星期一：This morning, my host mom bought us all doughnuts as she'd learned those are my favorite food. While they were pretty different from American doughnuts, they were still quite tasty and the gesture was so sweet (pun intended). For the first two weeks, we'll have intensive Chinese classes with just us, as our host university, Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, doesn't actually start class yet. So, after that great breakfast, my host mom and sister accompanied me on the bus since it was my first day, and it was pretty tricky, so I'm glad they did. When we arrived on the campus (Wenzao isn't open technically but we still used their campus), we all had to take a language test to determine the appropriate class level. After that, we found a delicious dumpling restaurant behind the school, ate lunch, then returned for afternoon Chinese class.
(my new bedroom)
(picture of everyone with their host families)
(my new favorite fruit, dragon fruit)
(doughnuts!)
(delicious dumplings for lunch, we ordered way too many but still ate them all)
星期二：The main event of the day was that I got my first bubble tea in Taiwan and it was dangerously good. The second main event was that, in the afternoon, the eight of us went over to a kindergarten teachers house where we learned about fruit, drank juice, read picture books, and then had to write our own picture books about us as fruit. It was silly and cute, and I'm actually fairly proud of my pineapple book.
(my book, creatively titled, "Maureen the Pineapple")
(first Taiwanese bubble tea)
星期三：Today our afternoon activity was to go to the mall by my house and ask random shoppers questions about Taiwan. We had to carry around a map and ask people about the different districts in Taiwan; once they answered, we could fill in the map like a puzzle. Overall, everyone was pretty nice seeing as we were just a bunch of foreign students asking them silly questions. Dinner that night was quite notable, too, in that my host family randomly took me to Ding Tai Feng, a super famous and fancy soup dumpling restaurant. I can definitely see what the hype is about; the food was fabulous. On the way home, we stopped by a bookstore so my host mom could buy a coloring book. I'd brought one with me and she thought it would be fun to color together, which is super sweet.
(we're already all addicted to bubble tea)
(our puzzle map of Taiwan)
(soup dumplings!)
(my host sister and I were matching)
星期四：Today I got super lost on the way to school, but, I never can be too lost here because we have Google Maps on our Taiwanese phones; so really I wasn't lost, I just took a nice, long scenic route to school. I will pretty much be eternally grateful for Google Maps as it has saved me a million times all ready. After school, we had a paper cutting class after school. While it looks cool in the end, paper cutting is really quite difficult, though maybe that's just because I've never been too great with scissors. Also, I've discovered a few random facts about Taiwan that I thought would be interesting. For one, there are 7-11 convenience stores everywhere, you can pretty much do everything at them, too, like you can literally pay your bills at 7-11. Another random fact is that Taiwan is super good at recycling to the point where I never know where to put my trash. There are 13 different recycling categories compared to the two or three in the U.S.. Also, the trash trucks here play cute music like ice cream trucks to everyone can know when to run and throw out their trash. The third observation I have is that everything here is super cute. What I mean by that is you can buy almost anything with a Sanrio character on it, like Hello Kitty. The funniest one I think is there's a character called Gudetama that's literally a sad egg. I have no idea why this character is so popular, but you can buy anything with this sad egg on it.
(a picture of our group with the paper cutting teacher)
星期五：After school, we had a group activity where we practiced ordering different kinds of bubble tea. In Taiwan, at any tea shop, you get to choose the amount of sugar and ice you want in your tea. This activity was mainly awesome because we got to try about eight different flavors of tea. Once we finished, I hopped in the car with my family to head to Taipei. My host sister would be starting college in Taipei the next week so they decided to go early so we could tour around. After about four hours of driving, we stopped at an aunt's house where we'd stay over the weekend. Before going to bed, my host family taught me how to play Chinese chess and Chinese checkers. While both games were quite fun, I lost every single time.
星期å…：After driving two more hours to Taipei City, we set up my host sister's dorm room. It was pretty interesting to see as there are six girls to each room, and, personally, I think the rooms look pretty prison-like. Once that was complete, we drove out of the city and up into the mountains where we stopped at a waterfall and then continued on to a gold mining museum. While I couldn't understand a lot of the museum, I did understand that at one point the mine had been a Japanese labor camp, which was interesting. From there I got the chance to experience my first Taiwanese street market. It was crowded, noisy, and full of shops and food, and I loved it. The view was also really great as you could see out over the mountains all the way to the ocean.
That evening, we drove to Yehliu Geopark, essentially the Taiwanese version of Garden of the Gods in Colorado, but on a beach. It was really beautiful as we went during sunset. I also discovered that my host mom really enjoys taking pictures of me everywhere which is honestly great because otherwise there'd be about zero pictures of me in Taiwan.
(waterfall outside Taipei)
(at the mining museum)
(in the mining cart with my host sister)
(first street market experience)
(view from the street market up in the mountains)
(Yehliu Geopark)
(view as the sun was setting)
(host family photo)
星期天：We started out the day by visiting some lotus fields near the aunt's house. While we missed lotus season by a few weeks, there were a few flowers in bloom, and they were really beautiful. We then headed to a famous seafood market by the ocean and ate tons of delicious seafood. I've now had lots of oysters, squid, and many unknown fish. From there, my host sister had to head on to college so my host parents, brother, and I started back to Kaohsiung. On the way we stopped in Taichung where we dropped of my host brother for his university. Before he left, though, we stopped at a famous house where an old man, he's now 93, literally painted his entire house in bright colors and designs just because he liked painting. My favorite moment of the whole trip, though, was in Taichung when we stopped at a famous ice cream shop. The building used to be a bank but was then converted into a cafe, so it's really cool inside. For the ice cream, they had so many interesting fruit flavors like lychee and dragon fruit, a large selection of tea and coffee flavors, and about a dozen different chocolate flavors where you could pick your percentage. I chose to get sugar cane, pineapple, and passion fruit ice cream and got to pick four cookies to go on top. It was pretty much the greatest thing I've eaten, and I'm quite sure I would make the 28 hour trip from Texas to Taiwan again someday just to experience the greatness of this ice cream shop once again.
9we spent many hours in the car, often snacking on Pocky)
(lotus fields)
(giant crab statue by the seafood market)
(all the incredible flavors at the ice cream shop)
(the gorgeous ice cream)
(at the cool colorful house in Taichung)