse me and that pushed behind us and rubbed their heels into our backs and stepped on our fingers!

It was so different for all of us that we even comment as a group on how different this scene would have gone if we have been in NYC watching the ball drop or even in DC on the Fourth of July! That said, we did have one wonderful reminder of home when a pleasant young man who we flagged as hailing from the state of New Jersey not only pushed into the circle, he walked straight through with blatant disregard for his fellow Statesmen and women sitting vulnerable beneath his belligerent sneakers. After he had passed through, he proceeded to yell at us for sitting in the walk way, to which we responded "Look around, everyone is sitting in the walk way". His anger not yet quelled, he replied, "It wasn't like this 10 minutes ago!" But of course, we being the intelligent college students that we were decided to end the conflict with a quick "We've been sitting here for 40 minutes...so yes it was." (Props to classmates Will and Emily for shutting Jersey down!) But yeah, that was the most anger that we encountered for the rest of the night! Good job Taipei!

So anger: check, Jersey Jerk: check, the last and probably most disorienting difference for me between New Years in the States and New Years here was the fact that outside of yelling  “新年快乐！” (Happy New Year!) at midnight and the occasional gasp at the magnificent fireworks show, no one said anything. No wooing, no cheering, just...watching fireworks--well that's not entirely true; Susan (another of my classmates) did America justice and wowed and screamed during the fireworks like a mad woman, but that's a 美国人 (American) for you! Anyway, it was different to say the least, especially since I'm the kind of person who runs around outside with pots and pans on New Year's in the street (true story)! At the end (or beginning?) of the day, however, I definitely enjoyed this New Year's Eve in Taiwan and I am definitely looking forward to the rest of the experiences I'll have here! Until next time friends, when I talk about Buddhism and Christianity!

Peace and Love

Akeel(埃克利）

Doing New Year's Eve right.