My First Month

My first month here has been fantastic! I have been very busy meeting tons of new people, I love it! I should have blogged awhile ago because now I have too much to tell and It is impossible to tell you all the crazy, awesome things that happened. But, I will try to briefly tell you some of the highlights of my first month.

I arrived on August 22nd at 2am instead of arriving on the 21st because there was a typhoon and I was stuck in the Tokyo airport for 9 hours. I was very exhausted when I arrived in Taipei, but my host family and some members of my Rotary Club warmly greeted me and I was very excited to meet them.

On my first day in Taipei my host family showed me around our neighborhood, my school,  a recreation center, brought me to eat some delicious taiwanese food, and went to a rotary club member's birthday party. I thought it was amazing how many times they filled my cup with tea and we had to toast. I realized that if I wanted them to stop filling my bowl with food and cup with tea I had to leave a little bit. The next day I met Vicki, an exchange student from Germany who is also in my rotary club (there are 3 of us- me, Vicky, and Sarun--a boy from Thailand). Vicky's host family, and my second host family, brought us to a ceramics studio. They gave us a lesson on how to throw a pot, and let us make one. They were very surprised at how good I was at throwing, I told them I had done this before, so after watching me for a minute they said I didn't need the lesson. The next day, my host parents and some of their extended family brought me, Vicky (and Vicky's host brother David that is now in Germany on youth exchange) to a volcano at Yangmingshan mountain! Then we went to a museum, saw a temple, and went to the most famous night market in taiwan (Shillin night market). The next day I went swimming with my host mom's sister, her friend, and their kids. I really enjoyed hanging out with the kids because it was fun to play around with them and they were very helpful for teaching me simple words in Chinese. They are very good teachers. Later that week I went to the zoo with them and went on a gondola up a mountain. There was a great view of Taipei and it was a very cute, less-populated, part of Taipei. Other events I did in the first couple weeks include going to the Rotary District Meeting and club meetings, seeing Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, walking around Danshui, ice-skating with exchange students, going u-biking, hiking around Beitou, and going on a ferris wheel (and seeing the view of Taipei at night)! These first two weeks were very fun! Some of my initial thoughts about Taipei were:
1. The MRT (mass rapid transit) is very easy and convenient, I use it to go everywhere. Bus is also great. Public transportation is amazing!
2. the garbage truck plays the fur elise or some other song so you know when to bring your garbage out- its very cute
3. Convenience stores (seven-eleven, hi-life, or family mart) are everywhere
4. The fruit is amazing!!!
5. There are a ton of exchange students here, and it's so easy to meet up with them everyday (there are a lot of French exchange students here, which is great because I practice my french with them!)
6. RICE and TEA! They eat rice everyday and drink drink a lot of tea (and there are tea stalls everywhere! (bubble tea is very famous here,)
7. There are many foreigners and college exchange students here!
8. People don't hug as much here. A guy doesn't hug a girl unless they are in a relationship. (However I hug with some of my close classmates).
9. There aren't trash bins on the streets, and amazingly, there isn't any trash lying around! People don't litter, I love it!

Now, I will tell you about my school. My school, called YuDa, is enormous, there are 6,000 students. The school put me in a class of first year students, who are mostly 15 years old. To me they seem a lot younger than me, but its fine, I love my class! The first two weeks of school I stayed with my homeroom class and took the classes they take (they stay together all day, everyday, and the teachers come to our classroom). After the first two weeks, I started my other classes, which include cooking, baking, bartending, illustrations, and painting & drawing. These classes are very fun, and they are older than my homeroom class. My classmates are all very, very nice and I have made so many friends! I feel like a celebrity at school. For example, I walk past a classroom and everyone immediately stares, smiles, waves, and screams hello! One day some students in a gym class asked me to play volleyball with them, and of course I said yes. Immediately after I stepped onto the court, almost everyone in the courtyard ( it was completely filled with students) huddled around the court and whenever I hit the ball everyone would scream my name and go crazy, but whenever other people hit it, they were silent, it was pretty funny. I get asked to take pictures with other people about 10 times a day. Students always say how beautiful I am, "my hair, my eyes". Many students have blue contact lenses in, they love blue eyes and blond hair.
 School starts at 7:50 and goes until 4: 30, but being an exchange student, I don't have to be there until 8:20 and I get to leave at 4:05. I have been walking to and from school everyday, it takes about 20 minutes. I really have been enjoying the walk to school, the weather has been nice and sunny (except for the couple of typhoons that have came) and I pass people doing Tai-chee! I might start biking to school because my host family has a bike, but we have to pump up the tires. I start Chinese class with all the exchange students in my district tomorrow! It's at a University and all the exchange students are split into 3 classes. I will have it three times a week, every afternoon Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Also, they have naptime here! This is very weird to me, and I can never sleep, so I go to the library. I am amazed at how fast my classmates fall asleep. The bell rings for naptime and they are immediately down, and fast asleep. So, starting tomorrow, this is what my school schedule will look like:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Morning Assembly	Introduction to Business	Illustrations	Chinese	Baking
Math	Bartending	Illustrations	English	Baking
P.E.	Bartending	Career Planning	Math	Baking
Introduction to Business	Bartending	Introduction to Computer	Math	Baking
Lunch & Naptime	Lunch & Naptime	Lunch & Naptime	Lunch & Naptime	Lunch & Naptime
Chinese	Exotic Cuisine	Chinese	Painting & Drawing	Chinese
Chinese	Exotic Cuisine	Chinese	Painting & Drawing	Chinese
Chinese	Exotic Cuisine	Chinese	Painting &  Drawing	Chinese

After school I have been hanging out with exchange students, hanging out with classmates, going u-biking (public bikes that you can take, they are free for the first half hour, and then they are less than $1 U.S dollar per hour after that), going to night markets, or going to the recreation center to run around the track or swim. Every monday night I have started to play tennis with a group of exchange students, which is very fun. The other day I went u-biking  at a riverside park with some friends near the University I will be taking Chinese at. It was wonderful to find such a big park with u-bikes nearby, and I found a bouldering wall as we were biking along the path, so of course, we had to stop and climb.

Moon Festival!!! I forgot to tell you about the moon festival. We had Thursday and Friday off of school one week to celebrate. The four-day weekend was nice and I spent time with my family (including extended family) and had a barbecue with families of the Rotary club at a farm. It was very fun to see this style of barbecue, and get away from the downtown part of Taipei. We also ate moon cakes and pomelo, both very delicious!

I am loving being an exchange student! I love my host family, the other exchange students, my classmates, everything! I want to thank Rotary, my family, and my host families for making this experience possible for me!

I will post more pictures soon!