Hello people! If you didn’t know, I am in fact, still alive. I didn’t think anything would happen to me but just in case you were worried, I thought I’d put that out there. So I’ve officially been in Taiwan for 1 week. I still have to write a post about my trip here and I’m also going to write about moving in, but for now I’m just going to sum up the entire week.

What have I done this week? Well on the first day that we got here, I was greeted, checked into my dorm and went to the CIEE office to meet our cultural ambassadors, our program cooridnator, and my roomate, Danielle. We did icebreakers to meet each other and orientation paperwork and all that fun jazz. When we finished, Danielle and I got to pick out some things for our dorm which will all be detailed in another post. Then we went to lunch at a dumpling place called 八方云集 ba1fan1yun2ji2. It literally translates to “All directions come together.” The food there ranged from about 5-30 NT$. 1 USD=30 NT$. CIEE paid for everything but 6 dumplings was $1 and they were oh so very tasty, therefore everyone was happy. I will defintely be returning there.

After lunch on the first day, some of our cultural ambassadors (students at NCCU who have joined the CIEE “club” to make American friends, help us with anything and show us the best of Taiwan while we are here) took me to get a Taiwanese SIM card for my phone. This is very important because even though lots of places in Taiwan have free wifi, it’s vey splotchy, especially on a mobile device. It took forever because the plans and the man explaining them to us were very confusing, but eventually we settled on an unlimited plan. There’s a bunch of boring logistics to my individual plan but I will say that I paid about $140 USD for 5 months of unlimited high speed data. MAKE SURE that if you are using the same phone from America and you’re just switching SIM cards, that you talk to your provider so that they can unlock your phone. I ran into lots of problems with this so it’s best if you talk to them far in advance before you leave for your trip so you have lots of time to resolve any problems or make decisions. After buying my SIM card I just went back to my room to finish unpacking. We went to dinner and my first day was finally over.

The next day, we had a bunch of boring orientations that I could’ve just read myself. My morning was pointless, but my evening was a blast! There wasn’t much inbetween other than a lot of netflix and hulu. Both of those became common themes trhoughout the week. ~ A neat trick for hulu~ I wasn’t able to watch any of my usual shows becuase my hulu said that they weren’t available in my location. To bypass this, I downloaded the google extension SetupVPN which basically tells whatever site you’re on, that you’re in the country of your choosing. I obviosly chose the US, and sometimes it gets weird and puts you in Canada but just keep connecting and disconnecting until you’re in a US location and it should work! In the evening, Danielle and I along with our cultural ambassadors took the bus and MRT (their version of a metro system) down to 西门 xi1men2, a touristy neighborhood and metro stop in Taiwan. We were going to the lantern festival which signifies the last day of the Lunar New Year and Chinese Spring Festival. There were so many people (人山人海）but the lanterns were beautiful and several of them we Pig themed since it is the year of the pig. After walking around a bit, we ate dinner and went back home. NCCU is far from everything so the trip takes about an hour on public transportation. I made some phone calls to friends and family and went to sleep.

The next day we had our chinese placement tests. Danielle and I are going to be the only ones in our class but we still had to to take the test so that our teacher (老师 lao3shi1) could hauge where we are and prepare accordingly. Yes Danielle and I are roommates and the only ones in our chinese class so we will be spending lots of time together over the course of this semester. The next day we went back to 西门 for a historical walking tour. I don’t like history so I was pretty bored but I got some excercise in, and by going I knew I wouldn’t regret not going which gives me the best feeling of content. We stopped halway through anyways because it was 3 hours long and we were hungry. We did a bit of window shopping but nothing too adventurous.

As the week goes on there was more Netflix, a very annoying 2 hour long fire drill, which in hindsight I don’t think was mandatory, and SO MUCH FOOOOOOOOD. Even in Taiwan I’m still not much of a breakfast person, so I haven’t had too much of it but for reference’s sake it’s delicious. 我很喜欢蛋饼。( I really like dan4bing3) It’s like a Taiwanese egg crepe. Honestly all the food here sounds pretty freaky but I have yet to try anything that I have not enjoyed. (Saw pig intestines on a menu though, and that’s where I draw the line) The portions here as reasonable so I usually spend about $3 USD for lunch/dinner, I’m always full but never have to take any food home. It’s actually kind of weird to do that here. They don’t have take-home boxes. The one time Danielle didn’t eat her noodles she asked for a box and they just put it in a plastic bag lol. So if you have a small stomach and don’t like your food to touch, Taiwan is not the place for you. (Maybe you can bring your own tupperware? Kind of like we do in Pitt’s cafeteria hehehe) When I’ve had more to eat I will absoulutely be making a post on food. (maybe 2 posts) I also just want to make a point to say that I’ve already been to the cat cafe twice and I went to KTV which is karaoke and had Taiwanese beer. The cat cafe is free as long as you get a drink. So far I’ve seen 4 furballs which isn’t enough but I’ll live. KTV was fun but expensive. I was also reaffirmed in the fact that I can’t sing to save my life.

Some cultural differences that I’ve run into

• Lack of trash cans
• Measurements
• School shuttle system
• Restaurants
• Metro Card
• Dorm Trash

Not going to get too deep into these but I just wanted to mention them. In Taiwan, there are no public trash cans! Like actually 0 I have not seen a single one on the street. There are very few inside of covenience stores and restuarants so you usually have to ask whoever the person at the counter of wherever you go, if they can throw your trash away. It’s actually much more inconvenient and annoying that you might think.

Measurements are obviously different here, becuase America uses a different system for most meausrements. So usually when I mention miles, degrees (Fahrenheit), or pounds to my cultural ambassadors, we have to do some converting to do.

I live on upper campus at the univerisity so I usually take the shuttle to get to my dorm. They run about every 5 mins. now that school has started but you have to pay 15 NT$ each way, and while that’s only 50 cents in America, it’s kind of annoying that it’s not free. Then again, students only pay $1600 USD in tuition a year so I understand.

I kind of mentioned restaurants in my expectations post, but it’s even more different that I thought. Most of the restaurants here are fairly small 10-15 tables and all you have to do is write the quanity of what you want on their paper menus, bring it up to the cashier and pay. I’ve never waited more than 10minutes for my food and at some restaurants there is complimentary tea and soup.

The metro cards here are so great! You can use them for the bus and metro, but also at convenience stores that take them. Most 7-elevens do, and you can reload the card there in addition to the machines in the MRT station.

So this may sound weird, but I love taking the trash out in my dorm. Instead of the trash room that most US universities have, everyone in NCCU waits for the trash truck to come. It comes around twice a day around 2 and 9 pm. It goes around the city with a tone similar to an ice cream truck. When it gets up to the dorm, I can usually hear the truck first because I’m on the first floor right by the entrance, but inside the dorm speakers, Fur Elise by Beethoven plays for a few seconds. At first it’s alarming, but then it’s pleasant. Everyone goes down with their trash at the same time and kind of looks like the scene from spy kid’s where the robot kids are wating to get their brains, but less evil. It makes me feel like I’m a part of a community. Anyways this is Week 1 but there’s lots more to come.

Since Taiwan is 13 hours ahead of New York, waking up and bedtime are the best times for phone calls! I usually use facetime, skype, or whatsapp for calls but almost everything has some kind of video call feature these days. I suggest trying them all to see what works best with your camera and connection. Skype is my favorite!

If you go on the the facebook page for the blog (make sure to like it for updates) there’s lots of pictures of the lanterns and even the Twinkle Twinkle Pig which is an electronic Pig that is basically an edm light show that people seem to love. Just watch the videos. If you want to see other pictures of my group and food from the week, that’s where I’m putting all the pictures. (照片 zhao1pian1) Just click the gear at the top of the page and the facebook icon to get there!