Celebrating Family

For my first weekend that I could actually do something in Taiwan, my 'buddy' Ray and I visited his home in Yilan. Every international student was given a Taiwanese buddy to help them out, pick them up from the airport and show them around. Ray is definitely the best buddy out there! Some people I talk to either 1 don't even know they have a buddy or 2 have talked to their buddy once. Throughout the weekend, he insisted on paying for things and making my time as easy on me as possible, as long as I kept my promise to take care of things when he came to visit the states.

Yilan county is located on the eastern side of Taiwan, basically due east of my campus. Since Taiwan is very mountainous, especially right down the middle from top to bottom, you have to take a bus north to taipei and then south to Yilan. In all, it took about 4.5 hours on the cheap, comfy busses to get from my dorm to Ray's house on Saturday morning.

His dad and aunt picked us up from the bus stop in the family Camry, and we drove about 5 minutes on narrow roads to their house, which is surrounded by rice fields. Ray lives there with his mom, dad, younger brother and grandparents.

After dropping my stuff off at the house, Ray and I went to see the National Center for Traditional Arts. They have a theater and a temple, but the main section is a long road with shops in either side. In the downstairs, there are people selling any sort of Chinese trinket you're looking for, and the upstairs section of any given shop will usually have an area for children to make their own crafts.

Carrying lots of soap

This traditional Yilan dessert is a mixture of two scoops of ice cream, some crunchies and :( cilantro wrapped in a thin tortilla. Get the greens outta my ice cream!

That night, we went out for dinner at a fancy Japanese restaurant in town. This restaurant reminded me of eating in China, where they give you huge portions of everything. Except at this meal, you didn't share. I think my soup had at least 9 types of mushrooms, and mostly gigantic mushrooms. It was a good meal, topped off with a big glass of kiwi juice. After dinner, we checked out the night market, which was packed and had a lot of cool shops. Ray's parents bought me things, of course with me insisting that they're far too kind the entire time. They also gave me a little good luck charm, a box of cookies, tons of fruit and traditional candy. 

When we got back, we celebrated Grandma's birthday the Taiwanese way with cake and birthday candles

弟弟，我，哥哥

On our way back on Sunday, we hung out in Taipei for a while. From what I saw, it's a nice little big city with the easiest transit system I have ever navigated. It reminded me of Japan with everything so nice and new looking, but it is so much more simple than Tokyo's craziness. I tried teaching Ray what "showing someone the ropes" meant after I had to show him the way two or three times. The saying wasn't understood, but we got a good laugh after I called him a country boy!

I finally started class on Monday! The future looks like fun on the weekends with lots of studying in between. 再見

Since I got my internet connected in my room today, I think I'll celebrate by saying a few things and posting some pictures! 

This is my dorm. Just to the right of me is the cafeteria where after one time there they already know I am a vegetarian and they enjoy inventing dishes for me, since most things have meat in them.

Some Campus shots:

The very cool forest on campus, it's quite spooky at night

This picture can hardly capture it, but this road stretches very far down a hill and has huge, beautiful trees lining it the whole way down

This is the university's famous Luce Memorial Chapel

I was supposed to play tennis on Friday night with Ginna, a friend of mine who was an exchange student last year at NCC and is back at Tunghai now, but the early typhoon winds didn't allow it. So before I was back in bed for the night, the guys in the room next to me invited me to come hang out and drink Taiwan beer! The Taiwanese are quite proud of their home brew, and I'm pretty sure it'll be my drink of choice while I'm here. Not quite as cheap as the Chinese Tsingtao in Beijing ($0.25?) but tastes pretty good :)

I couldn't believe the weather the US has been getting lately. Ike has been something else. Luckily, Typhoon Sinlaku didn't hit our campus very hard, not to say nothing bad happened.

The storm managed to flip these guys on their backs, but they have since been revived. Also, the window in a door down the hall shattered because of the typhoon

Sorry no pictures of me. (Mitzi!) I'll get to working on that this weekend when I visit some sights.

Corn on the Cob with Chopsticks

As I was sitting on the plane eating an un-ham sandwich with nasty mustard and watching the sex in the city movie, I realized studying abroad is all about compromise. I figure if I can realize it now, the next four months should be just fine.

My latest destination is Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan. The beautiful, tree covered campus stretches far down the side of a hill and includes many cafeterias, coffee shops, a famous chapel, farm, and a 7-11 (10% discount for students) where you can buy milk from our very own cows.

Yesterday was Freshman orientation. There's nothing like walking down a long road lined with booths full of student organizations while students attack you with flyers for their clubs. Besides every person I meet being extremely nice and welcoming, this was an overwhelming experience for my first day here. Looking back a year ago, I was lucky to have a Chinese student in Beijing ask me to practice English with them.

My roommate 'Peter' is nicknamed "Peter Fat" and "Pachinko", and when he told me that his friends say he looks like an animal, he didn't have time to look up the translation before I said raccoon and he gasped in disbelief. He doesn't look that much like a raccoon, just a good guess.

I went past a restaurant last night. It was called Moon River :(

My soup last night had every vegetable imaginable, yes, including corn on the cob.

Now it's Friday afternoon and this weekend is the Moon festival. Most students will go home to be with family while I am here studying Chinese to hopefully get into the classes I want next week. I'm not too sad though, after all, my first typhoon is supposed to arrive in the next day or so. Is it weird that I'm excited?

I was going to walk around today and take pictures, but the weather isn't so nice. Hopefully I'll have some good post typhoon ones.