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Day 13-Anddd That's a Wrap! Eee

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 At last, what seemed like a day so far away has finally come: our departure back to Los Angeles. While we are happy to return, see friends and family, and sleep in our own beds, it’s a bittersweet feeling because a part of us will forever be in Taiwan. Today, our last day, we woke up and finished any last-minute packing and sweeps through the hotel rooms (with some items still left behind). Afterwards, we headed to a local bakery for a DIY pineapple cake lesson. We tossed around the dough in flour, filled it with tasty filling, and designed our cakes with cute cat faces; although some of the faces looked nothing like cats, one lesson we have learned throughout this trip is that what matters most is not where you end up, but the journey that brings you there. Our group then travelled 30 minutes to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, where we were all impressed by the sheer size and beauty of the architecture. As we navigated the halls with Vincent, a name we are sure you all know by...
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Day 12- One More Day Left...

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     We started off our day early at 8:30 to head towards the Lin family house, a traditional house in Wanhua (a district of Taipei) that has stood for centuries. We took the metro to get to the house, as we learned that bus drivers require 10 hours of rest before working, and as we ended the day yesterday very late, it hadn’t been 10 hours since the previous night. Because it was rush hour in the morning, the subway was packed. However, despite the subway trains being packed, the subway was extremely quiet. Unlike subways and crowded places back home in America, the subway in Taiwan was really quiet, which was surprising. After arriving at the Lin family house, we noticed that the bottom two floors of the traditional house were a Starbucks. At Starbucks, I (Ryan) tried a matcha to see if the flavors were different despite the company being the same. However, it tasted almost exactly the same. At the Lin Family House, we learned that houses typically faced their worship...
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Day 11 - Parks and Fishing

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       We started our day off bright and early at 8:30 and headed straight to our hotel's delicious breakfast. After we finished eating breakfast at our hotel, we hopped on the bus and headed to Ye Liu geography park. This breathtaking landscape included unique rock formations overlooking the beautiful pacific ocean. At the park, we also met up with some students from Chihlee University of Technology and shared many conversations. As we wrapped up our visit to Ye Liu park, we ate a delicious lunch with the college students overlooking the ocean. After our delectable lunch filled with dishes of mapo tofu, watercress, popcorn shrimp, and many other scrumptious dishes, we headed on to the port to learn about crab cages. These specialized enclosures made out of mesh with a four-sided pyramid shape are used to lure and capture crabs for seafood consumption. The strategy the trap uses is a natural scavenging sequence in marine ecology–a perfect fishing technique. When bait...
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Day 10 - Art, Hoops, and Eats

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  大家好! Kalyx and Jack are here to enlighten all viewers about our 10th day in Taiwan!      Today we started off with a slightly later, but still quite early wake up call of 7:30am. Surprisingly, all of us made it to breakfast and were prepared for yet another amazing day in the lobby by 9:20am (No sorry notes for morning tardiness today!! 💯🔥). After leaving the hotel, we packed into our bus with our professional driver, Mr. Anthony, and our great guide, Vincent, and headed to the Taiwan National Palace Museum. At the museum, we plugged in ancient (early 2000s) headphones and proceeded on a tour that explained the history of Chinese art throughout the different dynasties. After the Chinese Civil War, the Kuomintang (KMT) government brought many artworks and artifacts to Taiwan that show the evolution of Chinese art through the ages. One really interesting item among all of the intricately painted pottery was an ivory ball that was carved into 23 layers!   ...
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Day 9 - Bye Bye FuZhong!

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大家好! This is Cavon and Mira excited to tell everyone about our ninth day (last one digit day 🥹) in Taiwan. This morning began with another early 6:00 AM wakeup call before we all groggily made our way down for breakfast in our hotel. After some great food we all walked through the rain and Xiqian subway station to get to our bus and head over to FuZhong for our last day of exchange.                                    Once we got there, we were immediately greeted with a class that combined biology with English literature. Each of the students were split up into groups of four, and they presented on the different environments and habitats found within Taiwan. We learned how Taiwan has environments across almost every category—from tundra to sand dunes—and became familiarized with some of the wildlife in southern Taiwan (where we haven’t traveled to). But, the twist for this activity was that we w...
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Day 8 - First Full Day in Taipei

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  大家好! This is Caralee and Ryan clocking into our first full day in Taipei!      We started the morning with our earliest wake up call at 6:00 AM followed by a delicious breakfast in the hotel lobby consisting of boiled eggs, bananas, and a cinnamon roll breakfast sandwich. We then piled into the bus for a 40 minute drive to FuZhong, but traffic made the bus ride even longer. We were all full of anticipation because after nearly 6 months of club meetings and multiple Padlet videos exchanged, we were finally meeting our FuZhong exchange students. As soon as we pulled into the school parking lot, we could see a large group of students, smiling, waving, and warm with welcome. Stepping off of the bus, while some students immediately found their student and rushed in to give hugs, I (Caralee) was a little more hesitant as I didn’t immediately find my partner student. But as soon as I recognized my two exchange students, I was immediately filled with excitement to finally ...
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Day 7 - Totally Tubular Trip - from Toucheng to Taipei

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大家好！You guessed it. It’s your favorite, Momo and Russell.  We have officially crossed the halfway mark! Seven days into the trip, and it's safe to say that we are all ready to cancel our flights back home and stay here permanently in Taiwan. Today was packed, yet again, with exciting cultural activities, starting with a slightly difficult wakeup call at 6:30 (We slept for another 30 minutes) 😩 . We woke up in the Toucheng leisure farm, had a traditional breakfast while conversing with some of the locals honing our Chinese skills, and then all piled onto the bus to head to the Yilan Cultural Center. I (Momo) must be honest and say that while I loved the Toucheng farm with all my heart, I was kind of glad to leave behind the gargantuan spiders that looked as though they were made in a military lab.  After a 40 minute bus ride by some beautiful scenery of the ocean and getting to know someone better that we didn’t talk to much on the trip, we arrived at the cultural center,...
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