I’m writing in the middle of my first Taiwanese typhoon. Our NSLI-Y group is in the middle of our two-week summer Chinese class at Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages, but Monday’s classes have been cancelled due to weather. It’s my two-week anniversary of leaving Nashville, and my host family and I braved the rain to eat steamed dumplings for breakfast, and I'm currently listening to the howling wind. Today we made mango tea jelly and watched a Chinese-dynasty soap opera.
This is an appropriate time for rhetorical and concrete questions. Who am I? What am I doing in Kaohsiung, 13 hours away from my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee? Do you speak Chinese? What have you been doing? How’s the food? Is Thai food Taiwanese? (No.) How’s your host family? Do they speak English? Do you have Facebook? Do you like your school? Do you like Taiwan?
Hopefully, through blogging, I’ll be able to answer some of these questions. I love a lot of people in the United States, and I don’t want to lose touch during my year abroad. Despite the rain and wind, Taiwan is sweet! I’m no longer jet-lagged and my adventure’s begun.
Two weeks ago today, I left Nashville crying; flying to NYC for my IEARN orientation, I was packed for my year in Taiwan. I met my fellow NSLI-Y scholarship students. The girls bonded, and I was impressed when I discovered Nora’s mom had made the Taiwanese flag into a bumper sticker.
Nora: “She hoped. She applied. She went.”
In New York, we had our final supper at a 中國restaurant in Chinatown. Wednesday morning, we drove to the airport as we (we at this point is just the girls, our two NSLI-Y boys were silent) sang Taylor Swift’ s “Mean” and the Dixie Chicks “Wide Open Spaces”.
Our airplane flew about 15 hours from Newark, New Jersey to Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Continental only has so many episodes of “Cougar Town” and “Man vs. Food” (man wins), but eventually we landed. From Hong Kong, we flew on to our final destination: Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
FYI: There are over 650 summer, semester, and year NSLI-Y scholarship given to young people between 15-18.5 annually in critical languages such as Arabic, Hindi, Korean, Farsi, Mandarin, ect. NSLI-Y scholarships were established in the Bush administration in an effort to better prepare America’s young people for an increasingly more global world. From a national perspective, it probably makes more sense to teach Chinese or Arabic in our nation’s high schools; however, it’s more likely that US students have opportunities to learn Latin or French. English is a core class in the Asian curriculum.
The beautiful, semi-tropical island of Taiwan! Upon arrival, we immediately went to a hotel and crashed. The next day, fueled more by adrenaline than sleep, we went to Wenzao for our tour and press conference. NSLI-Y stands for National Security Language Initiative for Youth; our group is on a full NSLI-Y scholarship for a year abroad in order to study Mandarin Chinese. Therefore, the U.S. State Department through the NSLI-Y scholarship pays our way (and found our student travel company, IEARN).
At Wenzao, we dressed up as students, and I met my host sister, Jubbie!
We have a second orientation from our Kaohsiung hotel with our Taiwanese contacts from IEARN. I learned in Asia, you don’t open your gifts upon receiving them, but wait until the giver is no longer present (in order to not look greedy), and that toilet paper should be thrown in the trash rather than the toilet.
On the 20th, Jubbie and her mom pick me up and move me into their apartment. On the 16th floor overlooking the city, it’s quite a change from my house in Green Hills. To shower in the morning, I use a hose in the bathroom. Jubbie’s grandmother hand-washes laundry on the weekends and hangs it out to dry. I’m glad I’ve lifeguarded, because not only is Taiwan hot, but air-conditioning is scattered. It’s humid too (but let’s be real, so is Nashville).
My lifestyle changes from going to the US to Taiwan are somewhat dramatic, but it didn’t take long to realize I couldn’t have gotten a better host family. My host sister, Jubbie, is 18 like me. Through pre-Taiwan emails, I knew that she studied Spanish and belly-danced. Through living together, all I can say is that I’m incredibly blessed to have someone who’s a generally awesome person. She’s already helped our group order dumplings, navigate Kaohsiung’s public transportation, and been sensitive and helpful to our groups needs as we struggle to adapt. I’m looking forward to a year of adventures.
I’ll have to have an entire entry devoted to food and other cultural differences. It’s easier to find a karaoke joint in Kaohsiung than it is to find a church in the South.
Right now, our group of NSLI-Y students is taking a summer Chinese class, waiting for the semester to start on September 5. Wenzao has around 10,000 students with a thriving population of foreigners that come to learn Chinese. As NSLI-Y brought 5 students to Wenzao, we’re excited for the upcoming semester.
When I received my host family information, Jubbie described her family as “small, but lovely,” and I agree. I live with Jubbie and her mom, “Ya-Shu Mammy”. It’s really cool to live in a family of women after growing up with four brothers. Jubbie helps me (who speaks very little Chinese) communicate with her mom (who doesn’t speak English). It’s my responsibility to learn Chinese, and I can already see myself improving.
Though it’s only been two weeks, I’ve already had some pretty cool experiences. This weekend, I went to the beach with the NSLI-Y girls and Jubbie. We were doing some shopping…when something caught our eye. We looked to our left, and we saw a sign: “Modern Toilet Ice Cream.” Upon exploration, we learned that “Modern Toilet Ice Cream” was soft serve in a pink, plastic squatty potty. Aside: this could be huge on US college campuses
Taiwan is sweet. I'm learning Chinese and having fun!
