This weekend, the cohort took our first overnight trip outside of Kaohsiung, traversing the coastline to a small town in South Taiwan called Checheng (車城). The purpose? A five-day folk-rock concert which calls Checheng home!  As soon as we stepped foot into the quaint city, I was struck by the still, calm sounds of the ocean. Having not left Kaohsiung for the past 5 weeks, the faint drone of car honks and city life had become expected background noise. We were quickly escorte

Starting the second week I arrived in Taiwan, a slow trickle of mooncakes started arriving at my host family's living room table. It started with a simple gift package from a relative in Northern Taiwan, and it eventually turned into an entire stack of sweets piled onto the table's center.  One of my favorite desserts I’ve tried in Taiwan so far, mooncakes are a traditional Chinese pastry, typically come in a round shape, and are filled with red bean paste and egg yolk (somet

Last week , I was notified that my gap year officially hit the 40 day mark. Hearing this, I was astounded, to say the least. 47 days ago, I boarded a flight from North Carolina and stepped foot onto the West Coast for the first time in my life. Today, I’ve officially finished my 5th week of studying Mandarin Chinese at Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. While I could write a hundred blog posts describing moments my NSLI-Y cohort has cherished over t

This weekend, Riya and I took a three day trip down to the 2nd southernmost state in India: Kerala. I’m beyond grateful to the Kalluvila...

To kick off July, I spent the past week conducting interviews in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh. After five weeks of research, packing, and...

Over the past three weeks, since I was thrown into the day-to-day life of ICRISAT, I’ve slowly settled into a consistent schedule—...

Just last night, as a blue light illuminated my face, I got to bridge the 9 and a half hour time difference to call my family. Having not...

I don’t think I truly believed myself — that a summer of warmth, Telugu, and Hyderabad was right around the corner — until the plane...