Greetings from Taiwan! We’ve just finished our first week of classes, although we have actually been here for 3 weeks already. Getting through the airport and quarantine was incredibly smooth, mainly due to the Ministry of Education staff who guided us through each step. The most notable event during my quarantine was twice catching sight of a Taiwan Blue Magpie (台灣藍鵲）that was living in a tree outside my window! It felt like an extremely special welcome gift 😀
[view from quarantine]
After leaving quarantine, I still had a week or so left until classes started and decided to get to exploring! I visited the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial (中正紀念堂）and saw the changing of the guards(10/10 recommend!), and2/28 Peace Park （二二八和平公園）along with the two museums inside it. Of course we went to Taipei 101 and saw the view, and with friends I met via the Huayu Scholarship went to check out Gongguan Night Market (公館夜市）。
[Joe and Trudy’s 公館夜市 haul]
A friend of mine convinced me to try using Bumble BFF to find friends, in particular any local students with whom I could do a language exchange. I got very lucky with the first person I met, and we clicked immediately! We ended up going to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum which had 3 or 4 amazing exhibits. Unfortunately she is on summer break from 師大 and so will mostly be in 台中 for the summer, but I hope to visit her there at some point!
[台北市立美術館, 李義弘：回顧展//Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Lee Yi-Hong: A Retrospective]
Of course I have to talk about food!! I think ordering food has been one of the biggest challenges so far, partially because I don’t always know what things are or how to say them, and partially because my brain stops working when the vendor/cashier asks me a question I’m not expecting! Nonetheless, my fear of being in one of the best places for food in the world but not eating extremely well every day has propelled me to try lots of new restaurants and menu items. I have also had a lot of help from Huayu friends, a friend of a friend who grew up in Taipei, and Julia Chiang ’22 who I was fortunate enough to spend the evening with before she flew out! She took me around 師大夜市 which was near her apartment and we had 九層塔+蛋蔥油餅 (scallion pancakes with basil and egg), 割包 (gua bao aka a fluffy taco as she described it), and 芒果冰 (mango ice). All in all, I have been eating quite well! And have been excited to try all the 小吃 we learned about with 陳老師 in 402 🙂
[Mango Ice with Julia!]
Finally this past week was the first week of class. It’s definitely quite different from Williams (and even Middlebury), and I am grateful for the amount of time I can dedicate to internalizing vocab and grammar when I don’t have 3 other classes to worry about. The homework is still a lot though, or maybe I am just tired from the humidity 😀 Anyway, I can already feel the improvement!
I hope to continue to make new connections, and discover new foods and places around Taipei and beyond in the coming weeks!
[Trip to Jiufen (九份) with Huayu/Williams friends!]