{"id":2640,"date":"2025-08-22T19:03:57","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T23:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/?p=2640"},"modified":"2025-08-22T19:03:57","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T23:03:57","slug":"week-1-at-harvard-taipei-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/summer-2025\/week-1-at-harvard-taipei-academy\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 1 at Harvard Taipei Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>I finally settled into Taipei life after some unexpected setbacks!<br \/><br \/>I was really na\u00efve in assuming that Taiwan would be really similar to the United States. I assumed that I could get along fine with just my credit card and no cash, but I couldn&#8217;t be more wrong. Without cash, I couldn&#8217;t eat at certain restaurants, reload my public transportation card (\u60a0\u904a\u5361), buy a lot of cute souvenirs, and just do a lot of things I took for granted back in the United States. Thankfully, I was able to get a nice amount of cash by coordinating with my friend (shoutout Emerald I owe you my life!!). <br \/><br \/>Another unexpected setback was that I was unable to get a SIM card because my phone was locked. I previously thought that phones being locked by your carrier only applied to physical SIM cards, but this applied to e-SIM cards as well. I had to pay extra for a WIFI box thing that I took with me that gave me internet connection wherever I was.<br \/><br \/>So, to anyone reading this, if you&#8217;re going to Taiwan, please don&#8217;t be like me and absolutely make sure you&#8217;re able to withdraw cash while abroad and please make sure that your phone is unlocked so you&#8217;re able to get data!<br \/><br \/>Besides the setbacks, my first week in Taiwan has been so exciting. This is my first time going to Asia, so everything is brand new, I love being able to walk everywhere, I love the grand selection of food, I love the skincare and makeup products, I love talking to the locals even though my Chinese is not so great. Me and my friends went to Haidilao, this was my first time going since I never visited a U.S location and I loved it. Me and Emerald also explored Ximending and spent an ungodly amount of money on claw machines (it was so worth it).<br \/><br \/>Classes were really daunting. It&#8217;s 5 hours of class a day, 2 lectures, 2 drill sessions, and then a one-on-one class with a teacher. I think one day&#8217;s lesson is the equivalent of one week&#8217;s worth of class at Williams, so it&#8217;s a really fast speed I immediately need to get adjusted to. With just a few days of classes, I&#8217;m already starting to notice that my Chinese is improving really quickly, I&#8217;m really excited for what&#8217;s next!<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finally settled into Taipei life after some unexpected setbacks! I was really na\u00efve in assuming that Taiwan would be really similar to the United States. I assumed that I could get along fine with just my credit card and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/summer-2025\/week-1-at-harvard-taipei-academy\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer-2025"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2640"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2659,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2640\/revisions\/2659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/study-abroad-in-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}