It didn’t take long for any of us to realize we weren’t going to learn a whole hell of a lot in our respective high schools. We spoke the equivalent of chinese baby-talk, and with all of the cooing and attention we were receiving from our classmates, they weren’t learning much either. One by one, we removed ourselves from the classroom whenever possible, always aware of where the ‘jiowguan’ or ‘guards’ were, so as not to be reported to the Rotary. I found myself especially frustrated around the 2000 elections, because I expected to be able to open the Taipei Times and find out who the conclusive winner was. Everyone remembers what a giant clusterfuck THAT election was, and it was extremely difficult to find any current information. While the US president may just be a figurehead and a puppet for stronger, hidden political forces, I wanted to know who our figurehead was going to be. It was then that I discovered the tushuguan (library). The library had the regular library things–books, magazines, and current newspapers, but more importantly than that, it had a computer lab with internet access. Ploddingly slow internet access, but internet access nonetheless. From here I was able to find out current news, and contact my boyfriend, whom I’d sorely missed over the past few months. Letters were not an effective form of communication, ESPECIALLY letters with packages. I had more packages seized by customs that year than I actually received. It always infuriated me to think that some postal employee somewhere was rocking out to MY cds. The tushuguan became the place to be–as Jessica stated in our yearbook, “What do I like about Taiwanese high school?? I love the tushuguan!! I love the tushuguan so much. She is my best friend in the world.” It’s hard to read in this picture, but underneath the Chinese, they have written in English, ‘Your good taste has been torn into pieces, too!’ Those administrators, always suspecting the exchange students when it came to tomfoolery. And perhaps they were right to do so. Muli spent her time in the tushuguan pondering ways to torture Hello Kitty.
Taiwan Part Ten: Tushuguan — The Great Escape

Those administrators, always suspecting the exchange students when it came to tomfoolery.
And skylarkings.
Lucas=Ever see The Shining?
Whenever I see people picking their nose in public…Taiwan.
HEEEEEEEEEERE’S JOHNNY!
WOW. I forgot how absolutely ridiculous we were. I am still distressed (TO THIS DAY) over the newspaper cutting crisis (there was a picture in the paper of a monkey smoking a cigarette- i had to have it).
Didn’t Emilie break a table when she was dancing on it? I’m pretty sure that’s when one of the library workers came in to yell at us.
How I wish I had gone to your school I went to class every day until I was caned by the jiaoguan for NOT sleeping at my desk after lunch sometime half way through my exchange – the teachers then told me to go to our boring tushuguan where they had set up a letter box for me so that my Taiwanese tongxue could send me creepy love letters and requests to take them to Australia. I wanted to be a Chung Shan sunshine girl so bad.