December 2017
December was a very fun month for exchange I’ll try to summarize each week down below.
Week 1!
The first week was fairly tame, I went to school same old same old. On Friday do that week we went in to Kaohsiung for a cultural event. Also during this time I was figuring out the whole broken phone situation. Kaohsiung, as always, was a blast and it was great to see everyone again. I also moved into my 2nd host families house which is realllllly nice, like living in a hotel its amazing. Picture of my room below, on to week 2!
Week 2!
Week two I was getting acclimated to living in the new house and talking with my host family. We set off to Kaohsiung again this weekend and this time we were there for our poem competition. This was a slightly nerve racking event, although the poem was short it was in Chinese so the difficulty was heightened considerably. I didn’t win anything but I’m just glad I was able to recite my whole poem. After that we had a day in Kaohsiung to ourselves then back to ye ol’ Taitung. I don’t have any photos of this week unfortunately. I found a funny one of Luis while we wait at the Kaohsiung bus station for Janek. Yes that’s a 3 story KFC and Yoshinoya.
Week 3!
This week was a fun one. It started off with school and the same old stuff. On Thursday I got a notification of a package, my phone had arrived! Thanks and bunch Mom, Dad, Auntie Anne, Uncle Jeff and Bailey for go through the trouble of getting it shipped to me! That weekend we were back in Kaoh for a third time this time we be staying till Monday due to the Christmas party. This party was an interesting one, rotary had obviously organized it. One of the stranger parts of this party was the inclusion of piñatas but otherwise it was a fun time with everyone and we got to interact more with the D3510 outbounds. I have one photo from the party of my friend Ben, he’s from Germany and an awesome person. Christmas day was, underwhelming to put it lightly. Rotary in an attempt to mitigate our feeling of homesickness took us out of Kaohsiung and up to Tainan. Where they took us though was what mad with underwhelming. First, we went to a really tall temple which was actually really cool to see. Second we went to a glass factory for lunch which was alright but was just a bunch of exchange students looking at glass. The last place was obviously something the Rotarians wanted to see. It was an Essence of Chicken factory. This last place was an honest to god bore fest. I know most things we do with rotary are somewhat fun but this was just weird. Anyways, after that week 3 ends where week 4 begins.
These two photos are at the glass factory. The first photo was in their trippy hall of mirrors and the second was their temple of glass. These two were actually quite fun and enjoyable despite my comments above.
Week 4!
This is by far one of the best weeks so far on exchange. So after the Christmas stuff we went back to Taitung and go ourselves hyped for New Years and our exciting destination, Taipei! We left for Kaohsiung on Friday and stayed there until Sunday morning. The bus ride from Kaohsiung to Taipei is around 6 hours, we got extended to 8 due to some stops rotary had us do. They were fairly quick so no complaints from us. We arrived at around 4 o'clock in the afternoon and rotary set loose 50 exchange students onto the streets of Taipei (Bad decision on their part). I met up with Brooke and Hayden and we went off to Ximen to walk around and catch up on everything. After a little bit Diana called me and we met up with her and Tom and went to a little out of the way fried chicken shop. Around 7 o clock we went of to Sun Yat Sen Memorial where the party was taking place. We had a great view of Taipei 101 and a ton of Brazilians blasting all the crazy funk sings they know. It was a great night, I go to meet a lot of the exchange students in Taiwan and most of the Americans here. Once the crazy fireworks display started and 2017 slipped off into the past we were all herded back into the bus and set off back down to Kaohsiung. Here’s some photos of Taipei 101 going ballistic and the whole lot of us posing for a photo.
That finishes up December and 2017. This month was heavily summarized so I may have missed something that we did during it. Now for January!