Day 4: First day of class

Today marked our first real day of class. We found ourselves up and at 'em nice and early at about 7am in order to be able to order food and still make it in time for our 9am class. We tried another breakfast place without a translator so our breakfast was random ...again.

The first lecture was interesting. We learned about business models and at the end of class, were encouraged to create a business model for either an existing business or an entirely new one. It was mildly entertaining to say the least. After that, we were dismissed for lunch and it was up to us to decide where we wanted to go. Our group settled for a nice warm bowl of gyudon before heading back to the lab to begin working on our projects. It took awhile for most groups to get started due to the language barrier and just general confusion about the project as a whole but then again, isn't getting started always the hardest part? At least now we had some sort of idea what would be going on these next couple of weeks.

With the day done we once again found ourselves at the night market. Today we got to try a couple more of Taiwan's famous foods and drinks, including xiao long bao, cane sugar drink, egg puffs, and wheel cake. Still just as cheap and delicious as the first couple of nights. I'm drawing blanks here as to what we did after that but I'm just going to assume we called it a night pretty early as we had a field trip early the next morning.

Day 3: Opening Ceremony

Hello world! Sorry for the delay, we've just been so busy that we've barely had time to blog! We'll try to remember each day but it's been awhile so just bear with us please!

The language barrier was made a little more evident today. We woke up early to buy breakfast before our first day of school but unlike the previous day, we did not have any Chinese speaking students to translate the menu or to help us order. Luckily one of us knew some basic conversational phrases so we were all able to order, albeit with a bit of difficulty. Most meals here end up being a gamble as we just pick something random on the menu in our price range and hope they end up being good. So far it's been working out for us..more or less, haha. Hopefully as more days pass we'll be able to order with a lot more ease.

After breakfast, we made our way to campus for the opening ceremony. We were introduced to all the students in both our program, IIELE, and the other program, IIALE. Surprisingly, we learned that we were the only American school in our program and the 50 or so other students that we would be working with for the next couple of weeks were all from Beijing, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Since it was only our first day, we only had an informational lecture about Taiwan and were set free for the rest of the evening at about 5pm.

After returning to the dorm for a quick change, we headed back to campus where we met up with a couple of other students in our program. The students from Taiwan were nice enough to accompany us to the nearby night market and show us around. Taiwan's famous beef noodle soup, nai cha, and sweet potato puffs were just a few of the things we sampled on our first night out. Everything is so unbelievably cheap here! Most foods and drink can be bought for NTD100 or less, which is a little more than $3. On our way home from the night market, we found a bar that we decided that we would all go to after we all met up back at the dorms. Unfortunately when our huge group headed there later that night, due to the lack of translator, we could not be accommodated at the bar and just ended up at a 7-11 (which is as common as Starbucks in America).

Day 2: Taipei

After spending the day visiting Taipei 101, visiting Shilin Night Market and taking various modes of transportation, I've learned a few things:

• Xigua is how to say watermelon in Mandarin
• Not knowing what food you're ordering is both a blessing and a curse
• There's no such thing as walking at a leisurely pace here
• The smell of stinky tofu is unbearable when being cooked, but more or less tolerable after that
• Living on a budget of $30/day is more than enough to survive
• And that I had yet to really experience heat until I came to Taiwan and spent the day wandering around the city 

Day 1: Departure!