I am bound... for Beijing

Hello again. And welcome to Round 2 of my travel blog. This time I am part of the MSU BIT exchange program for the spring 2011 semester. That means that I am going to Beijing, China for the next five months. I will be a fully enrolled student in the business center of BIT or 北京理工大学 (The Beijing Institute of Technology). The Spring semesters in China lasts from early March to early July; that means that I will have a full class-load and a lot of opportunities to meet people.

As of now I am busy packing everything I can think of to get my bags ready for the trip. It wouldn't be so bad if I could have enough foresight to know what I will be needing in June. Even so, I am pretty excited to have the opportunity. It turns out that I am one of the two students going to BIT from MSU. Charlie (the other student from MSU) and I are the first students in this new exchange program. Needless, to say this means that there are bound to be some funny stories on this blog later on. We both know a moderate amount of Mandarin (Chinese), but there is still a lot of room for improvement.

So, logistically I leave Tuesday the 22nd and arrive in Beijing on the 24th via Los Angeles, CA and Inchon, South Korea. I am actually looking forward to the flight. It seems I have a thing for trans-oceanic flights where all I have to do is read and watch movies. The flights aren't so bad if you look at them that way I guess. Plus, all the free time will give me plenty of opportunity to think about all the stuff I need to do on my arrival.

I hope you guys are able to tune into this blog once in a while. I'll update as needed, and I'll definitely respond to any comments/requests you guys leave. I look forward to it!

Flight Back

So I am officially back in the States. I left Taiwan Sunday morning and arrived in Memphis via Tokyo and Houston around 5 p.m. Sunday. ( Yes the time difference made Sunday a very long day for me). It was an uneventful flight, being old hat as it is. It really didn't seem to be too much trouble at all. As it stands now, I am doing well and preparing my things for moving up to Starkville, MS for my internship near MSU. It is a funny thing, because while I am doing all of this preparing sometimes I get hit with a 3 or 4 hour jetlag nap. It hits me like a brick wall and there is no stopping it. But, such is the result of long distance traveling. I don't mind it too much.

So this Semester I will be working at Garan Manufacturing and studying Mandarin heavily on the side. This means Grammar, TV Shows, and Books (well what little books I can get my hands on anyway). There won't be too many reasons to post that kind of boring stuff, so there will be an interlude between now and when I start my Spring Semester in Beijing (that is in the planning stages with MSU, let's hope it goes well). Feel free to check back periodically, as I might update everyone on that process.

To Wrap things up I will be putting up some final photos that I wasn't able to post before I left Taiwan. Some of them may be random but most will be from the final days of our Country Tour. I hope you enjoy them, and thanks for watching so far.

The Beach and Traveling

So we are currently traveling around the Island. We started from Taipei and have traveled south along the East Coast, which has really beautiful view and cliffs. From there we have taken some mountain passes through to the Western edge of the island. It is much more flat on that end but still just as beautiful. You would be surprised at how many fresh fruit trees are growing along the side of the road. Just as amazing are the views along every road of the trip. Maybe I haven't stressed that enough, but it seems like every five minutes we pass by another picturesque scene. I love mountains.

Really it has all seemed like a blur these past 4 days. We have traveled a lot and all of our events have seemed to blur together. Let me see if I can explain them so far.

Swallow Grotto- From the last post- Taiwan is known as an island with a lot of rain (twice as much as Seattle annually) Combined with mountains this makes for some intense rivers. One of these scenes is Swallow Grotto which is a 200 ft canyon carved by the river. It is gorgeous and has been my favorite so far.

Rafting- One day we too ourselves to a rafting adventure site. It was to be a 4 hour trip but due to the lack of seasonal rain the river was low. What was the result? The guides hooked us to their boats and tug-boated us through the rapids really fast. I submit that this is a much better way to do things.

Water Sports and the Beach- We stopped by a beach and took some rides on Jet-skis and inflatable rafts. It was really fun, but a couple of us got really sun-burned (not me though).

Visiting Cities- Most of our trip has taken us to some really neat cities around the island. Each has its own culture. It is really interesting to see the different cultural diversity. In the south there are much more indigenous tribes which make for a different cultural appeal. An example of this would be that most Native Taiwanese are Christian by decent, which is quite different from the mainly Buddhist mainland population, go figure. But still no matter where we go, we still get some very interesting looks, and yes it is still fun!

Oh, by the way. One might think that the events in this post sounds very far from educational to us students. But, again, we have had to use quite a lot of our conversational skills around town. We had some fun conversations with our rafting companions!

The East Coast and Swallow Grotto

We caught a couple of views from the swerving highway road. The road
wrapped around the mountain all the way along the East coast.

The sheer cliffs closer to Swallow Grotto made for some amazing pictures.
With the water being crystal clear and the clouds wrapping around the mountains,
it was perfect. 

GeoPark and JiuFen (Old City)

Since, Taiwan is an island there are a ton of beach front views to take in. In addition, there are also some really cool effects made by the ocean on the shoreline. One of these, attractions is the Geo park about an hour outside of Taipei County. Its main attraction is the erosion of different layers of sea-stone which results in these statue-like pillars. In fact, many have names like the "queen's head" or "donut." It was all very interesting, but most of it was sparsely enjoyed because we had such a heat spell that day. I suppose it was a combination of the lack of wind, the brightness of the sandstone, and the clear sun that made it so hot. It really didn't put us in too much of a mood to stand around and look at rocks. It was fun though.

Later on in the day we got out of the heat by walking around this quaint little village market. It was much more developed than just a village, but because it is built on a mountainside, it seems much smaller. They had a lot of really good stuff there. All of the things I like: calligraphy brushes, good street food, nice trinket shops, and even a really nice tea shop. Our group broke apart to look for different stuff, so I was accompanied by two of the Universities secretaries. They were both very sweet ladies who didn't speak much mandarin at all, which was great because I got to practice speaking a lot. We walked around and I asked them questions about this and that. I was wondering about the price of goods versus their quality at varying markets (souvenir stuff.. you know), when we came upon that great aforementioned tea shop. I really wasn't looking to by much, but when we arrived they let us sit and try about 5 different types of tea.

Cooked Snail

Most tea is divided into sections Black, Green, and Oolong (high mountain). Each has its own flavor and I prefer Green and Black. Oolong is usually too bitter for me, but the Oolong tea at this shop was perfect. Some tasted very similar to honey. So I bought some, and am very happy with the choice.

Bike Ride to the Bridge

So, Randomly our teachers here at NTPU will decide to take us on trips according to our interests. Sometimes they will recommend an activity or two based on what we have said in class ie) The previous hiking trip to WuLai was facilitated by our wonderful teachers. So this time they decided to take us on a nice lengthy biking trip. They talked around the office and a couple of the more experienced teachers lent us some bikes from the school and headed us on out to a town by the riverside. It was in fact quite a little ways off. It took us about 5 hours to get there and back. As usual it was the guys who were up to such an adventure. We alongside our equally active teachers set off. And let me tell you it was quite a trip
    I really think that Taiwan has some of the most
beautiful countryside I have ever seen. However, due to the small bike paths, speed, and not wanting to die-I did not take many pictures of said Beautiful Scenery. You will just have to trust me! But yes, Apparently the local government has spent quite a pretty penny on building these bike roads. They go right along the riverside and are very well kept. In fact there are quite a few legs of the journey that lead us through onion, grass, and rice fields. All of which are irrigated by the parallel flowing river. I really think it is quite something. Eventually we arrived to the destination-city just in time for a few pictures and dusk to set in. So we then hoped on our bikes (Mine was way too small- go figure) and headed back.
      Speaking of things too small, we had a coupe close calls with
some trucks on those little roads. (well the parts that weren't strictly bike paths). Everyone was fine, but it sure was a an experience to meet a firetruck on a one way street..haha. Even so, we all really had fun and appreciated the ideas by the teachers.
     Speaking of Teachers, this is one of them to the Right. Lan Rae is a sweetheart and about the most patient and enthusiastic person I know. She has taught english for about 20 years and is on her 2 year of teaching Mandarin to us english students. She must really love teaching because she put us with a lot of our stumbling through the language.

Thanks Rae!!!

Bookstores and Some Good Coffee

The needle in the haystack. A simplified bookstore. 

Perhaps some of you know a little bit about the Chinese language. The first thing to be aware of is that there is no such thing as an all encompassing thing as a "Chinese Language". It is in fact broken up into different dialects that vary from region to region. The largest two are Mandarin (What I study) and Cantonese (which is spoken in Southern China). For all effective purposes here, lets just stick to Mandarin.  Even with this one dialect there are several differences from region to region. One of the biggest differences is the use of its written characters. In Taiwan they use older and more traditional forms of writing characters. However, on the Mainland (China) the written language was simplified due to the Cultural Revolution. This means that while these two spoken languages may be very similar (they are not completely identical) there is quite a bit of difference in their respective written styles. For example, the word for "book" is shū, which is written in China as  书 and in Taiwan as 書. Pretty different no? They are pronounced and used the same way but the forms are quite different. Now, I won't lie to you. Most of the simplifications are quite intuitive, but getting to the point, this distinction makes it quite difficult for me to read books published in Taiwan. Thus I have been on a search for a simplified character bookstore. It has taken be 4 weeks, but I have finally found one (with the help of my teachers of course). I bought a couple of well needed books and have made sure I remember where it is for return visits. 

My classmate Rob with his classical
creeper look.

In other news, as we have been looking around our little town for new and exciting restaurants we have been surprised that the few unexplored ones are very good. One wouldn't think so, but there are quite a few good western style cafes hiding around town. These little Bistros have fresh baked goods and some very good coffee. It just so happens that the people in Asia love their sweets, and I (alongside my cup o'joe) completely agree. So a couple of guys and I have been hitting up these little cafes and enjoying some very nice and evenly priced treats.  

Now that Exams are over, (we finished the last of them this past Friday) we are having plenty of time on our hands. So, in the meantime before we go on our big trip around the island next week (Yes it is coming and I am excited) I expect us to take full advantage of some coffee and some warm conversations.