While I may not speak the common language here, "Mandarin", I am still astonished at the similarities between Taiwan and the United States. For the past week and a half, my friends and I would go running in the morning at around 5:30 AM just right before the sun comes up. I am surprised to see the amount of people out on the school track at the time. There must be at least 30 people out there. They are mostly older runners around 40+UP, however it doesn't matter to me because I have been running ever since I was born and doing it semi-pro in High School and College for over 6 years. Most runners will run do their thing and be on their way. It's the same here in Taiwan and over in the states.
After morning classes we sometimes would meet up with the CYCU students to play basketball or volleyball in the arena area. The people there would speak to us in a somewhat broken but understandable english to any player. We can't speak Mandarin but sports are sports, even if you can speak the language but you can't play then they wont' respect you at all. So I'm happy that when we play win or lose, the other team smiles because we are all meeting together to play something we enjoy despite demographics and citizenships.
I was thinking the same thing the other day. Even though we have people from all over the world on this trip, and sometimes it's hard to communicate, with sports we're all on the same level. The rules are the same worldwide. I understand a little better why sports are such a big part of people's lives.
ReplyDeleteMath and sports the two universal languages. Luckily, in that picture my shirt was already fully soaked so it just looks like a dark grey shirt instead of a sweat soaked shirt. Either way we sure had a blast trying to not get killed playing volleyball with them. Man are they good at volleyball and your right the Taiwanese do seem to enjoy working out.
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