First two Weeks in Taipei!

Well I can officially say that I've made it through my first two weeks in Taiwan.

I can already use many words to describe these first days... exciting, difficult, confusing, vibrant, exhausting, delicious... It's been a lot of fun!

I arrived on March 1st in Taipei, Taiwan (台灣） which is the capital located in the North of the country. This will be my home for the next 10 months while studying chinese here in the city. I began classes only a few days after my arrival and things started moving along FAST. I'm enrolled in an intensive Mandarin Chinese course at (Shida) University. The Mandarin Training Center (MTC) has nearly 1500 international students, representing over 70 countries, studying Chinese at varying levels. My class meets three hours a day, five days a week, and has only six people. 2 Americans ("Meiguoren" 美國人） , 2 Swede's, 1 Canadian, and 1 Korean. We're expected to keep up with the course work by studying at least 4 hours a day outside of class... WHAT?... That's what I said.

We'll the good news is that I feel my language skills beginning to move along at a fast rate. Writing chinese characters over and over again is brutal, but there is also something kind of soothing about it. I'm not a fan of spelling anyway, so what better than learning a language that is completely based on ancient pictographs! Hopefully some of my blogging can show off Chinese characters at some point...

I've been living with my original Up with People host family from my last visit to Taiwan. It's been a great way to get comfortable with my surroundings. I can say that my chopstick skills are much improved and I kind of prefer them to a fork and knife. Maybe I was Chinese in another life. Between classes I cruise over to the local "night market" by the school and pick up a bowl of beef noodles at my favorite place. At around 75 NT ($2.15) for a big bowl of noodles（"mian" 面) and tea, the price is hard to beat. Panda Express has nothing on the real thing...! Food here is great, and I highly recommend trying to find "real" Chinese food where you live. Loads of fresh vegetables, seafood, great meat, and of course rice... not the orange chicken we find in the USA. I won't even begin to talk about the fruit... my heaven!

Last weekend I traveled with students from my school to a lantern festival being held in a city nearly 45 minutes outside the city. It's the site of an incredible festival every year where hundreds of lanterns are released into the sky after dark. Each lantern has a flame that causes it to fly high into the sky. The tradition is to write your hopes, wishes, and dreams on the paper lanterns before they are sent up. What an amazing spectacle it was to see hundreds of lanterns go up at one time! We even had the chance to write on a lantern ourselves. You will see the video I created below...

You may be surprised to discover that nearly 65% of Taiwan is covered in mountains（“shan” 山). I'm hoping to head up into the mountains surrounding Taipei for some hiking this weekend. For now, I'm back to the books for more studying. By the way, I hope you enjoy the Chinese lessons as you read along! I'll be updating as often as possible, so check back!

馬修 － (Ma Xiu) A.K.A Matthew Erley