First Week

My first week in Taipei has been quite exciting, from starting classes, to eating all over the city, and to visiting parks and museums. We had our Chinese placement test on Monday, and after that we had our first culture class with Dr. Liu. We had a very enlightening discussion on the cultural differences we all noted throughout our first few days, and since then we've certainly noticed many more! The next morning was our first Chinese class, and it was an entirely different experience being fully immersed in the language. Even though the other students in the class were not Taiwanese or Chinese (we had Vietnamese and Indonesian students in our class), they spoke quite fluently and quickly with each other and the teacher, and so it was very difficult to process all of it in time. Since then however I have improved significantly, and I have learned significant amounts of new vocabulary.

In our first lesson we were added to the Line group chat for our class, and we learned that they would be selling food at a fair on Thursday. The Vietnamese students had brought in some Vietnamese fruits for the class to try, and offered some to us. It was certainly the most fun class. The next day we had to prepare a dialogue from the textbook, and perform it in front of the class, and so we prepared well before going in. Thankfully it went without a hitch; memorizing in Chinese is so much more difficult to do. Each class our teacher puts up on the board any new vocab we learn, so I've been learning so much thoughout the week. It's been a challenge to keep up with the material, but I've enjoyed learning it all.

Today was the fair! We saw all the lovely foods that all the different classes had prepared, food from Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan, all being sold at very reasonable prices. I bought the spring rolls and green mangos that my class had prepared, a flowery blue tea (花花茶), and a tofu and quail egg dish. All of it was delicious, especially the green mangos, which were covered in a sharp spicy dressing.

Today we also visited the 228 Peace Memorial Park (二二八和平紀念公園), commemorating the victims of the violence from the February 28th incident (in 1947). The memorial was beautiful, and we learned that every year on February 28th, they light a torch in the center in honor of the victims. After that, we went to a museum of Taiwanese history, learning much about the Japanese occupation and a significant amount about the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan. We learned about many of their cultural practices, customs, and differences. Finally, Dr. Liu treated us to the best meal we've had since arriving, hot pot! Not only did they provide an exorbitant amount of food, they even gave us free tea, milk tea, coffee, and ice cream! This was a fantastic first week here in Taiwan!

我很喜歡台灣，台灣菜，和台灣的文化！