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!
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