The last thing on the agenda was sushi–an incredible amount of sushi. I ate so much that I felt like I was going to turn into a salmon and swim away, and somehow managed to eat more.
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves today. Enjoy!
Sunday, March 10, 2024
Spring Break in Taiwan: Day 3
Today was a blur of car rides through pineapple and tea leaf fields and amazing amounts of food. We had a wonderfully leisurely morning, followed by my favorite Taiwanese breakfast, Danbing (eggs wrapped in soft, crepe-like pastry). We drove through the outskirts of Tainan to a dam just outside of Sun Moon Lake, where we explored a hillside town full of shops and restaurants. I have never eaten more food in such a short amount of time: Taiwanese hamburger (soft bread and pork with scallions), Taiwanese sausage, a sweet pastry tasting almost like roti chini, oolong icecream, and more I can’t remember. Simone and I windowshopped, and talked about the amazing appreciation here for cute things, which I sorely have missed in America. After the hillside town, we went to a traditional porcelain ceramics studio/shopping experience, where Simone, myself, and our host siblings made wheel pottery (thankfully, right before this trip, my ceramics class got to wheel throwing, so I managed to simultaneously make a presentable pot and impress my host parents. Thank you Rhys). The pottery at this place was genuinely gorgeous, and gave me an itch to get back in the Park studio.
The last thing on the agenda was sushi–an incredible amount of sushi. I ate so much that I felt like I was going to turn into a salmon and swim away, and somehow managed to eat more.
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves today. Enjoy!
The last thing on the agenda was sushi–an incredible amount of sushi. I ate so much that I felt like I was going to turn into a salmon and swim away, and somehow managed to eat more.
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves today. Enjoy!
Spring Break in Taiwan: Day 2 Photo Bomb
Here's a ton of photos from day 2, courtesy of my host family!
Spring Break in Taiwan: Tainan's 400th Anniversary
I woke up in my host family’s apartment to the rising sun and Taichung skyline. Despite initial superficial similarities, this city is very different from Gaoxiong. For one, there are so many more cars. Where I lived in downtown Gaoxiong, very few people had cars—most rode mopeds or public transport and parking lots were nonexistent (as weird as that sounds). It makes me wonder what plays into cities being built to accommodate cars vs public transport. Most cities I’ve seen in the US are car cities. But Taiwan is much smaller than the US and it’s super interesting to see such a small country have cities built with such different transit goals. In Taichung, I’ve only seen a few bus stops, the roads are wider, and there are actual parking lots. Parking lots!
The stars seem to have aligned perfectly for this trip, because at 9am our host family told us the plan was to move to another city for the weekend to see the local once-a-year lantern festival and celebrate the 400th anniversary of the city. So Simone and I packed up our temporary setup and headed to our new, more temporary home in the historic heart of Taiwan, Tainan. I actually was briefly in Tainan for NSIL-Y last summer, where we visited the oldest Confucius temple in Taiwan. Beyond that, we didn’t venture far into the city, so I was excited to see more.
Breakfast on the way to Tainan was 燒餅油條, a dish made of my favorite Taiwanese bread, youtiao, wrapped in scallions, sweet and sour hot sauce with chili chips, and a sesame wrapped pastry. Every type of person waited in line with us—from people in suits, to pajamas, and day clothes. We made a pit stop to introduce Simone to the amazing Taiwanese 7-11s (“they’re so clean”). Back on the road, our host mom’s playlist is a mix of romantic Chinese rock, Imagine Dragons, a bunch of rap songs Tyler loves (think kid LAROI, Stay, Mood), and American pop from the 2010s.
After arriving at our home-away-from-home-away-from-home, I ate my new favorite Taiwanese fruit, wax apples (fun fact: native to Malaysia), and watched Simone and Rex play basketball, and later, horse. Some things transcend language.
Before hitting the town and lantern festival, I should mention the weather. I’ve been living under the assumption that not only is all Taiwanese weather the same as the most southern city where I lived last summer, but also in a perpetual state of June heat and humidity. This could not be further from the truth. So I unhappily had to commit the egregious aesthetic sin of socks and sandals.
We were on our way to the festival when, in classic Violet fashion, I realized I had forgotten to tell my NSLI-Y host family I was back in Taiwan. I reached out to them, and coincidentally they were headed to the same area after the lantern festival to visit Tainan’s largest night market. We coordinated (with my broken mandarin failing me, gave the reins to my Taizhong host mom) to meet at the night market after the festival!
An hour out of the festival, we stopped to try a locally delicacy, whose name is long forgotten to me. It was a sort of fishy rice pudding with chunks of pork. Not my cup of tea, but I gave it a shot and mostly ate around the fish goo. My host family implicitly agreed that there’s usually a reason regional delicacies are regional, except for Simone who enjoyed it a lot. I realize again I forgot to take a picture and this time can’t make the excuse that I ate it too fast. Sorry y’all. Next to the festival there was a street side market (really another night market, but instead of in a parking lot like area, it was built into the surrounding streets), where we walked around and ate a ton of Taiwanese desserts (all whose names I don’t know): coffee boba, tiny fluffy chocolate pancakes, strawberries covered in melted sugar, crumbly peanut pastry the texture of baklava, and by far my least favorite, shrimp cakes—which had the same texture as crispy rice waffles with the unfortunately strong flavor of shrimp.
Munching on deserts, we walked to the cities’ harbor, which looks comfortably like the Baltimore Inner harbor, but cleaner. We then walked through a huge park filled with playgrounds, trees, light up sculptures, and ancient stranger fig trees. Before the festival show, we sat to watch several dance performances, ranging from a quick diablo show to a longer, more interpretive dance which I think was about an identity crisis in the face of extreme culture shock of moving West.
The festival show was truly a spectacle worth waiting for. It started off with a literal bang, a fireworks show that would have rivaled Fourth of July in Cross and ended with a drone show that made my night and would have made Grandpa Bulldog’s, too.
Lastly, we went to (you guessed it) another night market, the largest in Tainan, where we got dinner and met up with my host family from the summer. The parents immediately hit it off, talking about the program I am in now vs. NSLI-Y. While the kids were shy at first, they ended up warming up and gifted me a Starbucks cup and a new capibara keychain for my bag. Shoutout to An Bo (Ian, one of my NSLI-Y friends), they are so excited for you to return to Taiwan for college and want me to do the same.
Back at home, I am super tired, and very happy to be back inside after a long day out. My final note for the day is that my Mandarin really is coming back to me, and I’ve had several moments today where I seemingly pulled phrases and words from nowhere. I’m not sure if it’s Taiwan or the immersion or (hopefully) the food, but there’s something wonderful and satisfying about suddenly remembering how to say “we don’t have to buy more food if you don’t want to”.
Thank you and goodnight, and for most of you, have a good rest of your day!
 |
| Road trip!! |
The stars seem to have aligned perfectly for this trip, because at 9am our host family told us the plan was to move to another city for the weekend to see the local once-a-year lantern festival and celebrate the 400th anniversary of the city. So Simone and I packed up our temporary setup and headed to our new, more temporary home in the historic heart of Taiwan, Tainan. I actually was briefly in Tainan for NSIL-Y last summer, where we visited the oldest Confucius temple in Taiwan. Beyond that, we didn’t venture far into the city, so I was excited to see more.
Breakfast on the way to Tainan was 燒餅油條, a dish made of my favorite Taiwanese bread, youtiao, wrapped in scallions, sweet and sour hot sauce with chili chips, and a sesame wrapped pastry. Every type of person waited in line with us—from people in suits, to pajamas, and day clothes. We made a pit stop to introduce Simone to the amazing Taiwanese 7-11s (“they’re so clean”). Back on the road, our host mom’s playlist is a mix of romantic Chinese rock, Imagine Dragons, a bunch of rap songs Tyler loves (think kid LAROI, Stay, Mood), and American pop from the 2010s.
 |
| Youtiao breakfast stop!! |
After arriving at our home-away-from-home-away-from-home, I ate my new favorite Taiwanese fruit, wax apples (fun fact: native to Malaysia), and watched Simone and Rex play basketball, and later, horse. Some things transcend language.
 |
| Mochi/red bean paste, wax apples, ba la (guava) |
Before hitting the town and lantern festival, I should mention the weather. I’ve been living under the assumption that not only is all Taiwanese weather the same as the most southern city where I lived last summer, but also in a perpetual state of June heat and humidity. This could not be further from the truth. So I unhappily had to commit the egregious aesthetic sin of socks and sandals.
We were on our way to the festival when, in classic Violet fashion, I realized I had forgotten to tell my NSLI-Y host family I was back in Taiwan. I reached out to them, and coincidentally they were headed to the same area after the lantern festival to visit Tainan’s largest night market. We coordinated (with my broken mandarin failing me, gave the reins to my Taizhong host mom) to meet at the night market after the festival!
An hour out of the festival, we stopped to try a locally delicacy, whose name is long forgotten to me. It was a sort of fishy rice pudding with chunks of pork. Not my cup of tea, but I gave it a shot and mostly ate around the fish goo. My host family implicitly agreed that there’s usually a reason regional delicacies are regional, except for Simone who enjoyed it a lot. I realize again I forgot to take a picture and this time can’t make the excuse that I ate it too fast. Sorry y’all. Next to the festival there was a street side market (really another night market, but instead of in a parking lot like area, it was built into the surrounding streets), where we walked around and ate a ton of Taiwanese desserts (all whose names I don’t know): coffee boba, tiny fluffy chocolate pancakes, strawberries covered in melted sugar, crumbly peanut pastry the texture of baklava, and by far my least favorite, shrimp cakes—which had the same texture as crispy rice waffles with the unfortunately strong flavor of shrimp.
 |
| A poor excuse--sorry |
 |
| Start of the market |
 |
| Simone (the only other Park student allergic to cats, and therefore we share a host family)! |
 |
| Streetside market |
Munching on deserts, we walked to the cities’ harbor, which looks comfortably like the Baltimore Inner harbor, but cleaner. We then walked through a huge park filled with playgrounds, trees, light up sculptures, and ancient stranger fig trees. Before the festival show, we sat to watch several dance performances, ranging from a quick diablo show to a longer, more interpretive dance which I think was about an identity crisis in the face of extreme culture shock of moving West.
 |
| The inner harbor |
 |
| Light-up park |
The festival show was truly a spectacle worth waiting for. It started off with a literal bang, a fireworks show that would have rivaled Fourth of July in Cross and ended with a drone show that made my night and would have made Grandpa Bulldog’s, too.
 |
| Sunset in Tainan |
Lastly, we went to (you guessed it) another night market, the largest in Tainan, where we got dinner and met up with my host family from the summer. The parents immediately hit it off, talking about the program I am in now vs. NSLI-Y. While the kids were shy at first, they ended up warming up and gifted me a Starbucks cup and a new capibara keychain for my bag. Shoutout to An Bo (Ian, one of my NSLI-Y friends), they are so excited for you to return to Taiwan for college and want me to do the same.
 |
| Final night market |
Back at home, I am super tired, and very happy to be back inside after a long day out. My final note for the day is that my Mandarin really is coming back to me, and I’ve had several moments today where I seemingly pulled phrases and words from nowhere. I’m not sure if it’s Taiwan or the immersion or (hopefully) the food, but there’s something wonderful and satisfying about suddenly remembering how to say “we don’t have to buy more food if you don’t want to”.
Thank you and goodnight, and for most of you, have a good rest of your day!
Friday, March 8, 2024
Spring Break in Taiwan: Blogging Take 2
Last summer when I wrote a blog about my time in Taiwan, it didn’t really end how I wanted it to (or at all, really). The experiences I had in Taiwan were incredible, and I will forever fondly remember the people I met, the places I visited, and all the Chinese I learned, but the blog didn’t come together in a way that captured that meaningfulness.
However, due to my amazing high school (thank you Park), I not only get the chance to revisit one of my most favorite places and experience it in a new light, but also have a chance to continue (and conclude) my high school study abroad journey. So, in the coming ten days, here’s to consistency, and finally, sharing with you a satisfying Taiwan blog ending.
This trip started differently. Instead of a quick goodbye to Mom in BWI and meeting a cohort of unfamiliar faces from across the country, the Park Pack departed from the science wing and crawled through the turnpike up to New York’s JFK. (Fun fact: We are the Park “Bruins.” A group of bears is called a sloth, pack, maul, or sleuth, so I’ll be switching between those.) Thanks to the good company of the Park Sleuth and movie recommendations (Kill Bill–thanks Lucia), the drive went smooth. After checking bags and making it through security (with only a few items lost), the nine students and two teachers boarded the 17 hour flight. Departing the plane, going through Taiwanese customs, and picking up our bags was entirely normal, and also super strange, as it was the same setup as NSLI-Y. The whole situation didn’t even inspire deja vu levels of familiarity; it was just too exactly the same. We even boarded our bus to Taichung in the same parking lot, and listened to our wonderful guide Daphne tell us about Taiwanese culture and history through the bus’s built-in karaoke system.
It was jarring how quickly we were out of the US and thrown into Taiwan. In NSLI-Y, it felt like I was anticipating the switch, probably due to the all day two day orientation pre departure. But the switch here was like falling asleep in my home bedroom while packing and waking up at Hong Wen, our exchange school. And yes–we went directly from a full day at school to a 5 hour bus ride to a 17 hour plane ride to a 2 hour drive to our host school.
The first thing I noticed is how excited the Taiwanese students are to show us their school, with about four times as many Taiwanese exchange kids as us showing us around. The second thing was that everyone's English is really, really good. After a quick orientation, we split off into random groups and walked around the school, popping into classrooms, saying hi to students, and generally being the bubbly, walking circus act that teenagers become in new environments. Several members of the Park Maul had super sweet fangirls/boys ask for pictures and instagrams.
I ended up being bribed with a single piece of Toblerone chocolate to hang out with an awesome group of Taiwanese seniors. When the school took us to the local night market (at 1:30 in the afternoon), I hung out with this group. This ended up totally being the right call, as my claw machine skills were rusty at best and embarrassing at worst, and my new friends won me a new keychain for my purse. We celebrated with fried chicken, squid, potato-like starchy vegetables, fresh fruit, and more fresh fruit covered in melted sugar. Back at school, we Park Sleuths said our goodbyes, and Simone and I departed with our host family.
Our host family took us to a real (larger and actually at night) night market and bought us a ton more fresh fruit and some local Taiwanese desserts that I hadn’t seen before. As a side note, Simone and I need to look up the word for ‘share’, as somewhere the phrase ‘we’ll share one’ got lost in translation and our host mom generously bought almost double the food we could eat.
It was then on the car ride home that the jetlag really started to take effect. Simone and I spent the better part of twenty minutes elbowing each other out of sleep before our 7th grade host sister, Emma, took us out for late night caffeinated boba. After the caffeine started to set in, we enjoyed some of the best duck I have ever eaten, rolled into rice tortillas with a sweet and sour sauce.
Now, I’m sitting here, finishing off my midnight boba and wax apples, and thinking about how amazing it will be to shower and get out of the clothes that I’ve been wearing for the last 40 hours. I’m excited to say that even early into this trip, I am proud of how much Mandarin I’ve maintained. And I’m super excited to see where the next week will take me and the Park Sleuth’s.
I think I’ll go take that shower now.
However, due to my amazing high school (thank you Park), I not only get the chance to revisit one of my most favorite places and experience it in a new light, but also have a chance to continue (and conclude) my high school study abroad journey. So, in the coming ten days, here’s to consistency, and finally, sharing with you a satisfying Taiwan blog ending.
 |
| My favorite Taiwanese sign so far |
This trip started differently. Instead of a quick goodbye to Mom in BWI and meeting a cohort of unfamiliar faces from across the country, the Park Pack departed from the science wing and crawled through the turnpike up to New York’s JFK. (Fun fact: We are the Park “Bruins.” A group of bears is called a sloth, pack, maul, or sleuth, so I’ll be switching between those.) Thanks to the good company of the Park Sleuth and movie recommendations (Kill Bill–thanks Lucia), the drive went smooth. After checking bags and making it through security (with only a few items lost), the nine students and two teachers boarded the 17 hour flight. Departing the plane, going through Taiwanese customs, and picking up our bags was entirely normal, and also super strange, as it was the same setup as NSLI-Y. The whole situation didn’t even inspire deja vu levels of familiarity; it was just too exactly the same. We even boarded our bus to Taichung in the same parking lot, and listened to our wonderful guide Daphne tell us about Taiwanese culture and history through the bus’s built-in karaoke system.
 |
| Baggage claim |
 |
| The place my NSLI-Y cohort took our first photo |
It was jarring how quickly we were out of the US and thrown into Taiwan. In NSLI-Y, it felt like I was anticipating the switch, probably due to the all day two day orientation pre departure. But the switch here was like falling asleep in my home bedroom while packing and waking up at Hong Wen, our exchange school. And yes–we went directly from a full day at school to a 5 hour bus ride to a 17 hour plane ride to a 2 hour drive to our host school.
 |
| Drive to school |
The first thing I noticed is how excited the Taiwanese students are to show us their school, with about four times as many Taiwanese exchange kids as us showing us around. The second thing was that everyone's English is really, really good. After a quick orientation, we split off into random groups and walked around the school, popping into classrooms, saying hi to students, and generally being the bubbly, walking circus act that teenagers become in new environments. Several members of the Park Maul had super sweet fangirls/boys ask for pictures and instagrams.
I ended up being bribed with a single piece of Toblerone chocolate to hang out with an awesome group of Taiwanese seniors. When the school took us to the local night market (at 1:30 in the afternoon), I hung out with this group. This ended up totally being the right call, as my claw machine skills were rusty at best and embarrassing at worst, and my new friends won me a new keychain for my purse. We celebrated with fried chicken, squid, potato-like starchy vegetables, fresh fruit, and more fresh fruit covered in melted sugar. Back at school, we Park Sleuths said our goodbyes, and Simone and I departed with our host family.
 |
| Park and Hong Wen students |
Our host family took us to a real (larger and actually at night) night market and bought us a ton more fresh fruit and some local Taiwanese desserts that I hadn’t seen before. As a side note, Simone and I need to look up the word for ‘share’, as somewhere the phrase ‘we’ll share one’ got lost in translation and our host mom generously bought almost double the food we could eat.
It was then on the car ride home that the jetlag really started to take effect. Simone and I spent the better part of twenty minutes elbowing each other out of sleep before our 7th grade host sister, Emma, took us out for late night caffeinated boba. After the caffeine started to set in, we enjoyed some of the best duck I have ever eaten, rolled into rice tortillas with a sweet and sour sauce.
Now, I’m sitting here, finishing off my midnight boba and wax apples, and thinking about how amazing it will be to shower and get out of the clothes that I’ve been wearing for the last 40 hours. I’m excited to say that even early into this trip, I am proud of how much Mandarin I’ve maintained. And I’m super excited to see where the next week will take me and the Park Sleuth’s.
I think I’ll go take that shower now.
 |
| Me and Simone in our room |
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