Hello,

I hope everyone is well.  I have now been in Taiwan for about two months, and I love it more and more each day.

 

Well something I’ve defiantly acknowledged now is that my Chinese is coming along very well, I can now figure out what people are talking about usually and I can respond after thinking for a few seconds…which is a HUGE step for me. Having Chinese class every Monday and Wednesday night is helping but I feel like I learn a lot more in school from classmates and Chinese tutoring the school has offers to me.

 

I have spent many of my weekends with one of the English teachers from my school; she’s fluent in English and has a lovely husband and daughter. They love to help me with my Chinese while I accompany them to play badminton, which is a sport that I am getting hooked on. I find it to be the most intense sport here in Taiwan besides basketball but maybe that is because I am such a soccer person.  Thankfully, I have many P.E. classes and my teachers have been very thoughtful by having the class play soccer for P.E. which I had loads of fun with and I was surprised by how much fun all the students were having. After that they all began to ask me if we could play after school and such, which was really nice.

On another note, I have lost the crave for Starbucks. Yeah slightly random but here in Taiwan Starbucks is like any local coffee shop in California…not the usual various drinks and such, we so commonly know Starbucks for. And I have a short story for you, I stood in line for about 18 minutes (not that I was counting) at Starbucks and when I ordered a Tazo passion shaken iced tea, the cashier stared at me as if I were an alien and told me they sold no such drink. Those 18 minutes I was so excitedly waiting in line because I was going to finally get a taste of the normal drink I buy in America was all for nothing. However, the point in telling you about this is that it’s the most disappointing moment I have had here in Taiwan so far. I hope you can see that everything is going great from my Starbucks story.

 

My classmates, school staff, rotary, and my host family are all amazing and very supportive.  I had told my classmates I really missed “in n out burger” and the following week they invited me out for dinner to an astonishing local burger place, I was in heaven and it tasted like what I imagine a big Carls Jr burger made by in n out would taste like. Also I was interviewed by classmates which turned out to be pretty fun since all the questions came from different students in the school, surprisingly non were too personal.

 

Something different I experienced in regards to health was going to the doctor here in Taiwan. I told my host mother my back was hurting and that same day after school she took me to see a doctor, although I personally didn’t think it was necessary she insisted. So apparently here, going to the doctor is pretty casual unlike in America where sometimes people wait until symptoms are really bad, usually. I was very happy that the doctors spoke a fair amount of English so it was very easy for them to help me and tell me what I needed, and at the end of the therapy treatment I went through my back was better. On the same note, during the treatment I was in for some countless laughs and memories with the nurses who did the therapy treatment. Their English wasn’t great at all which made things a lot more fun, but they were so interested in me and the English language that every day I came in for my treatment they had questions for me. For example (which was my favorite and excuse the slightly vulgar language), “is shape and shit the same?” The way they pronounce English makes these two words sound very similar which is pretty funny to a degree. Almost as funny as trying to show them the correct pronunciation.

 

As for my host family, they have been extremely helpful and supportive. I had asked them if there was any place I could play soccer. And now I spend every weekend afternoon at the university playing soccer with the university students and some other Taiwanese people. I am the only girl who goes to play which at first was weird but now I really enjoy it because I am learning so much from all the other players. In addition, my host family was very kind and bought me a soccer ball. I have also been going with my host dad to the driving range to hit some golf balls which has been a lot of fun since it’s a sport I play back at home.

 

During this second month here, was Taiwan’s 100th anniversary I believe which turned out to be a lot of fun. My host family took me to a different city where they have family and we spent like a family day at a night market and exploring the town and it ended in the Disney style firework show which gave me that Disneyland happiness feeling you get when you have a nice moment in Disneyland.

 

I finally got to go to Taipei, which I was extremely happy about and it was great! Although standing next to Taipei 101 made me feel like an ant but it’s a beautiful building that you must see. In addition to Taipei, I got to see some aboriginal villages which were really fascinating.

 

Now that I am passed my second month I am starting to feel more comfortable and understand of the way life is here in Taiwan. I am still pretty surprised by how much pressure students have here in high school, it makes me feel like we have it pretty easy back home.