身體不舒服

I think the fatigue of sleep-deprivation finally brought me down because I seem to have caught a bug. I thought my throat was feeling funny because of all the tea I drank during the tea tasting on our field trip to 文山 (Wen Shan) tea farm. On Sunday I awoke with a minor sore throat, so I then realized I was falling ill. I tried to fight it with orange juice and some medicinal soup yesterday. Today my sore throat has turned into a scratchy, dry throat and cough. I'm hoping it'll be over by the week's end. The good news is that my eye problems seem to be due to the polluted air in Taiwan and not something more serious like a side-effect from the corneal abrasion. Wearing contacts is still a bit painful at times for my left eye, but I hope the problem will be resolved magically when I return to the States. And if a certain someone is reading, this means I won't need an eye patch! Guess my dream of being a pirate will be deferred. =P

Twinnie sent me an interesting article from Slate about being a standardized patient and the experience of being examined by green med students. I really respect standardized patients for giving us the opportunity to learn how to conduct patient exams before having to work with real patients. Props to the reporter who volunteered to be a standardized patient. It seems that people who are standardized patients really enjoy what they do though, which is great. The SPs that I saw at EVMS were a great bunch and I look forward to working with them. I have to pay my highest respects to the SPs who are trained to undergo the gynecological exams or prostate exams. I don't think I would accept any amount of money to allow a nervous med student to conduct a gynecological exam on me, no matter how broke I am. When I'm a poor and destitute med student, I will take to the streets with my violin to pay my tuition.

As mentioned earlier, this Saturday I went on the school field trip to 文山 (Wen Shan) tea farm with a brief stop at 烏來 (Wu Lai) on the way back to 台大. The tea farm was fun though the heat definitely made it a bit unbearable at times. However, since I've been here over a month, the heat doesn't really bother me as much anymore as I've grown accustomed to being in a perpetual state of perspiration. Tea production is a fairly intensive process so after seeing how tea is produced from plant to final product, I understand now why some types of tea seem to be prohibitively expensive. The particular type of tea we learned about was 烏龍茶 (oolong tea). The type of 烏龍茶 that I'm used to drinking is dark brown and has a rather heavy, rich flavor but the kind produced at this farm has a most wonderful delicate fragrance, somewhat akin to jasmine or lily, and is light green in color and has a light flavor. It was really lovely to end the day in an air conditioned room and learn the proper way to serve and taste tea.

At 烏來 we just walked up and and down the old street and sampled various treats like mochi and deep fried pork/chicken from the street vendors. There was a high number of vendors selling mochi and 炒米粉 (chao mi fen), I'm not sure if it's a specialty of the region or not, though I'm guessing it is. Since Hualien is known for mochi, I didn't purchase any since I feared it would be inferior to Hualien's, however the samples I tasted were pretty good. I'm surprised I haven't ballooned due to all the food I've eaten but I think walking everywhere has helped me keep my weigh stable.

Today I had two speeches, one in the format of a debate which the teacher recorded. Her original intent was to upload the video to the web, but I persuaded her not to (er, I think I did), so hopefully no one outside my class will witness my dismal public speaking abilities. The fact I was ill didn't make the situation any better. I don't mind the speeches because it enables me to practice the grammar patterns and vocabulary we're learning. I just mind being recorded with the intent of showing the WWW my Mandarin skills, or lack thereof. In my other class, I talked about the perpetual foreigner syndrome that Asian-American's experience. It's hard to translate terms like "perpetual foreigner syndrome" or "quarter-life crisis" into Mandarin because I usually do a direct translation which does transmit the meaning of what I'm trying to say, but it makes no sense to native Chinese speakers (and probably to non-native Chinese speakers as well). Thankfully, I've had my cousin help with the phrasing sometimes.

Homework calls!