The Sparks Nightclub - Downtown Taipei

Dressed and ready for a night on the town. From left: Tatjana (I've been spelling it wrong this whole time), Marie, Daria, Angelina, and Claudia. Our common room isn't exactly the nicest background...


At around 11pm we met up with about 20 others at the fountain on campus (our typical meeting place) to catch the bus to downtown.


We made a last minute decision to go to The Sparks instead of Luxy because they were having ladies night all you can drink for 300NTD's (approximately $10CDN). This is when we first arrived. I was shocked to see how similar the club was to clubs in Canada.


Tatjana and I - she's such great fun!


A nice picture of the guys. The boys paid 450 NTD's to get in and they got two free drinks inside.


Group shot.


This was the washroom. There were quite a few Taiwanese girls throwing up in the sink...can't hold the alcohol.


I accidentally snapped this shot of the bar tender. They were really nice and all of them had fancy sparkle make-up on their faces that shone in the lights- very beautiful. They were serving only vodka mixed with orangina for the girls. You had to keep your glass and hand it back to the bar tenders every time you wanted a new drink. To purchase a drink was about the same as you would pay in Canada, maybe even a little more expensive.


Smoking is not prohibited in the bars here but very few Taiwanese people smoke so the air wasn't too bad. I think the exchange students were the ones smoking the most.

Our small blonde friend Leslie met a very prestigious Taiwanese man who gave her loads of cigars to pass around out group. We were all up on stage in front of the DJ booth dancing for the crowd. They all loved us - watching us dance and sing along to the North American music.

It was really funny because all of the Taiwanese girls were hitting on the exchange boys, being very forceful and trying to get them to take them home. My buddy told me on the first day that most girls who go to clubs are looking for one night stands but I didn't believe her. The guys didn't mind. I think they enjoyed playing hard to get for a change.


This is the view from up on stage - what a great club.

We danced and drank until 4am when it closed and then took a taxi back to Chengchi. A few of us were still having a good time so we bought a few beers from the 7-11 and sat on a patio on campus until the sun came up. Two of the guys - Pim and Michael left the patio around 7:00am and on their way back to their dorm joined a Tai Chi class that was happening on the soccer field - I think they were still a bit drunk. The rest of us went for breakfast and then went to bed for the rest of the day. What a great night.

Wednesday

I have a bit of time before we head out to the club so I've decided to do a short recap of today.


I woke up starving so I popped out of bed and went out with Claudia and Tatianna to a local breakfast spot. This is the same meal I ate the first day I was here with my buddies - the crepe with egg inside and special sauce. I don't know what it is and I don't care.


Tatianna and Claudia enjoying their crepes. After breakfast the girls took off downtown to do some sightseeing, but I had already committed to lunch and shopping with my buddy.

After another Skype conversation with Davin I met up with Frances and her friend Linda. We went to the store and they helped me pick out laundry soap and pick up my photos for my gym membership. Then we went to lunch.


I feel like we are always eating. This is a dish from the best restaurant on the strip outside the university gates (so Frances tells me). I have tried to come here twice before but it has always been packed. I let them order for me and they picked a rice noodle soup with chicken - I really liked it. We also shared a spicy sour chicken plate which was really really good.


Frances and Linda.


For dessert we had the typical Taiwanese dish - bubble tea balls in coconut milk (shown above). I now see why the Taiwanese are so small - they aren't eating cheese cakes and gooey chocolate chip cookies after their meals. Maybe I'll develop some better habits here. I've drank more milk these past few days than I have in the past few years. :O


Over lunch Frances and I came up with a great idea. In all of these restaurants you have to order by filling out a sheet just like the one shown above. What Frances is going to do is circle the items on these sheets that I really like, write the name in English and write the price. She will do this for every restaurant we go to together and by the end of the semester I will have one big book of all the "good" dishes (according to westerners) that I can pass on to future generations of exchange students. Good idea? I thought so.

After lunch I said goodbye to Linda and Frances. They were going to take me to get a cellphone but I thought the prices were too expensive so she is going to look around for a second hand one and get back to me.

I had the whole afternoon off so I decided to climb up a mountain. I looked at the name of this mountain over and over again so that I could mention it here but I've definitely forgotten.


I ran into Izzy, a sweet Polish girl, and Daria and they decided to come too. This is a picture of them at the top of the mountain. Daria is pointing out Taipei 101 located in downtown Taipei - where we will be going out tonight. I believe it is supposed to be the second tallest building in the world.


It is a really pretty hike up the hill - about an hour to get up and down. You can see the entire district from the top and there is a temple at the peak if you want to go further. The path to the temple is just to the right of Daria and I in this picture. I will go up one of these days, but the girls had class so we had to keep moving.

Some of you may be wondering why I've been at school now for three days and only "the girls" are going to class and I am not. This is the great thing about the IMBA program. The courses are only held once a week for 6 weeks max and they are completely staggered throughout the semester. My first class will be this Saturday (Entrepreneurship) and it will continue each Saturday and Monday until March 15th. On March 14th I start my second course (Confucianism and Leadership) and that will continue on each Sunday until May 9th. Marketing Research begins Mid-May while Global Cross Cultural Marketing begins later that month. Finally I have Consumer Behaviour which begins early June. There really aren't that many days of class and if I wasn't taking Mandarin Language courses every Monday and Wednesday I would have a ridiculous amount of time off. For example, without Mandarin I would only have two days of attending class in April...I don't think I would know what to do with myself. Just wanted to clear that up (mom and dad) so you know I'm actually making good use of that tuition payment ;)


Now back to the day. We ran into this scene on the way down. We don't know what they were doing but it looked like they could be picking rice?


A picture of me overlooking the city close to the bottom.

When we finished our hike I went to the gym for a bit and then back to the room to nap - I think my body is still adjusting to the time change. It's now 10pm and I am all showered and ready for the night on the town. Talk soon.

This N' That

This morning was the second time Davin and I managed to catch each other on Skype. It's my first time using it but man is it great. Just being able to see the person makes you feel so much closer than you really are and to see their expressions and hear them laugh - it really is a great tool for travellers.

If anyone has a Skype address and would like to chat, you can search "shannonsoules" and hopefully we can get in touch. Once I get my wireless signal up and running I'll even be able to do virtual tours of the campus and surrounding area! Won't that be fun.

So today was the day that we - "we" being Claudia, Daria and I - decided to take care of all the little housekeeping issues - fee payments, gym memberships (no, we didn't forget), and things like that. It was supposed to be a fairly easy and relaxing, carefree kind of day but, of course once you start to believe that someone from up above tends to show you differently.


We started our day very innocently walking to a Tai Chi class that was scheduled to start at 10am. This is a picture of Claudia and Daria standing at the edge of the garden outside our dorm. It's the same garden where all the couples go for make-out sessions at night - remember?


We arrived in the basement of the old gym where the Tai Chi classes are held. I have to say, this "old gym" is massive. It took us about 5 minutes to manoeuvre our way down to the basement floor because it is such a maze. The whole place is about the size of a small mall and the upper level has at least 25 rooms - most of them filled with ping pong tables.

So we arrive and the teacher is doing his stretching at the front of the room. We wait for at least 20 minutes before the class begins. We all gather on the hard wood floor in front of him. The teacher hands out what appears to be a course syllabus to everyone in the room. He looks at the three of us and asks if we understand Mandarin..."No." He smiles and continues on...and on...and on for TWO HOURS. Yes what we thought was going to be a work-out ended up being a two hour lecture in Mandarin on god knows what about Tai Chi. Not to mention we were sitting on a painfully hard hard-wood floor. It turns out what we thought was a fitness class is actually a credit course on the art of Tai Chi for the Taiwanese students. Not the intensive work-out we had in mind.


Luckily we all have good attitudes. We shrugged it off and decided to go for lunch.



Lunch...hmm now that was interesting also. For those of you who knew me when I was young, you may know that I was scarred by a very specific dining experience in Toronto at an Indian restaurant. I was fed a pancake - as a child you think, "mmm pancake," but no. This pancake had peas and spices and other odd things that my mind wont even let me remember and it was served with some odd salty sauce that I can still smell to this day. Well this meal wasn't that bad- but it was close.

Just as we did you may mistake this dish for a lovely looking veggie pizza. Wrong. It's actually a large gooey flour and egg pancake filled with long strands of green onion and chunks of octopus parts. The dipping sauce on the side is a mix of sour something and garlic and was my favourite part of the meal. I ate as much as you see here because I was starving after our hard work-out, but it really brought back bad memories that I don't wish to revisit. I have tried anything and everything that has been put in front of me, but I will never try this one again.



After lunch we walked back to campus to start getting organized. I have to report - the rumours are true. There is a 7-11 on every corner in Taipei. They just love their 7-11's here. I am guessing it is because they have such a wide variety for the Taiwanese - even more so than the 7-11 stores in North America. For example, many people get breakfast and lunch at the 7-11 store. As some of you have asked about - no, I have yet to buy anything from 7-11. Nothing is familiar here except for maybe some of the pops and candies but even then the bottle sizes and labels are different.

This is a picture of Daria and Claudia in front of "breakfast" at 7-11 - looks like some hard boiled eggs, tofu balls, fried dumplings, and bread balls. Mmmmmm.



So we began our jaunt around campus to the different buildings to get ourselves established here before classes start. First stop was the library to get our cards set up. The librarians didn't speak English so that was quite a task. None of us had National ID #'s so we used whatever we could find - passport numbers, social insurance numbers...it seemed to work out fine.

Once we were all set up we took a tour around. This is one of the "study areas" on the main floor. Can you tell what everyone is doing? Apparently the students love to come to the library to watch movies - all kinds of Hollywood hits in English with Chinese subtitles. There are even rooms to that right that have big leather couches and big screen TV's that you can book for a few hours to go watch your favourite movie with friends. Now that's my kind of studying.


When we left the library we ran into Leslie - another student in the Commerce program living in a different dorm than the rest of us. She was doing the same sorts of things as us, so we decided to continue on together.

Now I know I started this entry off by giving off the impression that it wasn't a great day, but as I continue to write I am getting less annoyed and much more positive about the whole experience. So if you don't mind, I'd rather skip all the details of what happened next. To give a brief overview, we ended up having to go to the same room in the same building 3 separate times (a result of our bad planning), I had to re-register for Mandarin courses and almost missed the deadline to pay, we had to wait in a horrendous line at the post-office to pay for our gym memberships, and we got lost multiple times trying to find our way around our own Commerce building.

Really when I look back on it we were laughing the whole time. It was so humorous for me because Daria is speaking in her Polish accent, Claudia in her German one, Leslie is half-asleep (jet lag?), and we are all trying desperately to get around this place where we do not speak the language and at the same time we are all trying to understand each other. I am on an empty stomach and it is hot out, we are bantering and bickering and each one of us is trying to take hold of the situation and lead the way...Oh so funny. My words don't do it justice.


When all that was over, Leslie agreed to show us her living situation. I realize now that I was lucky with the room I got. Apparently, if you are a women in the Graduate program taking either graduate, IMBA, or EMBA classes - which I am as per the request of my home school - you are eligible for a double room. However, if you are an undergraduate student like Leslie, even if you are coming on exchange, you are required to stay in one of these 6-person cells. I don't know if you can see, but there are 3 desks lining each side of the wall with bunk beds above and a ladder to get up giving each student about a 5.5 X 2.5 foot area of space to live for four months. Daria, who is currently living in a double room by herself, has offered to give Leslie the space. She is working on that right now.



Around 7pm - which is when we go out for dinner each night - we met up with more of the exchange students from the Commerce program. From left: me, Michael from the Netherlands, Marie, Daria, Pim, also from the Netherlands, Tatianna, Kaia from Germany, Leslie, and Felix also from Germany.

It was really great to have a larger mix of people. The dynamic of the conversation was much more exciting and it was nice to have us all together because we could talk about all the things we find funny and irregular in Taiwan.


We had such a good time at dinner, we decided to buy some beer and head to a patio on the mountain side by the boys dorms.

On this patio you could see for miles - you could even see the top of the Taipei 101 building in downtown Taipei. It was very beautiful with all the lights but unfortunately my camera does not capture the beauty.


A nice group shot. We sat around and laughed about our current experience, talked about our past experiences, shared information about ourselves and why we are here...We talked about places we'd like to visit this semester and what we want to learn. We had such a good time that we all decided to meet up again tomorrow night, "to make party" as my Polish friend Daria says so cutely. Some of us have class til' around 10. After that we will get ready and go downtown Taipei for the first time to Luxy Nightclub. Stay tuned!

Doing the Lion Dance

Learning the Lion Dance

Watching the Lion Dance

Cultural Day

So much for my tres chic hot pink Hello Kitty mattress. I was up tossing and turning all last night because it felt like I was sleeping on a rock. The mattress is so thin that my hip muscles dug into the wooden boards and the comforter I bought was barely enough to keep me warm at night. I kept glancing over at Sleeping Beauty Claudia sound asleep on her brand new Ikea mattress and wished I had splurged on something a little more comfortable. I'll fix this problem later on. It's time for Cultural Day!


As promised, I did not forget to take a picture of breakfast. Today was something a bit different - a "rice ball." It looks just like an avocado but it is made of rice and stuffed with toppings of your choice. It looked like you could choose from a number of different meats - ham, chicken, pork, bacon etc., veggies - turnip, beat, spinach (I think?), spices, nut mixes, dried fruit, and much much more. I honestly had no clue what to mix together so I asked the vendor...actually I got my buddy to ask...to make me his favourite mix and it was delicious! I think he added a curry powder, dried raisins, seeds, the turnip looking veggie, and a crunchy tempura-like piece and I couldn't believe the taste. So far it has been my favourite meal here. Claudia, her buddy and I ate it in the Faulty lounge room of the Commerce building before going in for the start of our orientation day.

After a brief presentation and some student introductions we were taken on a short tour of the Commerce building where all of my classes will be held.


As an IMBA student we are treated very well. This is the student lounge where most students come to study or read. Off to the left is a beautiful sun light seating area with orchids and other beautiful flowers all around and behind is where some of the classrooms are located. At the end of the hall to the right we have another lounge where they have complimentary food and drinks all day long and nice meeting rooms with leather seating.


This is one the the classrooms - they look very similar to the classrooms at Ivey. Apparently they were built to mirror the Harvard Business School classrooms.


The next stop was the Commerce library. This is Claudia doing her best Asian pose.

We were behind schedule so we cut the tour short and head to the buses to start the cultural part of the orientation.


They announced that we were going to I-Lan - an agricultural town in North East Taiwan about an hour from NCCU.

I asked Gerry to fill me in a bit. He told me that unlike Taipei, which focuses on the service and technological industries, I-Lan is an agricultural city that grows tea and rice. He said the people in I-Lan are much more concerned with the environment than the people of Taipei and that it is much less crowded.

Arriving in I-Lan I could definitely tell the difference. The air was much cleaner and there was much more space to move around. Most people rode bicycles instead of motor bikes and far fewer people drove like maniacs. The terrain was also much different too. Everything was very flat - there were no tall buildings and most of the land was divided into plots for rice crop.

Driving onto the main street I saw something familiar - Beetlenuts! Yes dad - Beetlenuts! (My dad mentioned that he tried to get Beetlenuts for the family to try at my Farewell dinner).

For those who don't know, Beetlenuts are nuts that grow on trees and when chewed act as a sort of stimulant. Taiwanese girls stand on the sides of the road peeling the nuts in their underwear to attract buyers - mostly truck drivers and labourers. Nice dad.

I told Gerry that I wanted to try some - he warned me that they would make my mouth go red and that I shouldn't have too many because they are bad for your health. Unfortunately we were on a tight schedule and I didn't have time to stop and get some. Next time.


The first thing we did in I-Lan was go to a famous seafood restaurant on the river. I was surprised we came here because I heard that I-Lan was famous for the way they prepare duck but the food was incredible so no complaints.


These are some of the buddies giving Tatianna (a German exchange student in my dorm) a lesson on how to use chopsticks.


This was the first of 8 different courses - octopus, eel, squid, and salmon sashimi. I don't normally eat the sashimi at sushi restaurants in Canada, but I was so excited to see something somewhat familiar that I took it right down. They even had the soya sauce and wasabi as well which I loaded up on - Lots of burn.


This is me enjoying a soup which came out with the first course. I ate four bowls of it before finding out that we had seven more courses to go.


The manager came out to show us how to prepare this course before eating it. It was some sort of white fish that was crisped on the BBQ and had to be de-boned before it was eaten. I ended up picking the only fish that was filled with greeny brown guts. Gerry gave me a taste of his and I moved on.


These were delicious - clams in a creamy tomato mushroom sauce on a bed of penne noodles. Mmmm.


My table.


After lunch we arrived at the National Centre for Traditional Arts.


Tatianna, her buddy and I standing in front of a traditional Chinese street.


We were the first group to go and experience the Lion Dance. The instructor showed us the Traditional dance with drums and then let us try them out. Some of the footage I got it pretty funny. I will try and upload it later.



This is me in the lion after my big debut. The instructor kept telling us that we didn't look fierce enough - we looked like "sissys." Gerry told me that he thought I really, "became one" with the lion.



After the Dancing we all walked along the street and did some shopping. Gerry and I went to Starbucks and I decided to try the Sesame Green Tea Latte. You can't see in the picture, but there were tons of sesame seed chunks floating around at the top. It was fine.



There was a temple in the centre that I wanted to check out. Gerry handed me two wood pieces and told me to make a wish. When I was done I was to throw them on the ground and hope that they landed properly - one facing up and one facing down. Luckily they landed right which meant my wish was supposed to come true. After I was able to go to the front and pick out a stick that had a number on it - my number was 93. I then had to go to a chest at the front of the temple, find the number 93 drawer and take that fortune. Gerry translated it for me. It went something like this:

"You are a very talented person, more talented than many. IF you use your talents for good, you will experience great success." (Interestingly enough it never said anything about using them for bad). It also said that, "When the timing is right, you will find everything you are looking for."

Apparently this was such an unusually good fortune that Gerry felt the need to show his friends and then take a picture with it. I asked some of the other exchange students what their fortune was - one boy had, "If you sue, you will loose." Another had, "Don't be so sure of what you think you know." Maybe mine was pretty good after all.



Gerry and I ditched the theatre presentation and went for a walk by the river to learn more about each other and our countries. He takes a great interest in Canada and tells me that he may do an exchange there in the future.

It was so cute. During a moment of silence he spoke up and said, "Shannon, can I ask you something that may be offensive?" Of course I said, sure, go ahead. He wanted to know first, how many boyfriends Canadian girls have on average by the age of 22. Then he wanted to know what Canadian girls find attractive in a man. I told him what I thought, (tall, blonde, masculine type) and then I asked him out of curiosity what he would consider to be an attractive woman. He told me, "Well Shannon, I think you are too cute, but you are way to tall for me." Huh...Can't please everyone I guess.

I was exhausted on the ride back to NCCU and apologized to Gerry, but told him I had to take a break from the conversation and have a nap. He understood and pretended to take a nap with me.


When we got back to NCCU the girls and I went out for a bite to eat. From left: Angelina, Tatianna, myself, and Marie. We chose a pretty grungy place to go and we even saw the women cleaning the pots in the gutter on the side of the street as we were leaving. We weren't satisfied after that and were getting frusterated until...we found the chocolate pancakes. Oh yes. There is a vendor on the side of the road and you can buy these delicious pancake treats with melted milk chocolate in the center for only 10NTD or about 30 cents Canadian. We were in heaven eating these strange little pancakes on the side of the road completely oblivious to all of the little Asians trying to push past us. Oh so good but oh so deadly. It's obvious the Taiwanese do not stay thin eating these. We all plan on signing up for a gym membership tomorrow.