{"id":3673,"date":"2012-07-15T06:06:23","date_gmt":"2012-07-15T14:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ups.edu\/studyingabroad\/?p=3673"},"modified":"2012-07-15T06:06:23","modified_gmt":"2012-07-15T14:06:23","slug":"goodbye-taipei-hello-taichung","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/2012\/07\/15\/goodbye-taipei-hello-taichung\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye Taipei, Hello Taichung!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author’s Note: Sometimes busy things happen to good people and sometimes\u2026they happen to your author.\u00a0 He is not a good person because he was tardy in getting his blog entries posted for the last two weeks.\u00a0 Also, he sometimes writes about himself in the third person.\u00a0 He is sorry and would like to be known that, in his defense, it was quite a busy few weeks and he was <\/em>writing.\u00a0 He just forgot to post that writing online (whoops).\u00a0 He will now upload the missing entries.\u00a0 Please hold\u2026<\/p>\n

Goodbye Taipei, Hello Taichung<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong> Since my last entry, I have been quite the busy bee.\u00a0 I’ve flown all the way from San Francisco to Taipei and have spent the last few days exploring the city with the other Puget Sound students going to the Tunghai University summer program.\u00a0 In this time, I have sampled some local food, visited the National Palace Museum, gone to the Shilin Night Market, visited my first dragon boat festival, and rode the Maokong Gondola.\u00a0 Like I said, it’s been a busy few days.<\/p>\n

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Alleyway Outside of Hostel <\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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View of Taipei 101 from Maokong Gondola<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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Banner at Dragon Boat Festival<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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This has been a excellent chance to test out my Chinese skills which are\u2026\u00a0 Well, let’s just say that something about being in Taipei has really brought home the Chinese language learning curve.\u00a0 Chinese is hard, y’all. <\/em> I “knew” it would be going in.\u00a0 Even though I have studied for the last two years, I am still at “beginning level” Chinese proficiency, so I didn’t expect in-depth conversation.\u00a0 Still, it can be a shock when ordering coffee is challenging.\u00a0 What are the characters and tones for hazelnut latte?\u00a0 Did I ever learn that?\u00a0 No?\u00a0 I had better just stick to milk tea then… \u00a0Needless to say, every meal is an adventure here.\u00a0 Fortunately, it is a very delicious adventure.\u00a0 The food in Taipei is fantastic and I have yet to order something that hasn’t been amazingly good.<\/p>\n

In addition to the food adventures, local transportation is another good chance to practice my rusty language skills.\u00a0 Taiwan’s HSR (high-speed rail) and Taipei’s city transportation are English user-friendly.\u00a0 Signs are in characters and English, so there is little chance of missing a stop, and I’ve been able to make it a game to stick to reading only characters without fear of getting too lost.\u00a0 For sheer entertainment value, many of the helpful warning signs here have given me a chuckle.\u00a0 My personal favorites were posted on the doors of the Maokong Gondola. \u00a0I have shown them below with my version of the warning depicted:<\/p>\n

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“Do NOT Defiantly Place Your Left Foot Outside of the Gondola”<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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“Nor Shall You Lean Against the Doors With That Look On Your Face, Chad!”<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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That wraps up my first few days in Taipei.\u00a0 As I write this, I am sitting in a comfy seat on the HSR and am approaching Taichung with rapid speed. \u00a0I am not entirely sure that I am prepared for this adventure, but hey, it’s never stopped me before\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since my last entry, I have been quite the busy bee. I’ve flown all the way from San Francisco to Taipei and have spent the last few days exploring the city with the other Puget Sound students going to the Tunghai University summer program. In this time, I have sampled some local food, visited the National Palace Museum, gone to the Shilin Night Market, visited my first dragon boat festival, and rode the Maokong Gondola. Like I said, it’s been a busy few days.<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[215,230,231,243],"class_list":["post-3673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brendan-trosper-14-taiwan-china","tag-signage","tag-taipei","tag-taiwan","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}