大家好！（Hello everyone!) I am a little bit more than halfway done with my study abroad program now, and I must say I am not looking forward to leaving! Taichung is a city in about the middle of Taiwan, and there is so much to do and explore here that I feel like I’ve barely started. For the most part, our exploring consists of trying new restaurants around the area, but we have explored shopping and cultural visits too.
A typical day in my life in Taiwan looks like this:
7:00am – Wake up, get dressed
7:30am – leave the hotel and catch the (typically extremely crowded) public bus to Tunghai University, where our classes are
8:00am – Go to the 7/11 on campus to grab breakfast. I usually get a salmon + roe onigiri and a milk tea. I am going to miss having a convenience store on every single corner to be able to grab a healthy and satisfying breakfast for only about $3 USD.
8:15am – Go to my first class of the day, US-China and Taiwan Relations (Fish and Chips). This class explores the political history and complexities between the global superpowers and how they relate to Naval Power and the global Semiconductor industry. Taiwan hosts one of the largest semiconductor chip manufacturing firms in the world: TSMC. They play a hugely vital role in the success of the global supply chain.
10:00am – Find a quiet spot on campus to do my readings for Fish and Chips. I usually sit on the second floor of the Management Building in the outside area, but on really hot days I will go inside the air conditioned library.
12:00pm – Get lunch with friends! We love exploring the neighborhood around campus and have tried many Taiwanese restaurants, along with some American chains to see how they are different here. The fried chicken from KFC was great! But my favorite near campus is either the 牛肉湯 (Beef noodle soup) or the 麻醬乾麵 (sesame noodles) from 八方Ba Fang。
2:00pm – Go to Chinese Character Art and Culture, a calligraphy course taught fully in Chinese. I love this course not only because of how much it has made me appreciate character writing, but also because the teacher for this class is so sweet and is improving my listening skills by teaching the class fully in Chinese. On the first day of class, he was showing us how a single horizontal line has 6 steps to it, and while I giggled at this notion at first, I was actually in awe when he did it for the first time. It is really such an impressive art form.
5:00pm – Leave campus. Take the extremely crowded bus back to our hotel. We usually hang around the hotel for a couple hours, resting before going out to dinner and catching up on homework.
7:30/8:00pm – Go out to dinner with friends! I love this part of the day because we get to explore the neighborhood around our hotel. We have found many hidden gem noodle shops this way. We also have gone to the nearby night market (in my featured photo) a couple of times to try some Taiwanese street food （小吃) . The potstickers from the night market are great! After dinner, we usually grab an ice cream or a milk tea before heading back to the hotel and preparing for the next day of classes!
On the weekends, we usually have a field trip to a culturally important city near Taichung. So far we have gone to Sun Moon Lake （日月潭）and Changhua（彰化市)。My friends and I also took a weekend trip to Taipei!
I am happy to have a great community of people around me, but it definitely feels different from home! Acclimating both to the new environment and an entirely new group of people has been challenging but rewarding. I can’t believe I have to return home so soon! I will definitely be returning to Taiwan at some point, whether it is for vacation, a gap year, or grad school!