Since I started blogging rather late, I'm not going to bore you all with a detailed account of all the days I have spent in Taiwan so far. So, I'm just going to give you the highlights:

1) Papaya Milk (木瓜牛奶) – the most delicious drink on this planet
2) Watching the Opening Ceremony at the Pig and Whistle
3) Getting Internet
4) Visiting the most enormous elementary schools I had ever seen in my entire life
5) Going to the Love River (愛河) and Night Markets (夜市)
6) My new Mini Laptop!!

PAPAYA MILK is one of my favorite drinks, and it's very popular here in Taiwan. So, I'm very happy. My dad used to always make it for my mom and me. You basically put papaya, milk, and ice in a blender, and you're all set. I like my papaya milk thick, so I usually request more papaya and less milk.

WATCHING THE OPENING CEREMONY

A couple Fulbrighters and I went to a pub, the Pig and Whistle, to watch the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I had a bailey with milk. We stayed there for many hours because we watched all the teams march into the stadium and the lighting of the Olympic torch. I though the way they lit the torch was pretty cool, but I really did not want to stay at a pub for almost 5 hours just to watch that.

GETTING INTERNET....

Getting internet was a stressful and bittersweet highlight. We had to wait a week before we got internet because every internet company required us to join a two year contract and Alex, one of the coordinators of our trip, had to negotiate with various companies to find the most reasonable deal. My mom thought I fell off the face of the planet when we had no means of communication over the weekend. She left many humorous messages over email during the course of that weekend.

So, the day when we would get internet finally came; my apartment mates and I sat around all day waiting for the guy to come. The other two apartments already got their internet router installed, so we were anxiously waiting for our installation guy to come. We were even afraid to go out for lunch, but he didn't show up until 4pm. Then, he said that he was not getting a signal and told us that we might need to get our apartment's cables fixed before we could get internet. Our jaws dropped. But the guy went up to the roof, and figured out an alternative plan of action. Fortunately, we got internet that day.

I was happy that I was finally able to contact people, but I had way too many people to contract and that was rather stressful. And after getting internet, we all would come home from orientation and go to our rooms. I'm sure we all had many emails to reply to.

VISITING SCHOOLS

For part of orientation, we went to visit all the schools that we could potentially be teaching at. At first, I thought that this was kinda pointless, but now, I'm glad I went to all the schools because we got to meet the administration. The administration does play a major role in whether that school would be your ideal teaching environment. Also, every school was very generous and would offer us bubble tea, dragon-eye fruit, or tea (Picture to the Right: Gered holding up a basket of dragon-eye fruit that one of the schools gave us; we're still not done eating it and we visited the schools a week ago). I also did not expect elementary schools to be so large. Some are the size of Miller Quad and would house 2000 students, which is more than my college's student population. How will I ever learn all my student's names?! I'm also glad that badminton is a popular sport in all these schools. I'm good at any sport that involves a racket, and badminton was one of my favorite sports growing up. I wonder if it's too late for me to train to be a professional badminton player. But better question, how do you become a professional badminton player? Answers, anyone?

(Picture Above: One of the elementary schools (舊城) even has the original Confucius Temple in it.)

GOING TO THE LOVER RIVER AND NIGHT MARKETS

PLACES WE'VE BEEN TO SO FAR: Love River and a couple of Night Markets. Love River use to be this very polluted river in Kaohsiung, and people use to hold their noses walking around that area. But the Kaohsiung government took really proactive measures to clean it up and is now one of the City's most attractive feature. We went on a Love River cruise when we visited it one weekend; it was quite romantic.

We have also been to a couple of street markets, which are basically rows of shops that open up at night time. You can eat and shop there. The food is usually quite cheap, and you can bargain for clothing. I bought myself a merse! It's similar to Chris's merse; one of the Fulbright coordinator also has one and he helped me negotiate the price with the shop owner. Bargaining in Taiwan is very different from Beijing. They usually already start off at a very reasonable price, whereas in Beijing, they would start off at some ridiculous amount.

MY MINI LAPTOP!

Speaking of bargaining, I bargained for a mini computer! I now have two laptops – my standard HP one and my new Asus mini laptop! I love my new mini laptop! It's pearl white – literally that's how the box classifies it – and it's two pounds! It has a built-in webcam and microphone. The screen is only 7 inches and it only had a 8 GB memory, but hey, it's supposed to be a portable computer. As long as it allows me to word process and go online, I'm happy. Also, it was only $320 (US dollars). It was originally approximately $390. However, I went with a 3 other Fulbrighters, and we were buying three laptops. So, the store better gave us some discount. Also, we were planning on just buying a mini computer that was only $300, but every computer store was sold out of that one. But oh well, everything works out for the best. Shiela, Katie, and I got a better one with bigger memory and ram for just 20 bucks more. I carry it everywhere now. It also has a English-Chinese translator and very fun, educational games. I'm learning how to type faster at the current moment.