6/23: National Palace Museum and Keelung Jioufen Historical Township

No more lecture days! We learned so much that will be incredibly useful for writing our lesson plans for Towson University, but it’s nice to have a whole day to explore now. 

Today’s breakfast was extremely disappointing, so we ended up at the amazing 7-eleven again. I got onigiri, a small triangle of rice with chicken wrapped in seaweed It’s not sushi but it’s sushi-like. It’s so good I’ve gotten a bunch of them now, they’re a great little breakfast or snack. 

The day really began with our tour guide Michelle. She’s amazing…guide, translator, bad ass negotiator, everything a good tour guide should be. We started at the National Palace Museum. This is full of items from the Forbidden City in China. When the Revolution happened, the Republic of China government allowed the Emperor to stay in the City with his family. After many years of living there, they realized he was selling off items to fund his lifestyle, so they confiscated them and turned the City into what it is today. When the ROC government fled after being kicked out and went to Taiwan, they brought a lot of it with them. This allowed a lot of historical artifacts to survive the Cultural Revolution that may not have otherwise. 

The first pictures are the view outside. This country is so amazing, the mountains are everywhere and are so lush and green. 

This photo is right after walking out to the patio and my camera lens was fogged. Every time I spent outside it’s like glasses and instantly fogs, but I didn’t know it was when I took the shot. I kind of like it though. 

This is basically the same shot with an un-fogged lens to show the difference. 

This is the museum itself. It’s made to look like a traditional Chinese building but is made of concrete. It makes temperature control a little easier. Many of the artifacts are paper, silk, and other very delicate things so they are rotated frequently and are tightly protected. 

I always love looking at the designs on the roof ridges of Asian style buildings. The colors are very different from what I saw in Korea, but the little statues are similar. Different animals, but similar placement. They’re so cute. 

This is a porcelain vase. Porcelain is baked in the kiln at a higher temperature which somehow makes it stronger and thinner than other pottery. China is well known for producing it through history. 

This is a tiger (maybe painted by someone who has never seen one up close before 🤷‍♀️) but I kind of love it. It’s so questionable but 

6/22: Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall and Taipei 101

The day began with another great lecture on The Economic Development of Taiwan and the Latent Factors Behind It by Professor Frank Y-H Ying. He got his PhD at the University of Kentucky and is the Executive VP of NTNU. He’s been to every US state and his kids are in school in the US. We learned so much and I even understood most of it! My take aways were mostly about current issues Taiwan is facing including an aging workforce, young retirement age, and lack of young people. It’s going to be tough for them if they don’t figure out a solution I think. 

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Lunch was at the university again, we’ve been having bento style meals. This was the first day that wasn’t great, it was just a little spicy for me. We had a frozen rice treat though with bean paste inside that was really good. It’s the dragon boat festival holiday so apparently it’s a traditional food on that day. 

After lunch we went out to the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. It’s a beautiful traditional Chinese building, 30 meters tall and 100 meters on each side. 

6/21: Dihua Street and Dadaocheng

So we've been incredibly busy and wifi has been sketchy at night, so updating has been tough. 

The day started with a visit to Starbucks and 7-eleven with my roommate. We pretty much had snacks from 7-eleven every day (there's one on every corner...like sometimes across the street from each other) and we've been testing all kinds of different flavors of things. The seaweed chips were underwhelming, but the garlic pea chips were quite tasty. Starbucks has the most amazing tea drink I've ever had which I may have already mentioned, but I literally got one every day in Taipei. It's a black tea with ruby grapefruit and honey, iced. They have a deal here where you can buy two grande or venti of the same drink and get the second one half off, so we kept doing that and enjoying it! The tea is sweet and tastes exactly like a super fresh ruby grapefruit. Everyone in the group started drinking it after I let them all try it, I'll miss it so much!

Our lecture today was on the Development of Taiwan Democracy, given by Professor Mei-Chuan Wei, Associate Professor at NCCU and National Chengchi University. She got her Ph.D. at the London School of Economics and Political Science and was incredible. My biggest take away was definitely figuring out the goal of the KMT party (how did I never figure out that reunification does not mean being absorbed by the PRC, it means taking back control of the mainland? 😲). 

After another lunch on campus, we went to Dihua Street and Dadaocheng for a tour. This is a historic street market where they still sell a lot of wholesale spices and supplies. 

We saw the first of many Buddhist temples, this was a really big one. We learned about the history of the temple and how people worship at them. The smells of incense is so nice, and it's always burning in temples.  

We went down some little alleys and saw some cool houses, there's lot of little details that pop out and plants everywhere. This is about the greenest place I think I've even been, there's plants on every balcony and patio. Some are so pretty!

Scooter life terrifies me and we aren't even in Vietnam yet. The number of scooters I've seen with 3 people, and kids just standing up between their parents legs...so nerve wracking. But everyone wears helmets and obeys traffic laws so it's fairly safe. The amount of traffic is a lot less too since there aren't all the extra cars everywhere. The scooters have special zones at each light were they all gather and then get to the front of the lines, so they stay ahead of the cars and move out all at once. It's like a dance watching it happen. 

This building is owned by the descendents of the family that built it during the days of the tea trade. The tiles are from England and it's a historic building at this point. Lots of famous people have stayed there on trips to Taiwan including Western politicians. 

I love seeing street food and how it's prepared here. This was a giant roasting oven and the wares nearby...lots of chicken heads and feet here!

This was our first visit to the harbor and it was really pretty. It's hard to get good photos sometimes because the light is a little flat when it's cloudy, but you can see how there are mountains everywhere. There's very few spots so far where we haven't been able to see at least one mountain. 

I'm not entirely sure what this model ship represents because I was off taking photos when the guide was talking, but I'd guess it represents the tea and fabric trade that was very important to the area. 

This is a songwriter, Li Lin-Chiu. He was known for sitting in this spot and writing songs for people. He wrote some of the most famous Taiwanese folk songs, and at the top of each hour they are played on speakers near him. The piece we heard was beautiful!

I've been on a bird hunt. I'm pretty I found a stork and a heron of some sort here, maybe a cattle heron? It looks different than the night herons I've been seeing. 

I love the turtles, they're everywhere and so curious about the world. They will pop out and watch you as you want by (probably just looking for food).

Taipei 101 is the largest building in Taiwan, I'll post more about it later when we visit. 

Remember that banner from yesterday's post? Here it is in action! We have to unroll it, take photos, and roll it back up. It's made of a thick paper so it's pretty sturdy, but it is quickly becoming a running joke with the group. 

After our tour we had a little time to wander but I was stupid hot again, so I found this adorable shop all painted with scenes that apparently are from a popular kid's book or show here. There's selfie stations everywhere, and so many cats...I've become known in the group as the cat-lady and everyone expects me to be taking pictures of them everywhere. I'll probably have a whole separate post some day about the cats and cat drawings I've been seeing just because. As you can tell, I'm disgustingly hot again here. Patrick made fun of me for buying the fan around my neck (it blows air up so my head feels it moving around, it's not usually cool but at least it's moving) but it's been the best thing I brought with me. People are so jealous they're looking out for ones to buy now!

After the tour, we went out with the old roommate of one of our group members. They took us on the subway to Raohe Night Market. The subways are quite easy to negotiate and are pretty cheap. Everything here is pretty cheap, actually. The token I've got here is used to get into the station, then you deposit it to get out. You load it with the amount you need for one trip, and the cost depends on how far you are going. This one cost $25 New Taiwan Dollars, which is about $.90 US. $30 NTD = $1 USD. Night Markets are like street markets in South Korea or many other Asian countries...lots of little stands to buy just about anything you want plus amazing food. 

This temple is outside the night market and we took a little walk though. It was huge!

I love street food so very much, it's my favorite thing in the world. Luke's friend gave us some great suggestions. I'm trying to take lots of food pictures, I'll probably have another full post on those at some point (food and cats...I'm in heaven here). This was a donut, but it was almost more of a cronut...crunchy on the outside and doughy inside, and so tasty. I got the strawberry and the chocolate, the strawberry was the best. I also bought a small change purse (I only use cash as much as possible when traveling to help me track how much I spend, but I always forget that I should be prepared for lots of coins. Hence my coin purse collection) and lots of food. The stuffed rice balls are also very good, but the watermelon juice was meh. The watermelon wasn't very sweet so it wasn't awesome. 

 

6/20: Affiliated Senior High School of NTNU

Tuesday began with breakfast at NTNU (National Taiwan Normal University). We're staying in their hostel that is for foreign visitors, kids on camps, and possibly also a standard hostel, I never quite figured that out. We have breakfast coupons to a couple of cafes on campus, so today was Camo Cafe. Breakfasts are a sandwich and coffee or tea, so I had one egg and bacon sandwich with ketchup on white bread, and the other day I had a bun with a full sized hash brown, fried egg, and ketchup, and some veggies. Neither was overwhelmingly good but the coffee was good, Americano with fresh espresso, milk, and cream. Coffee is overall quite good here I've found. 

After breakfast we visited the Affiliated Senior High School of NTNU and had a great campus visit. We sat in on an economics class where we learned about the Tulip industry and supply and demand. The teacher did an amazing job of getting us involved with a warm up where she had the kids brainstorm reasons people in Taiwan would shop at Costco, then they had to try to guess her favorite three things to get from there. They had a great time and we got to know something about her. This part was in English which was great. Then she got into the lesson and switched to Chinese. A lot of us have taught a similar lesson before, so we were mostly able to follow along. I was really impressed with her rapport with her class. The kids in Taiwan stay in one classroom all day and the teachers move from room to room, so that was interesting to see in person. 

After the lesson, we met with several people from the school (an English and History teacher plus a couple of directors) plus a student and had a really open and frank discussion about what school is like in our two countries. We talked about things like dealing with cell phones and internet use, high stakes testing, the impact COVID had on learning, respect for teachers, and school shootings/air raid fears. I'd say a good portion of what we talked about led to us feeling more similarities than differences between our cultures, which was pretty cool to see. I wish teachers in the US were respected as much as they are in Taiwan though!

The school has some really cool artwork scattered around including this kind of strange painting on the stairs. I took the picture before seeing the top step and then cracked up - see if you can figure out why. 

Their views of the city are great too, this is from the upper levels. 

After a lunch back at NTNU, we had a 3 hour lecture on an Introduction to Taiwan History given by Dr. Ian Rowen, a Professor at NTNU who studied at CU Boulder. He covered Taiwanese history from its earliest settlement through modern times, so it was a wild ride. His stories were amazing, he knows or has interacted with a surprisingly large number of modern politicians. My biggest takeaways were probably about the modern political structure of Taiwan and the ROC vs DPP. There was so much I didn't know. 

We take group pictures absolutely everywhere, so keep an eye out for the banner behind us...you'll see it a lot!

After the lecture a large group of us walked down to Din Tai Fung, a bao restaurant that originated in Taipei. It was absolutely amazing and lived up to all of my expectations for bao. We ate about 10 different things and were stuffed. 

I love how they show what's inside the dumpling, this one was obviously chicken. 

I split a shaved ice with two other people on the way home because it was approximately the size of my head, but didn't get any photos. It was a layer of ice made with something that tasted vaguely like coconut water, then two huge scoops of mango (which is in season here and is the best mango I've ever had in my life), then a huge scoop of mango sorbet. It hit the spot! Back in my room I took this selfie to try to show the effect the humidity has on my hair, it's just curling all over the place. You'll see it get progressively worse and worst through my photos, I can't figure out how to control it plus I'm sweating absolute buckets every day so it just gets wet then dries then gets wet again. Pretty gross. 

Day one: Orientation, NTNU campus tour, and National Taiwan College of Performing Arts

 Sleep was hard to come by last night! I took some melatonin and tried to settle down at about 10:00, but I definitely woke up about every hour or so. Taiwan is 10 hours ahead, so it's enough to make jet lag a very real thing. Everyone in the group woke up between 3 and 5 am, so we're all feeling it. I woke up at 5 for good and was able to check in with family a little. 

We went to get some bottled water at the 7-Eleven, I grabbed seaweed chips to try out as well. Breakfast was an egg and bacon sandwich (meh) and a surprising good Americano at the cafe on campus. We met up with more of the group and went to get some cash and found a Starbucks. I got the most amazing drink I think I've ever had, black tea with ruby grapefruit and honey, iced. I'll be getting that again tomorrow for sure. 

The little message and bear is so cute!

(And here I'm realizing that Blogger is not awesome for uploading photos, sorry about the formatting.)

We had our orientation to the program first and learned a lot about National Taiwan Normal University. They have a ton of programs but we're in with the teacher development side of things, and they produce a lot of teachers from the program. 

Two ambassadors from the University took us on a tour, and it is a very cool campus. 

The lion is coming out of the ground next to a giant chess board, it's very cute. 

This is their school museum with over 190 separate sides. The building looks kind of like an iceberg. 

A statue outside the engineering hall made by students with their skills. There's a tradition where you don't step on the grass as a student or you will fail, so the first time anyone steps on it is after graduating. 

The library is stunning. These floors go all the way up and the lighting was fantastic.

There's multiple campuses, so this is entering the main campus area. 

Hang out with a bunch of social studies teachers and we're going to focus on the globe. What did you expect? 

Sister schools all over the globe represented here. They're in a partnership with the University of Northern Colorado!

This was in the Bejing Olympic opening ceremony and then was gifted to the University to display. It's huge!

There's so many trees and plants everywhere, so different than Colorado. Anyone know what kind of trees these are? They're everywhere. 

The reflecting pool just inside the gates with one of the main buildings. 

Lion and Teacher in Mandarin are either very similar words or the same word, I didn't quite understand the guide. There are lions all over the school representing the future teachers they produce. It's really cute!

Lunch was back in the conference room, a tasty meal. After lunch and a short break we went to the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts. This is a school where kids who want to be professionals in different areas of theater (Peking Opera, acrobatics, tech, etc) attend from all over Taiwan. They live on campus and attend class from 6 am to 8 pm. This was the most fun I've had at a school in a very long time! We got to see some kids practicing their skills, fought with some stage weapons, and I rode in a "car". 

Then we had a lesson on the masks used in Peking Opera and learned all about how you know which character type someone is based on the mask style. Our instructor was incredibly knowledgeable and has painted masks for several ad campaigns as well as the giant ones outside the school.  He painted some designs on us and we painted our own masks! I did ok on mine, I had to keep reminding myself to not be a perfectionist (Stargate students will understand...) but I'm really happy with the final product. 

After struggling to stay awake on the bus ride back we went to the Shida market for dinner. I had Braised Noodle Soup with thick noodles, they're a flour based noodle and it was very good. Now we're back in the hotel room getting ready for tomorrow! I took almost 12,000 steps and went almost 5 miles walking overall today.