早上好 Taiwan!

Welcome one and all to your favourite Chilean Kiwi’s first Taiwan blog! This past week has been absolutely amazing and I can’t wait to share with you all what it has been like in this beautiful country. Let’s start with the arrival!

After a long 11-hour flight, we finally arrived around 5 pm in Taoyuan to an expectingly not cold BUT! dark area? This was quite the shock to me, that it was already getting dark at 5 pm after being in Auckland and having the sun set around 9 pm. It was a little disappointing as we weren’t able to really grasp the beauty of Taiwan, but as they say in mandarin “没关系!” We have six amazing weeks to see this wonderful country 🙂

Group selfie <3
Our first dinner!
As we are staying in Tainan (the south of Taiwan) we had to take a 5-hour bus ride from the north to arrive at our hotel and new temporary home for the next week. Getting on the bus and driving on the right side was almost comforting; after a recent holiday in South Korea it felt very familiar to be back in a similar country and, thankfully, not have to be too overwhelmed by the differences. Our 5-hour bus ride went by quickly by napping most of the time, as it was already 12 am when we arrived at our hotel. I will have to say that this hotel was really so comfy to be in for the past week. My roommate Maia and I spent a lot of fun quality time together, and luckily enough, our hotel was placed in such a good area of Tainan! We had access to many cute side restaurants where we bought our cheap, yummy dinners most nights. I’m not going to lie, I absolutely love the money difference between New Zealand and Taiwan; I feel so rich here!
My language buddy and I had to do a challenge of finding specific characters around NCKU
Dinner at the night market!
The night market was packed with locals
The first proper day we had here was Friday where we spent most of the day going onto the NCKU campus, checking out our classes and meeting our new language buddies! I was lucky enough to be given a language buddy who I’ve really clicked with. She’s such an amazing person and we’ve already spent some time together, with her showing me some fun places around Tainan, especially good food places. After Friday we had the whole weekend to walk around and explore, so as a group we went out and ventured around Tainan. Saturday we spent looking around a really nice mall called Shin Kong Mitsukoshi. It was so big and fancy! However a little too expensive for my budget haha:,) Later that night we went to a night market, my first ever night market!! It was so amazing to walk around and smell the tasty but superrrr cheap food stalls everywhere, and all the cute little stores with jewellery and clothes! I got tempted way too many times to buy lots of cute things, so I did end up giving in to some jewellery and hair accessories hehe oops.

Sunday we went to this adorable cute cafe that Simonah’s buddy showed us; it was like a dream place! I’m such a huge cat person and being away from my cats at home has been challenging, but this place was really amazing. Did you know that cat cafés originated in Taiwan? There are so many of them here! Later that day, Maia and I went for a stroll around the area near our hotel and found a beautiful lake with a Christmas tree and a bridge with neon lights. It was just so fun to walk around at night and see all the small shops and lights everywhere; I love the night culture here in Tainan!

Monday was our first official day at NCKU, and to be very honest with you all it was harder than I expected, but that’s OK! I’ve decided to take it as a challenge and try my best to make the most of all these materials around me, being in Taiwan and utilising my Chinese skills the best I can. It’s been really fun to feel like an exchange student and walk around the university here; NCKU is such an amazing campus with so many beautiful flowing trees everywhere and even a pond with turtles!!

A store gave us free light-up headbands!
Anping Tree House
It was too hot that day
People put locks on a tower here!
Cute group photo under the pretty tree
Pretending to hang off the ledge?

Most of the weekdays were the same: go to university for classes, explore around Tainan after, find cheap & tasty food, and take a cheeky nap back at the hotel as it has been a little hard to adjust to the time difference here (Taiwan is 5 hours behind New Zealand.) We finally got to move into the Ching-Yeh dorms on Friday morning and start setting up our new home for the next five weeks! It was so exciting to see how our rooms looked, what we had access to near the dorms, and what facilities we had inside them. Maia and I have tried our best to decorate our room and make it feel homely. I even went to buy a little Christmas tree and some lights to get into the Christmas feels; I think it has made our room so cute! (I’ll add a picture in my next blog). Later that day, on Friday, we also got to have our first school excursion, which was a half-day trip to Anping. It was really awesome to walk around the area, have a tour guide tell us the history of Anping Tree House, and then walk through some streets in the dark while looking at cute tourist stores and tasty food stalls.

Well, I think that’s enough babbling for this week’s blog. Keep an eye out for my next one, as I have so much more to show and talk about! Stay cool gamers <3

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