Venus and I took a trip to Kenting, which is a town on the coast of Taiwan. It is point C on the map below:
Getting There
On Thursday night, we road the high speed rail to Kaohsiung and spent the night there. It is about 245 miles form Taipei toKaohsiung. The high speed rail is so awesome. You pay around 1490NT ($ 52 dollars) and get from Taipei to Kaohsiung in about 1.5 hours. We have nicknamed Kaohsiung "City of the Lounge Bar" because the whole city looks like a lounge bar. Anyway, it is very beautiful at night though.
Then, on Friday, we took a Taxi from Kaohsiung to Kenting. It is around 100 miles, but it only cost us 350 NT (around $ 12) each for that and it took about 2.5 hours.
We stayed at a really great Bed and Breakfast place which is owned by a guy who used to be a chef at a 5-star restaurant. They were nice enough to give us the honeymoon suite at a discount. Our room had it's own balcony, and a bath tub that overlooked the ocean.
Here is a video of our room. As you can see, Venus was very excited about it. She's so cute.
Here are some pictures:
During the day, we went to the beach and explored a little bit. We ate at some great restaurants too. At night, we went to the night market there.
We put our stuff too close to the water
On Sunday, we went to an Aquarium.
The breakfast at our Bed and Breakfast was really good. I especially liked their home made bread. The pictures really don't do it justice.
It was really amazing and romantic weekend. We really didn't want to come back.
My handwriting in Chinese is better than in English...
Thursday, I had orientation, and Friday was my first day of Chinese class.
Getting Lost
Orientation day was the day that I got lost everywhere I went. First, I missed my stop on the bus and had to take a taxi back to NTNU. Then, on the way home, I walked the wrong way when I was looking for the MRT. I walked fooooooorreeeeever and ended up at CKS Memorial Hall. Then, I managed to take the wrong train several times before finding the right one.
The MRT can be a little confusing some times because at some stops, they have multiple trains stop at the same place, and the trains themselves are not labeled. They have a sign on the wall that looks like this, which would lead you to believe that the train stopping there is the one you want.
They also have a LED display inside that tells you the current station you are at. About 30-60 seconds after you leave the station, the LCD changes to tell you the destination you are going to and the next stop. This is just enough time for you to realize you are on the wrong train. To know which train is actually there, you have to watch the TV that is there, which is constantly displaying commercials, mostly involving some girl dancing around and falling on her ass and then taking some product and becoming an amazing dancer complete with animated ribbons flying around her. Anyway, on one side, there is a thing that tells you how long it is until each train comes.
Orientation
For orientation, there were several hundred new students in a large lecture hall. They said everything in Chinese, and then repeated it in English, which was OK. Though, a lot of what they say conflicts with other things that they say, so it was a bit confusing. For example, we have 10 hours a week of regular Chinese class. But, we need 15 hours a week of class to keep the Visa people happy. So, there all these things you can do to get extra hours. You can study in the library. You can attend lectures on pronunciation and such. You can also take cultural classes such as the cooking class I am thinking about taking. Anyway, but then they have these rules for the maximum hours you can do of each thing. For this month for example, we need 19 supplemental hours. In theory, I can take the cooking class for 1-2 hours a week and it is supposed towards that. But then they told us that we must have exactly 13 hours in one place and exactly 6 hours in another place. (I think one was the library and one was a language lab or something.) So, I am confused if taking the cultural class will just make me have to do more total hours or not. Anyway, I guess it is a typical bureaucracy.
My First Class
I attended a supplemental class on pronunciation Friday morning. It was good. Though, the teacher pronounced the third tone in a way that is different than anyone else I have ever heard. A lot of other students commented on this, so it wasn't just me. But, two hours is a long time to focus on a foreign language without having a break. I did meet several interesting people there. One guy was a Buddhist monk. He is originally from Oregon, and grew up near my college town. He went to college in Eugene, Oregon. Apparently, he is in a monastery in Taiwan now and has to take a 2 hour bus ride to get to school each day. I also met a couple of girls from Japan that seemed nice. One of them kept correcting the stuff I wrote down wrong, which was cool. Afterwards, when I was killing time waiting for my regular class, I met a guy from Thailand. I have a theory that they actually don't let anyone out of Thailand who is not from Bangkok. When I was talking to him I met several other students from Thailand, and they were of course all from Bangkok too.
My class has maybe 8-10 students. One other guy is from the US. He was studying in Japan and was forced to leave and ended up in Taiwan. There are three more girls from Japan, who were all very nice. Then, there was a guy from Thailand. And a Buddhist monk from somewhere that has a strange accent. Anyway, so this school is very culturally diverse.
They gave us this food to eat during class called Zongzi that looked like this:
This food is traditional for the Dragon Boat Festival. Apparently, it is designed to be better for fish to eat than a dead body of a poet. True Story. I'm not even making this up. Some guy killed himself by jumping in the river, and he was so popular that people didn't want the fish eating his dead body. So they threw bundles of rice in the water.
Anyway, for a while, everyone just sort of stared at it. I'm not sure what everyone else was thinking, but I was trying to decide whether or not you were supposed to eat the outside layer. Luckily, the teacher didn't mention the part about it being a substitute fish food and all of that. Finally, one of the girls who is braver (or more reckless) than me untied hers and started eating it. I decided she was our poison taster. She didn't appear to be poisoned, so I started eating mine too. Anyway, you had to untie the string and it was kind of messy and we didn't have napkins. So, I ripped out some paper from my notebook to use as a plate/napkin. One girl couldn't actually get hers untied for a while. I don't remember what her name was, but I secretly nicknamed her Houdini. Actually, I could emphasize with here because they were really hard to open. I was going to tell her the Houdini thing, but I didn't think she would get the cultural reference. Seriously though, it was totally like a puzzle or something. It didn't taste all that great, but I would indeed prefer to eat it than to eat a dead body.
Capoeira
Thursday night I took my first Capoeira class. It was fun, but I am so out of practice. Ninja, which is the nickname of the teacher, did a good job teaching the class. We did a lot of a kick called Meia Lua de Compasso. It looks like this:
Here is a random youtube video of a guy doing this kick:
Anyway, I am sore in every muscle in my body. Hopefully, I will get used to it again.
McDonalds:
McDonald's delivers here. They have person on a scooter who carts around a rally big box with the food in it. I tried to take a picture of her, but she didn't want me to. Maybe it is because we made her walk up three flights of stairs with a big box to deliver our food. They also have some different things on their menu. I will have to check that out some other time though.
Some Random Pictures:
Here are a few other random pictures of me and Venus:
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Randy Flood. I am currently a PHD student in Computer Science at Florida State University. I decided to start this blog to write about my adventures in Taiwan.
This is my third trip to Taiwan and I am going to be here for the entire Summer. I am taking a Chinese class at the National Taiwan Normal University. Tomorrow, I have orientation and Friday should be my first day of class. I am excited. I may sign up for one of their cultural classes. Here are the cultural classes that they offer:
I am thinking of signing up for one of the cooking classes. I don't really know how to cook, so that might be good. Plus, you get to take the food you cook home afterwards, so that is cool. :)
I am planning on taking some martial arts classes while I am here at the Taiwan Mixed Martial Arts Association. I am planning on taking their Capoeira class on Thursday nights. The way this school works is that you pay for a book of 10 tickets (for about $84 USD) and then you can use them for any one of their classes. This is good for me because in July Venus is going to be gone for several days at a time, so I can probably try out some other classes. Besides Capoeira, they have Muay Thai, Boxing, Hapkido, Wrestling, and Taekwon Do. Oh, and they also have some free trial course thingy, which I think is kick boxing.
Applying for NTNU was pretty simple. Though, they didn't really explain the process of getting a Visa for Taiwan. A lot of places you look online tell you that you must show up in person at a Taiwan consulate in the US to apply. This isn't entirely true and is very misleading and stressful. I ended up using a Visa Agency to get me a Visa and I am really glad. It took less than a week for me to get my Visa using this service. Essentially, you send all your stuff to the Visa Agency, pay them some money, and sign a form saying they can apply for the Visa on your behalf. Then they go get you your Visa and ship it back to you. The correct Visa that I needed was a "Visitor Visa". Anyway, I highly recommend using a Visa service.
My apartment in Taipei is near the MRT station at Jingmei. The MRT is Taiwan's mass transportation system similar to a subway (though some of them do go above ground to some of the stops.) It is a two minute walk from Venus's parents apartment, so that is nice. She can stay at my apartment pretty late, and then I can just walk her home. It's much better than her having to take a taxi, which gets expensive after a while. There are several ways to get to NTNU from my apartment. I can walk about two blocks to the Bus stop and take bus #278 there. It is about a dozen stops from my apartment. Another way is to take the MRT. But, it is about a 10 minute walk from the MRT station to my building at NTNU.
The key to my apartment is sort of like a switchblade or something. I keep playing with it:
Finding my building was quite an adventure, especially since the Mandarin Training Center at NTNU didn't ever mention what building they were in, and lists only the address of the entire campus on their web site. Also, when you look at the campus map, they are not listed at all. Luckily, Venus came with me to register. It turns out that my building is next to a statue of Confucius, which is cool.
Confucius is totally copying my awesome pose
The food here is very yummy and relatively cheap, for the most part (with the exception of Starbucks coffee.)
appetizer (free)
Chile sauce (free)
pork with garlic, green onions, and Chilles and soy sauce (160 ntd/$5.58)
