This week was really fun because the Harvard Alumni Club of Taiwan allocated some tickets to HTA to head to a basketball game in Taipei, and I luckily snagged a ticket in time! It was my first time seeing a professional sports game of any kind (crazy, I know, since I’m a native Bostonian) and it was so fun being in that kind of competitive yet supportive atmosphere. It reminded me of the tug-of-war activity HTA organized a few weeks back for all of the students to compete by grade (\u56db\u5e74\u7d1a was small but mighty, and it was a blast tugging for our life with only 7 students in the entire grade). In our written test on Friday, we had to discuss the phenomenon of “misfits” in society, which I found really interesting — as I wrote about, on the one hand, some people \u7406\u6240\u7576\u7136 become misfits due to treating others poorly, but some people are just excluded from society for no discernible reason other than a vague “not fitting in” with others. To hand one to HTA, I will say I really enjoy the open-response questions we have at the end of our written exams, because they were probably one of the (if not THE) only times where HTA encouraged us 4th-year students to think critically instead of just regurgitating vocabulary from the textbook — it helped even the playing field for people with a horrible working memory (i.e. literally just me; everyone else in my class was a genius with a photographic memory).<\/p>\n
This week, I also had the opportunity to organize a birthday party for my friend from HTA, and it was amazing just getting to talk with everyone and enjoy a meal in a less neurotic environment than usual. I tried to remind myself that my health and happiness is a lot more important than any program will ever be, and that I will never be in this exact setting with my new friends again, so I should treasure it. In that spirit, I took the chance to introduce the birthday friend to my local Taiwanese friend, and they really hit it off, which thrilled me — he’s considering going to ICLP next year because he also had a very negative experience at HTA, and feels relieved to have a local connection through me. By week 6, I was already starting to grieve over not seeing a lot of my friends again for a while — but, given that half of them are Harvard students, I guess I’m pretty lucky that I live so close to them! They all have already started planning a reunion for the fall, and while I’m sad I can’t attend because I’ll be studying away on my refugee program, I’m even more thrilled to have made so many genuine connections with new friends through this program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week was really fun because the Harvard Alumni Club of Taiwan allocated some tickets to HTA to head to a basketball game in Taipei, and I luckily snagged a ticket in time! It was my first time seeing a … Continue reading