On
December 27th I waved hugged and waved goodbye to my family at
Dulles airport and nervously proceeded to embark on my journey to Taipei,
Taiwan. Not knowing what to expect, I decided to keep an open mind and fully
embrace the Taiwanese culture. Connie and I happened to be on the same flight,
and our seats were right next to each other. After Connie and I arrived in
Taiwan, we met with Travis and Dr. Liu, and immediately Dr. Liu put me to the
test and made me have a conversation with Travis is Chinese. I was so nervous!
After everyone had arrived we went to our hotel near Tam Kang University. I
immediately noticed that the room was very small and the shower was not
separated from the rest of the bathroom. Taking a shower was an adventure, and due
to my inexperience in using Taiwanese showers, I splashed water all over the
toilet, my towel, and the mirror. The following morning, I woke up at 6:30 AM
due to a loud ruckus of people walking around on our floor. Surprisingly, I
felt well rested even though I only slept five hours. A few of us walked over
to Sunmerry and bought bakery items to eat for breakfast. Then we came back to
the hotel and met with Dr. Liu. She invited us over to her apartment and
offered us apples, bananas, oranges, and a Taiwanese fruit which I do not know
the name of. She told us that when one has guests over, a good host will always
prepare a gift. After we left Dr. Liu’s apartment we decided that we were going
to explore around Taiwan, so we walked to a park called Da’an Park. There were
many beautiful trees and statues. Then we all decided to go to Mos Burger, and
almost everyone decided to get the burger that has sticky rice buns with beef
inside. It was delicious! After lunch we met up with Cindy, Travis, and Dr. Liu
to take the MRT to Taipei 101 area to learn more about the history of Taiwan.
We had a wonderful tour guide who told about the colonization of Taiwan, and
the different countries that had influences on Taiwan. We also saw the stage
where the New Year’s celebration is going to take place. Although many of us
were already tired, we decided to continue the night by going to the Night
Market. I did not know what to expect, and upon arrival I was so excited by all
the culture and food all around us! There were so many foods being sold, and so
many smells in the air. I tried the famous Taiwanese tofu, which tasted great.
Travis and Cindy warned us and told us that the tofu smelled like stinky socks,
but personally I didn’t think the tofu smelled bad – smelled like garlic to me.
After a long evening, we finally came back to the hotel, and by 10 PM I was
sound asleep.
Something
that really stood out to me about the Taiwanese culture was the lack of trash
cans and trash in the city. After visiting big cities such as Manhattan and
Brooklyn, I noticed that there is trash everywhere! But in Taipei, the streets
were remarkably clean. This was shocking to me because I assumed that in a city
where there as so many people and no trash cans, there would be trash cluttered
all over the streets. Turns out, Taiwanese people actually carry around trash
bags and keep their trash on them and do not just throw it out onto the
streets. To me, this shows that Taiwanese people have respect for where the
live and want to keep their city clean. I saw visual similarities between
cities in America and Taiwan in that both do not have very many trashcans in
the city. But Taiwan is very tidy and do not just throw their trash on the
ground. I feel that part of Taiwanese culture that I will take back to America
is that we should preserve our cities too and not just throw trash around in
the city and on the sides of highways. Also, another reason that Taiwan does
not have trashcans is because when they did people would take their trash from
their homes and try to throw it away in the public trashcans. It is great that
Taiwan is so clean, and that people just carry around their own trash with them
at all times.
Tomorrow
is New Year’s Eve, and we are all going to Taipei 101 to go see the fireworks
and many famous Taiwan pop singers. I am very excited to celebrate the New Year
with my new friends from UMD and Taiwan. Also, we are going to our first day of
classes tomorrow, and I was placed in Level 4 Chinese. Being the only one
placed in that level, I am a little nervous to go into it all by myself. But I
am looking forward to learning a lot of useful Chinese. I am not exactly sure
what time we will arrive back to the hotel after New Year’s, but luckily we do
not have Chinese classes the following day, so I can sleep in!
