A Year of Memories: My First Month in Taiwan

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 the past month, I’m going to work my best to summarize it into four.

After braving the fourteen hour flight from San Francisco to Taipei, where I was blessed with two empty seats to myself, the cohort stepped into the humid, Taiwan night both delirious and filled with excitement. Taiwan’s Western coastline, home to the vast majority of the population, boasts a complex network of High Speed Rail (高鐵) lines, so we quickly made our way across the dark countryside to Kaohsiung. Arriving at the city’s HSR station, we were quickly introduced to our local coordinator, Kai. Both Kai and Swegin (residential director who we met in San Fran) work for NSLI-Y to help coordinate trips, peer tutoring, direct finances, and more to help the program run smoothly. Arriving in Kaohsiung that first night, it felt homely hearing familiar voices in a completely new city.

Just ten hours after landing in Kaohsiung, I visited Wenzao for the first time to meet my peer tutors, learn from diplomats at the American Institute of Taiwan, and speak with other high ranking officials running the school. The first official phrase everyone learned was “Dà jiā hǎo!”（大號好), meaning “hello everyone,” and it has become a running joke to greet every new group on campus with a courteous “大號好!” (Despite the fact we couldn’t say anything beyond that at first). I think this being our first phrase of the year truly sets the tone to lead every conversation (despite being able to get your point across or not) with a smile and open heart. 

I’ve found that even the smallest conversations can lead to lasting friendships! One of my favorite aspects of Wenzao is how diverse the student body is. From random intersections waiting for the crosswalk to pingpong matchups, I’ve found friends from around Taiwan and the globe! I’ve met people and made friends from Spain, Vietnam, Indonesia, Belize, Guatemala, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, France, Sweden, the UK, Italy, Brazil, India, and counting. Sometimes the conversations are a mix of Mandarin and English, and sometimes they consist of a lot of google translate, but I’ve come to love laughing at our shared mistakes and translation errors. 

Chinese Culture Club Beach Clean Up, a Night on Lotus Lake, and the beach in Pintung!

Over the course of the first week, the ten of us NSLI-Y students piled into the back of our host families cars and spent countless hours exploring Kaohsiung and connecting with our families. My host family is a family of four, and I have two younger sisters (兩個妹妹) who study at a music school in Kaohsiung.

On my first day in Kaohsiung, my host family brought me to a Taiwanese hot pot restaurant. At first, I could barely say more than “I am American, I am 18 years old, and I am from North Carolina.” However, since then, my vocabulary has substantially improved to over 400 words! (Approximately 270 I can read and write from the textbook, and 130 more that I’ve learned through day to day conversation and translation). 

After one week of settling into Taiwan, our official classes began. Each day of the week, we begin with three hours of rigorous Chinese classes from 9 to 11 am. The incredible part about being in a cohort of 10 people is that there are only 7 people in my class! (the other 3 students being more advanced in Mandarin). On the first day, we were all assigned Chinese names, and the Chinese teacher at my high school in NC offered me the name “Mí Ruòxī” 米偌曦”, meaning “like the morning sun.” I immediately loved the name because, despite the extremely complex third character, Ruòxī has the same meaning as Zara! While writing“xī” still challenges me to this day, learning to write has been the most difficult and rewarding part of learning Chinese.

54 hours of traditional Mandarin later, class has finally become a consistent routine. Everyday, we start class with a 5-minute vocab quiz on over 20 new words assigned the night before. Taiwan day-to-day life revolves around traditional Mandarin characters instead of simplified characters which adds another level of complexity to writing. However, it also means that each characters has a complex meaning, which oftentimes makes the characters easier to remember in the long term. 

Alongside learning about Taiwanese culture through in-class readings and discussion, Kai and Swegin have organized countless trips throughout the year for the cohort. If you take the MRT 30 minutes from Wenzao and hop on a quick ferry ride, you can easily arrive at Cijin Island!  The first time I visited Cijin was with my friends, Andrew and Rachel, to explore the beach. The second time, it was a cohort trip to climb the old Cihou fort on the North shore of the island. Braving the blistering heat, we walked up a sloping hill to an open lookout area. After the Japanese expedition in 1874, the Qing authorities occupying Taian constructed a modern fort which still stands to this day. Alongside our beach excursions, Kai and Swegin have also taken us to Soushan, the national park next to Kaohsiung, to a local high school to make boba together, and to the National Parks Headquarters for the Mid-Autumn Festival. 

When I’m not in class, Practical Mandarin lessons, or Peer Tutoring, I typically spend my afternoons in club meetings. I’ve officially joined four clubs on campus: Calligraphy Club, Zonta International, Chinese Culture Club, and the Wenzao Debate Team. Otherwise, I’ve loved exploring Kaohsiung via running, studying at the library, or coffee shop hopping along the MRT and bus routes. Compared to the United States, Taiwan has incredible public transportation. Wherever I am in the city, there is typically a bus route or MRT line that gets me to my final destination within a 5-minute walk!

Furthermore, I’ve loved getting to spend time with new friends I’ve made throughout my stay. I recently visited the Kaohsiung circus with two Taiwanese students I met at Wenzao. I've played on the rooftop tennis court with friends from Spain and Taiwan, and I’ve spent countless evenings taking photos and playing games with my two host sisters. Having an incredible host family has been one of the best parts about my gap year so far. Dinnertime is oftentimes filled with chatter and laughter, and it’s become one aspect of each day I look forward to the most. 

After five weeks in the city, the NSLI-Y cohort finally escaped Kaohsiung to enjoy the Hear Here Festival in Hengchun, Taiwan. From beach walks and capybara farms to semi-submarines and folk music, Hengchun offered so much in a short, three-day weekend. However, that’s a story for another blog. 

Lastly, if there’s any one trait necessary to becoming a NSLI-Y scholar, it’s humility. A willingness to laugh at myself when I accidentally say I’m going to “sit” on the trash instead of “take” it out. To repeat phrases when I accidentally use the third tone instead of the fourth. To remain patient as I wait for my host grandmother to repeat phrases to Google Translate that aren’t processed the first time around. Even though I’ve only been in Kaohsiung for 5 weeks, it feels like a lifetime since I last said goodbye in Durham. As I wrote this post, I found myself wondering: why is that so? My hypothesis is that time stretches in proportion to how deeply you live it. When every day asks you to relearn how to speak, eat, and belong, the minutes swell with meaning. I can't wait to experience the next chapter of life in Kaohsiung!

All the best,

Zara