Hey everyone! After a hectic week of tests, presentations, and retaking the crazy difficult placement test we took at the beginning to evaluate our improvement, the Tunghai program has come to an end. On Friday, we retook the placement test. I think it was a different version of the same test, but the listening portion this time felt more difficult, as the topics were less familiar and used more of the newer vocab we learned, and they spoke faster. The recordings were also only played once, with the actual question at the end, which definitely didn't make things any easier! Having the question first would have given more context to the dialogue; for some of them I had no idea what was even happening until they got to the question, by which point the entire dialogue ... read more

Hey everyone! First of all, I can't believe that this coming week is my last week of classes here! WHAT?! It seems like no time at all has passed, and on top of that, this week is definitely going to go fast! Anyways, as I mentioned last week, this week was pretty stressful. We had two tests, calligraphy, and a presentation (which Yu laoshi FILMED. I'm pretty sure she intends to send them to Sun laoshi, the Chinese professor back at UPS that set up this program, but knowing that you will be filmed for a presentation is horrifying!) But I'm getting ahead of myself. Besides the tests, on Tuesday Bai Laoshi (our calligraphy teacher), cooked us dinner. Have I mentioned before that he's good at everything? Using only the few things in the CLC, the ... read more

Hi everyone! Sorry I missed out on last weekend's blog post... Not much happened last week, so it was much easier to procrastinate writing a post. Last weekend most of the girls went to Taipei for the weekend, although KC and I hung out in Taichung, due to lack of both funds and interest. On Friday night we made our way back to Fung Jia night market, which was actually more fun with just the two of us. I'm finding that lots of things are actually easier and more fun to do with fewer people. When there is a large group, so much time is lost trying to please everyone, but with only two it is much easier to simply detour into whichever stores catch your fancy. We ended up in a lot of clothing and ... read more

Hi everyone! Tis the season for typhoons here in Taiwan. This means rainy, cloudy weather, with lots of wind and grey days. Luckily, here in Taichung we are protected by the mountains that run through the middle of Taiwan, so we don't have it nearly as bad as Taipei (because I am enrolled in the STEP program I got an email from the government that they closed the American Institute in Taiwan on Friday due to the bad weather). In fact, the wind is actually quite nice, because it lowers both the temperature and the number of mosquitos. Regardless, we tend to try and stay in on the evenings there is a typhoon warning in effect (three so far). On one of the days, our challenge was to translate three recipes, then trade with another group ... read more

Hi everyone! Tonight is my last night in Taipei. Tomorrow I head down to Taichung to begin my study program at Tunghai University. Before I talk more about Taiwan, I would like to apologize as I more or less promised photos of hanboks. It turned out that the place Tanya and I were planning on going to was only open like one week a month or something, so we didn't get to go do that. Also, we did try the Kpop museum again, and found that we had been at the wrong building the first time, but that it was closed on Sunday (although it should have been open - especially since that Sunday was the start of the last week the exhibit was supposed to be open. It was very weird and kind of disappointing, ... read more