Friday was the Fulbright goodbye dinner, which means that all the Fulbrighters in Taiwan, from the English teachers to the University professors, the 22 year olds to the 50 or 60 somethings, get together one final time... making our total number of all-inclusive meetings something like 3. Even though we don't see each other, though, there is a more subtle bond that links us, even if it is just mutual respect and mutual mother language. It will be a sad day when I can no longer call myself part of that group, and rather accept the status of alumni... that sort of half-member of a community, a member only in memory, and usually only in your own memory at that, as the group itself has gone on.
But the weekend itself. I usually find huge dinners with old people rebarbative but the simple bittersweetness of this one and the fact that everyone is at turns interesting and inspiring made it a good dinner. Then dancing afterwards with my broken knee, suprisingly sucessful, then sleep at 4 in the morning, then reading romance novels in the bookstore, then the train back to yilan, then dinner and a massage.
Dancing: breathless and stiff-legged, that strange combination of exhileration and loneliness I feel when I visit clubs where hormones permeate the air and I drink in that desire yet am, at the same time, so far from the one that I love.
Massage: painful on a swollen knee but otherwise awesome. Chinese massages are the best.
1 comment:
sorry, I was only attempting to be tongue in cheek. I didn't mean to be hurtful.
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