Getting Situated in Taiwan

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)
Bitter Mellon Soup (60 NTD /$2.09)	pizza (90 NTD/$3.14)	Mr. Brown's Coffee (130 NTD/$4.53)
Hot Pot		Bubble Tea (45 NTD/$1.57)
Shredded Pork sandwich(15NTD/$0.52)