Michael Wilson

2010-11 Outbound to Taiwan

Hometown: St. Augustine, Florida

School: Nease High School

Sponsor: Coastal St. Johns County Rotary Club, District 6970, Florida

Host: Touliu East Rotary Club, District 3470, Taiwan

Bio

Michael's Bio

Ni hao! That is hello in Mandarin Chinese, which is the main language of the country where my exchange is to be. Can you guess what it is? Next year I will be going half way around the world to stay in TAIWAN!!! I could not be more excited for the chance to live in such an exotic place.

My name is Michael Wilson and I am a very proud Canadian- born 16 year old young man. I moved to Pennsylvania shortly after I was born however, and then moved here to St. Augustine after living there for five years. I live with my mom and my three cats during the school year and in the summer I live with my dad who lives in Canada. I also have four half sisters that live in assorted places around the globe. I love traveling and have been to several different countries such as Guatemala, Malta, France, and Italy.

I am currently a sophomore at Allen D. Nease high school in Ponte Vedra. I’m in a special program called the International Baccalaureate program, IB for short. This program is designed to give me the most academically challenging classes that I can get. It can be very demanding at times but I enjoy challenges. That’s why I wanted to live abroad for a year and learn a new language and from what I’ve seen and heard, Mandarin is very difficult.

I have many hobbies such as reading and listening to music but sports are my real passion. Sports are practically my life. I play a sport in every school season (fall, winter, and spring) and what I can’t play at school; I play recreationally with my friends. I enjoy playing football, golf, tennis, basketball, table tennis, and lacrosse but soccer is my favorite sport and I have been playing it since I was five. I play for my school team and recently started playing goalie. If I wasn’t going to Taiwan I would be the starting Varsity goalie next year.

I would like to thank everyone at Rotary for giving me their support and allowing me the opportunity to be an exchange student. This will be one of the most important and exciting years of my life and I look forward to it with great anticipation.

September 5

Although I’ve only been here in Taiwan for about ten full days now, it feels like I’ve been here for a lifetime. I have done so much and I have so much to talk about that I don’t know if I’ll be able to say it all properly. Sorry if you’re here for hours reading about all of my fun adventures, that’s exchange for you.

Anyway, my adventure officially started on August 23rd but since my flight was at 6 am and they wanted me there three hours early, I never went to bed the day before. I was packing and repacking and making sure I had everything I needed (so far I do). So the day went by and by and eventually it became time to leave. Now let me say that I had NOT been nervous at any point before this time and it stayed that way. For some reason I wasn’t nervous or anxious or anything. I was simply ready to leave on what I thought would be another trip to another foreign country. What I’m saying is that I had done this all before. I’ve been to both Guatemala and Canada for months at a time so I suppose all those times had prepared me for this. The car ride there was just another two hour drive to the airport for me; one that I’d done countless times.

Well we arrived at the airport with like three hours of free time. My mom and I just sat in the rocking chairs by the security check-in and talked. The time went very slowly, it seemed, but it finally passed and it was time for me to go. I hugged my mom and she started crying. Honestly, I hadn’t been expecting it and I guess it kind of brought me back down to earth. People were going to miss me and I hadn’t really thought about it. I told my mom I’d be fine and I was on my way. I went through security without a problem and bought a White chocolate Mocha from Starbucks to keep me awake.

When I finally got on the plane, I still wasn’t nervous. Perhaps it was because I knew I had a 25 hour! trip ahead of me. That flight ended up being the most uncomfortable flight of my life for some reason. And what made matters worse was that the x-ray machine fried my iPod (it later turned out to be fine when I arrived in Tokyo) but either way this was not a good start to what was supposed to be the best experience of my life. When I arrived in Chicago I had a 5 and a half hour layover so I just wondered around and ate. I started to feel a little sleepy but I knew that if I fell asleep I would miss my flight so I got another White Chocolate Mocha from Starbucks. When I went to my gate to check in for my flight, I looked out the window and saw the biggest flipping plane I have ever seen in my life. It was a Boeing 747 (I think) and it was the size of like two regular planes put together. After I checked in and went into the plane, I saw the first class and business class seats. They could recline into beds and I was seriously jealous but when I sat down in my seat, I was more than satisfied with the amount of room that I had. I ended up sleeping for a good nine hours of the 12 hour plane trip so it didn’t feel that long. It was a much better flight than the first so I was in a good mood when we reached Tokyo. There I met up with another exchange student going to Taiwan and we explored the airport. I exchanged some money and bought some things but I kept the rest as a souvenir. They had some really nifty candy and cakes there that I couldn’t resist though.

After the two or so hours of our layover, we got on another Boeing 747 (again, I think) and departed for Taipei. This flight was only 3 and a half hours so it sailed by. Once we arrived I said goodbye to the other exchange student, her name was Erin, and went off to catch my connecting flight to Kaohsiung. Walking through the halls I realized I felt weird. Then I noticed it was because literally EVERYONE was staring at me. That’s when I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

The flight to Kaoshiung was only fifty minutes. I got off the plane at 11:30 Tuesday night and went toward the baggage claim, not knowing where I was to meet my family. I got my bags and wondered around a bit then decided I should try outside. As soon as I walked outside, I was hit by two things: a wall of humidity (literally) and the sight of like ten people holding a sign that said “Welcome Michael John Irwin WILSON”. I walked over to greet them and it turned out that it was my first three host families (I’m going to have four). I was nervous and dropped my bag and it hit the metal railing. Everyone started laughing and that calmed me down; I knew I’d be alright. After that we all got into two cars and drove for about an hour. We stopped at a 7/11 (they are honestly EVERYWHERE) to talk and get a drink. Then we drove the remainder of trip home, about 40 minutes. We pulled up in front of our home, which is almost like a town house. It is four stories and has houses connected on both sides. There are zero stand alone houses here unless it’s on a farm or like a restaurant or other business like that. Other than that every house is an apartment or town house like ours. No one has yards either. But anyway, they showed me my room which is very nice. It’s relatively large and has air conditioning, which is a godsend here. I only turn it on when I sleep though, the rest of the time we use fans. After they showed me my room, I conked out immediately.

The next morning I had expected to wake up after at least noon. I woke up completely rested at 7. That was only five hours of sleep. I organized my things, put my clothes in my dresser, and then went down to eat breakfast. I don’t remember what I had but chances are I didn’t like it to much. I don’t like most of the food that is served here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The desserts here are amazing though so that’s a plus.

After breakfast my dad took me to the Rotary office. There I met another exchange student who lives right above the office. Her name is Ammi and she is from Finland. I’ve spent a lot of time at that office and with Ammi since I’ve been here. I also met a girl named Finney. She is my Rotary club’s secretary’s daughter and she speaks English. She has helped me learn so much Chinese since I’ve been here including my favorite phrase “Yi bei jinju nai cha”, I will have one bubble milk tea.

The next day, I went to the Rotary office again and hung out with Ammi and Finney. They told me I had my first Rotary meeting later that day and that I would have to say a speech in Chinese. Luckily the speech was easy and it went over well. Rotary meetings here are a little different, mainly because I can’t understand anything. But they have it at night and they separate the president and vice president from the other people. They do most of the speaking. After all the important business is out of the way (or at least that’s what I think it is) we go eat dinner. Dinner is very different here in Taiwan. At home and pretty much everywhere, you get a bowl and there are several different dishes that are in the middle. You put rice in your bowl and eat what ever you want over it. Rice is served at every lunch and dinner, EVERYDAY. That’s what I’m pretty much living on. I try everything they ask me to, except something with meat (I’ve even tried that a few times) but I don’t like a lot of it.

The next few days were a lot of going to the Rotary office, hanging out with Ammi and Finney, and meeting people. On Saturday, Finney took me to the night market. Those are AMAZING! It was so cool although it was raining and only half the vendors were there. She kept buying me everything that I said looked good even if I insisted I pay. She wouldn’t even let me buy something for her. Needless to say, she is a very sweet person for doing this (and stubborn).

On Sunday, we had our district inbound orientation. There I met about 25 really cool people from around the world. That was also the first time I met the other exchange students from our town, Douliu: Marcio and Claudia. Marcio is from Brazil and is like 20 feet tall, literally. He’s easy to spot from a distance because he towers over everyone here. He’s quickly become one of my best friends here. Claudia is from Germany although she looks Brazilian (Marcio confirmed it). Later she said she liked my English accent and everyone agreed. I was flabbergasted that I had a pleasant accent. I never really though I had one but no one ever does. We all had to give a short three minute introduction of ourselves in Chinese and English. I was happy to find out that my Chinese was pretty good compared to the other students; only about three or four knew it better than I. Later we all got assigned a “nanny.” This is just a rotex who is supposed to check up on us every now and then and someone we can turn to if we need to help. I was assigned to a super cool girl named Jean who went to Illinois two years ago. She lives in Douliu too and I made her promise to show me around someday.

The following Wednesday (9/1) was our first day of school although I wouldn’t really call it that. We did literally nothing learning related all day. We cleaned the school, got our books, and elected class leaders. The most exciting thing all day was getting recruited into the paintball club. The next day was our real first day. We (Claudia, Marcio, Ammi and I) started off having Chinese for like three hours. The teacher doesn’t know English so they have this girl who just went to Brazil last year translate everything for us. After Chinese we convinced Laurenz (We are under his jurisdiction because he speaks English) to let us spend the rest of the day together. So that meant we didn’t have anymore classes. At around 12 we had lunch. Lunch in school is kind of like lunch at home. There are four big containers: one filled with rice, the rest filled with something new everyday. I ate mainly rice but they had a nice Chinese curry so I ate that too. After lunch we had to go get our uniforms. Our regular uniform is alright. The girls even get to where this cute skirt. But our sport uniforms (uniform we where on days we have PE) are legitimately the ugliest things ever. They consist of neon green pants and a polo shirt with the same green as the collar. At least everyone will look just as bad as me. We also got this cool satchel like backpack thing that everyone has to use.

On Friday our Chinese teacher thought it would be better if she showed us around Douliu some instead of school so we didn’t go to school. Instead we went shopping and ate lunch and went to this English school with really cool themed classrooms and met some random people. It was actually a really fun day, mainly because we didn’t have to go to school. So we really haven’t had a real day of school yet. I get to see what that’s like tomorrow.

On Saturday, the four of us exchange students hung out all day. We went shopping for a good part of the afternoon and I got my jinju nai cha (bubble milk tea). Then Claudia’s host father took us bowling. I was horrible. At one point I had thrown six gutter balls in a row. The bowling alley had a little rubber bullet target range that they let us use. I was much better at that. At the end Marcio and Claudia had one or two holes in the smallest 4 inch by 4 inch circle, while the circle on mine was completely shot out. Claudia’s host family and the attendants were calling me soldier afterward. We were supposed to go to the night market later that day with Jean but it got rained out which was unfortunate. It has rained every afternoon or night while I have been here. Luckily it’s usually at night when I don’t have to do anything.

I think today (Sunday) was the best day so far. My family surprised me by taking me out to this amazing place called Sun Moon Lake. On the way there were stopped in this town called Jiji and we went to the little carnival there. My Didi (little brother) and I played this baseball game and then went on the go-carts. I can honestly say I thoroughly trounced him hahah.

As I was reading over other journals the past few days I saw almost everyone talk about how homesick they were and how everything is so weird. I can’t say I’ve missed home at all since I’ve been here. I suppose all the times I went to Guatemala and Canada for extended periods of time have trained me differently. I did think that I would think everything over here would be weird and I’d freak out. I haven’t experienced that yet though. Every time I encounter something new, I feel that it’s just different, not weird.

All in all I could not be happier here in Taiwan. Aside from the ungodly humidity, everything is absolutely perfect here. I love all the attention I get and my host family and how open and friendly people here are. I can walk down the street and people will come up to me and comment on how “hen shuai” (very handsome) I am.

Well I suppose that is enough for my first entry. I will have many more to come so you can look forward to more outrageously long journals to read. Until then, Zaijian!      

Well, since my two month anniversary just passed, I felt like it would be a good time to write a journal. A lot has happened since I wrote my previous journal as it has been well over a month. Again I could go on and on for pages but I learned my lesson on the last journal; just keep it short and sweet.

There are some things however that I feel like I need to talk about a little more in depth that I missed in the last journal. The biggest most, important thing is my host family. Let’s just start off by saying I LOVE THEM! I live with my host mom, who I simply call Mama, my host dad, Baba, and my little brother, Didi. Oh and we just got a brand new host puppy that I’m super excited about, named Abui. He’s this little black thing that loves to bite my pant legs and shoes. My host dad works as a civil engineer which leads to his Rotary name, Civil. I don’t think my mom works since she’s pretty much always at home cooking or cleaning or something. My Didi is like 13 or 14 and is a junior high school student in town. Luckily he speaks a solid amount of English so whenever I have trouble saying what I want to, he can help me. We live in this four story house about five minutes car ride (ten minutes on bike) outside Douliu, which is where I hangout with my friends. The first floor or ground floor has the kitchen and the living room where we eat and watch tv. The second floor has both my Didi’s bedroom and mine. There’s also a bathroom that we share. The third floor has our parents’ room and a spare bedroom that they use for storage, I think. Lastly, we use the fourth floor for the laundry room and extra storage. My family has taken me to many exciting places and on some really fun trips. A few weeks ago, we went on this intense four hour bike ride through the nearby villages and mountains and just the other day they took me to my first ever baseball game.

I love dinners here. Not so much for the food but just how we eat them. We all sit at the main giant granite table in front of the TV to eat. My mom prepares rice and four to five different dishes every night ranging from assorted veggies to soup to meat things that I never eat. We fill our bowls with rice and then just use our chopsticks to pick and choose what we want. I cannot emphasize enough how big of a deal rice is over here. We have four rice cookers. I don’t know why we would need more than one but apparently we do. We also eat rice with every lunch and dinner we eat, even at school and out at restaurants. Rice is so common that the Chinese word for meal, Chifan (literally “eat rice”), is named after it. Oh and we use chopsticks for everything. If I don’t learn anything else at least I can say that I’ve mastered the use of chopsticks.

Another thing I missed was talking about my school. Its name is Yi Feng Gaojong or Yi Feng senior high school. It has about 1400 students which I thought was small at first compared to the 6 story building that is our school. When I asked why they said they wanted to have small class sizes. Well when I got to class the first day I found out I was one of 51 in it. It’s so large that I’m still finding new kids I don’t recognize. Not all the classes are this big, however; I think average is around 35ish. My class is unfortunately on the fifth floor (last one with classes. I think some kid died on the sixth floor so they stopped using it) so I have to walk up and down five flights of stairs 4-8 times a day, at least I’ll have ripped calves by then end of the year. School hours officially are from 7:40 to 5 every weekday but I catch my bus at 7 and don’t get home until 5:30. So you Floridian people better stop complaining about how long your school day is. Mine is almost 11 hours daily so I know I never will when I get back. Class schedule is set up much better here though. At least I like it better than Florida. We have eight 50 minute classes with 10 minute breaks between each one as well as a half hour lunch and a half hour NAP TIME. That’s right, I said NAP TIME. It is legitimately the best thing since sliced bread. It makes that 10+ hour day feel much shorter. While I do have classes with everyone else I usually don’t do too much except in Chinese class with the other exchangers and Japanese class because it’s interesting. I’m not slacking or anything in my other classes, it’s just that I can’t understand much of anything the teachers are talking about. I can’t even do math because all the instructions are in traditional Chinese characters. In fact, everything is. So if there isn’t a nice picture or English label, I don’t buy it

Okay, now for some current stories. There is this amusement park here called Janfusan Fancy world. It has one of the world’s largest ferries wheels and some really fun roller coasters and carnival rides. I went a few weeks ago with Marcio (exchange student from Brasil) and Claudia (Germany) for pretty much the whole day. We got there at like 10 and started to explore. This place had a pretty weird lay out since it was built into the side of a mountain so it was kind of split in two by a steep incline. First off we went to this really cheesy virtual roller coaster thing then this super awesome giant roller coaster called G5. It only lasts like twenty seconds because it only has this one drop but this drop makes it worth it. I don’t know how high or how fast it is but it was pretty fun. There was another roller coaster there as well. I liked this one better because it was much longer and had corkscrews and all the other fixings. Needless to say this was one of the most fun days I’ve had.

Over the next couple of weeks, nothing else too out of the ordinary or worthy of mention happened, until last week that is. That week was seriously the best school related week in the history of school weeks. On Monday I didn’t have school so that automatically makes it pretty good. Then Tuesday all I did all day was help out with the school wide paintball tournament. Each class sent out a team and it was really funny watching some of the girls play. They’d run around shrieking until they got shot, usually in the face. On Wednesday and Thursday, Ammi and I went to this camp thing with the all the grade three (senior) classes. This was so much fun. We did a bunch of really fun activities pretty much all day both days. I have no idea what the purpose of any of them were but they were fun nonetheless. On Wednesday night each class performed a dance that all of them had been working on. Some of them were really funny and a few of them were really good complete with break dancing and all sorts of crazy stuff. Friday was my favorite day by far however. I’m on the school paintball team here and we had a tournament at some university in some city that I don’t remember. We were one of the best two teams there but sadly we lost in the semi final to the team who won it all. It was a really intense match too. We both had one person left and they were shooting back and forth for a good three minutes until our guy finally got hit. We were pretty disappointed that we lost but it was still lots of fun and way better than going to school.

Since this is getting kind of long I’ll just talk about one more story. This happened yesterday (Saturday). We had been wanting to visit the other exchange students in Chiayi (closest big city) for some time now and when Preston (American from Nebraska. Cool dude) told us it was his birthday; we knew it was the right time to go. We got to Chiayi around 4 (I think) and went over to Preston’s house because the party wasn’t until 6. Once we were there we met his host mom and two host brothers, who all seemed like they were very nice people. Preston is crazy with how good he is at EVERYTHING. He speaks Portuguese fluently as well as a lot of Spanish and German. He also showed us how he was amazing at playing the Violin and then he showed me that he was pretty darn good at ping pong by beating me 21-19, 22-24, 7-3. I consider myself pretty boss at ping pong but he had me beat, mind you I haven’t played in months and he plays everyday since the tables in his house. Anyways, after a few hours of chilling at his house, we went to this restaurant where his family had rented out a room for his party. Lots of Rotarians came as well as all the exchange students from Chiayi (3 Brazilians, a South Korean, and a German) and some of their friends from school. It was just a really fun/funny night with a lot of cool people. Oh and I forgot to mention that Preston’s Chinese is soooooo good. It’s way better than any of the other exchange students that I’ve met here.

Well that about wraps everything up for now. I still haven’t felt homesick at all although I really really really miss cheese. Like that’s pretty much the only thing I miss. Luckily I have a care package coming in soon with some cheesy goodies. Still no culture shock either although I have experienced some sadder moments, mostly about how Chinese is really difficult. Sometimes I feel as though I’m never going to learn Chinese as well as I would have learned Spanish or Italian or Portuguese but then I’ll surprise myself with how much I actually do know. I’m trying as hard as I can to learn the characters and how to speak and I think I’m finally over my fear of being wrong when I speak. All in all I’m completely having the time of my life here and could never imagine myself anywhere but here. Bye for now. 

January 10

It's been a long time since I've written my last journal, some three months almost, and I have a looooootttttttttttttttt to talk about. Some much has happened since I last wrote and it has been so long that things have blurred together some so please forgive me if I forget some details. I think that naturally happens when one becomes settled anyway, like how school days just begin to melt together after a while.

Let's see, I think the most prominent thing that has happened was that I switched to my second family so I guess that's as good as any place to start. I switched exactly one month ago on December 4th and I only have a little over one month with them left. I was sad to leave my first family but my new family quickly made me feel at home and softened the sadness I felt. I live with my host dad and mom, Simon and Susan, and I also have a host sister (Judy) and a host brother (Edward) who are off at university. Our house is a very nice four story town home in a gated community located a few minutes from town one way and another few minutes from school if you go the other way. We have a very nice garden as does every other house in the development and the development even has a nice park which I rarely see even in the city. I have only met one pair of our neighbors but they are extremely nice and have two young kids, probably about 9 or 10, with whom I can practice my Chinese. My whole host family speaks fluent English with my dad's being the best I've ever seen in Taiwan from a non-exchange student. My host dad is actually one of the most intelligent men I have ever met; he has an IQ of 165, has 5 majors and a triple degree PhD, he taught himself English, and he is the vice president of a university in mainland China. This last thing is actually the reason I only get to stay for such a short amount of time. He has to go to China for a few months to do important things for the university. Anyway, that's getting off topic. Now let's talk about my mom. She has to be the sweetest and most joyful person ever and definitely the best cook ever. I have almost never had the same thing twice to eat here, except if I have to make it or it's a favorite dish of theirs, and I've never had anything I didn't like. Oh and she makes American food for me too and Indian and Mexican as best she can with the ingredients she can get. On my third day with them, they came home with a crate full of American food. I was overjoyed and I haven't stopped being so since I've been with them. They also quickly got me a lot more involved and got me things to do some days after school. Now I have Kung Fu every Tuesday and Tennis every Thursday. Now back to the house I guess. Our house is four stories tall and has a bunch of different internal designs. The first floor is kind of European style and then you work you way past the kitchen to the floors above and they are more Asian/Japanese. Like my room is incredibly Japanese. I have folding doors, a reed floor, a table that's a foot high, and a bed on the ground. I love it though. It's very cozy and it feels like my room not someone's I'm borrowing.

The reason (I like to tell myself this at least) for pushing this journal off so late is because every time I felt like writing this journal a new big event was right around the corner. First is was me switching to my next family then my district Christmas party then Christmas and another Christmas party and now finally New Years. I am glad I waited though because these events were amazing and it would be horrible not to describe them while they are still fresh in my mind. I don't want to bore you all so I'll only talk about Christmas and New Years. The rest of the school days just melt together because everyday is the same day of studying Chinese and doing Flvs. If it wasn't for that I'd have nothing at all.

Anyway, Christmas. It was much different than a normal one back in the States to say the least. Since the majority of the people here are Budhist or Taoist or not Christian (there are some), Christmas is not a big deal here. They don't get a break from school and it's just like a normal day here. MY Christmas eve day was spent in school just like any other. I got a few cards from some of my classmates and a few little presents but other than that it wasn't special. I went home and had a “Christmas Dinner” with my family which was nice but it had nothing that you'd find in a normal dinner. In fact, it was a spicy Korean dish if I remember correctly. It was delicious (it was made by mom after all) but it just wasn't Christmas food. Christmas day was a Saturday luckily or else it would have really sucked. You know, not waking up and being with your family is hard enough but going to school would have just been the worst thing imaginable. It turned out to be a very good Christmas day actually. I went with the German girl, Claudia, to a Christmas party in Taichung that was being held by the district there. Claudia and I were able to go because her host dad is in Rotary clubs in both districts and I'm so glad he is, for reasons other than this that I'll get to later. First, we went to Shuili to plant a tree with the Rotary club there. It was pretty boring/stupid if you ask me but it was fun because I got to meet two of the exchange students from there, Gabi (from Lithuania) and Michelle (Taiwanese American from California). It took an hour just to get to planting the trees and then we had lunch. As usual there was not much I ate so I just ate some sweet rice soup thing. Anyway, after all this was done, Claudia, Gabi, and I drove in the same car to the Christmas party in Taichung. We got there and had to sign in a stuff, and after I started to meet all the inbounds in that district. There are 7 Americans and I clicked pretty quickly with five of them as well as a Canadian, Dane, German, Brazilian, and a French guy. They all had a Chinese speech contest (we had one at our Christmas party the week before as well. I'm not going to talk about ours because it was like this one except less eventful) and some people even sang some Chinese songs. This took a while because there are like 30 something people in their district (ours only has like 20) and every speech was supposed to be around 3 minutes. After all these were done we had a big Christmas like dinner except everything had meet so I just ate lots of corn and French Fries. Then they gave out 6 first place awards to the six best (3 of the top six were Americans. REPRESENT! haha) and then we had some skits. The rest of the Americans recruited me to be part of theirs and we went up and performed a very simple skit about what we would be if we weren't exchange students. I was the President but we also had a maid, farmer, typist, Tiger Woods, girl scout, rapper, and a Rotarian. I won't go into details but it had everyone laughing including us. After, the skit (ours was the only one I think) we all sang our national anthems when they called out countries. I sang for both the US and Canada since Jordan (Canadian) was the only one and I was born there. Then after ALL of this we had a dance. We cleared out the tables and then it was time to get crunk. We probably danced for like four hours and it was really interesting hearing all the party songs from all over the world. All this fun ended at midnight (ours ended at 10, I told you it was lame) and then Claudia's host father drove us home.

The next week, starting on Wednesday, I went with all the grade 2 classes (11 grade) to the south of Taiwan near Kaohsiung and Kending. We started off at school and all took buses down to Kaohsiung, the second biggest city in Taiwan. We went to a museum and then this giant 8 story mall that had a bunch of international stores. We spent a few hours there and had lunch, then we went to the night market. Kaohsiung has a REALLLYYY bad night market. My town is better and it only has one 10th of the population. There was nothing I ate there and we were expected to each dinner while we were there. SO i just went to the best/most abundant store in Taiwan: 7-11!!! and got some peanut butter sammiches. After we were done here we went down to Kending to spend the night. Kending is a surfer resort town that attracts lots of tourists so we saw lots of 外國人 (Wàiguó rén) or foreigners. We stayed in this really cool hotel with a giant arcade, pool tables, a bowling alley, a spa, squash courts, and of course a 7-11. We had a hour until our curfew so Marcio and I went and played air hockey, except this wasn't a regular air hockey. It sporadically sent out more than more puck, up to 4 sometimes, and we had some much fun and laughed every time we scored on ourselves trying to keep up with all the pucks. After like an hour of playing, and ten bucks spent, we went back to our rooms and passed out. The next day, we got up early, around 6, then had breakfast and went out. We went to this dune buggy place. There were like 40 jeeps and we all got in and they took us through the dunes on the beach. They had really large dunes and the drivers were freaking crazy but it was soooo much fun. After this we ate lunch somewhere and then we just traveled around the coast. We went to some museum and ate this “famous” ice cream according to our friend Vivian who went to Brazil last year. We were skeptical because Vivian says everything is famous in Taiwan. After we went to watch the sunset at this “famous” cliff. It was pretty nice actually and the views were amazing. Once the sun was gone, they took us to the part of Kending where there are lots of shops and restaurants and people and our teachers just gave us free time for the rest of the night. A few of my friends and I went to eat at this restaurant and then we went shopping for the rest of the night. Once 10 o'clock came around we had to go back to the hotel and sleep. Then the next morning we woke up and went to a an amusement park in Kaohsiung. It was soooo small and there was hardly anything to do. I was pretty bored and I was only there for an hour. After that hour, Claudia's host father picked us up and drove us all the way to Taichung for what I had really been excited for: a trip to Taipei (my first) for NEW YEARS EVE!!!! We drove straight there only stopping for a lunch break (more peanut butter sandwiches) and made it just in time to catch the bus up to Taipei with the same district as the one who had the rocking Christmas party. I was excited to see them again as I had made some pretty good friends the week before. Unfortunately, I was put on a bus with mostly people I didn't know except for Jon and Johno, two Americans I had talked a bunch at the party. I was great full I had them but I wish I had the rest of my friends on my bus too. I don't remember if I slept or not but the next thing I remember is people pointing out the sight of Taipei 101 off in the distance. Soon we were in the city and the thing that usually accompanies big cities: traffic. It took us a while to get to our parking spot but I didn't care since it gave me more time to look at all the things I could see, especially 101. It was massive and was larger than I had expected. When we finally got to our parking spot, at the Sun Yet Sen memorial, they gave us an hour to look around but everyone kind of chilled within a block of the bus in a group since it was so cold. Then it was time for dinner and then we had the rest of the night to ourselves. I went off with a bunch of my friends and before we had walked a meters from the bus we saw a mass group of exchange students gathered at this pavilion. There were like 50 exchange students there from Taipei so we decided to join them for their New Year's party. It had a great view of 101 too for when the fireworks would go off. I spent hours just going around talking to people I knew and meeting others I didn't. I met so many cool Rotary people and even a few that were with another program. I also got to see LEELAH for the first time since I've been here. I was sooooooooooo excited to finally see her and we talked for what seemed like hours as well. The time flew by and before I knew it, it was already almost midnight and time for the countdown. I went with some people to get a better view of 101 and then just watched and enjoyed one of the most spectacular showing of fireworks I've ever seen. They were magnificent and last for such a long time. The fireworks wrapped around 101 and went up and down and shot out from all directions. It was truly amazing and I was so glad I was able to witness this fantastic event with all these great people. This year was extra special too, because it was Taiwan's centennial; it's 100th year free from imperial rule.

Two of my good friends here just went home to their countries: Jordan, from Canada, and Michelle, from the US (California). We had a big going away party for them at a T.G.I. Fridays in Taichung and then continued it back at a friend's house. We all met at Friday's on, ironically enough, Friday. I think like 15 exchange students came from around Taichung, and then the four of us in Douliu, and even a few people from around Taichung that I didn't know, like this girl Sharon who has lived in Vancouver for the last 17 years but was born in Taipei. Anyway, we all had a great time talking and just having a great time until they kicked us out of the restaurant. It was great having some American food for once even though there was literally not an item there that did not have meat or fish, so I had to get a shrimp dish. After we left the restaurant we went back to Kristian's house to spend the night. We didn't sleep much since it was our last night with these guys so we mainly just talked all night. Once it was pretty late, we slowly started passing out one by one until we all fell asleep. In the morning we all said our tearful goodbyes and wished them luck with whatever they chose to do. This was one of the best but saddest days for me here in Taiwan and I will miss them both greatly.

新年快樂!聖誕快樂! (Happy New Year and Merry Christmas)

April 7

Woah, I apologize for taking so long to write a journal. It seemed like I just wrote one the other week but my last journal was from early January so that shows just how fast time is going by. Like always, tons has happened since then and there's no way I could cover it all so (like always again) I'll just keep it to a few major events.

Nothing really happened for the two weeks after my last journal until our winter break started. We get three and a half weeks off for Chinese New Year here instead of for Christmas and, let me tell you, it was sooooo needed. Over four and a half months of waking up at 5:45 and then spending 10 hours in school everyday with no breaks, except for the occasional sick days, really takes a lot out of you. SO anyway, we get three weeks off of school and I can honestly say these were some of the best weeks ever. Every day I got to sleep in as late as I liked (a luxury I didn't even have on the weekends most of the time) and go where ever I wanted later. I spent literally everyday of one week in a new city with friends and it was awesome. I got to see sooo many places and do a ton of things. This break was for Chinese New year however, so there were Chinese New year festivities. They came during the second full week off and they were interesting to say the least. Chinese New year here is a big family holiday like what Thanksgiving or Christmas is to Americans. Everyone goes back to their families and for one of the days, the cities are practically shut down. I was still with my second family then and we went to my host Dad's parents' house in Taichung for three days. Our first day there I had free reign just to go wherever I wanted in the city so I just explored and went to one of the night markets but I had to be back by dinner because that day was the eve of the new year. We had a special dinner and kinda prayed too at the family shrine for my host family's ancestors. The next day was the first day of Chinese New year. We had nothing special during the day but when night came we burnt a bunch of “god money”, just fake money for the gods, and had a huge family feast and did more praying. After dinner, my dad told me to go out to the main street because I would literally see no one, and true to his word, when I got out there I could not find a single person or car out. I went back and just talked with my family for the rest of the night. It was overall a really great holiday experience even though it was much different than anything I had ever experienced. The next day we just went home around noon and got my grandparents settled in because they were going to spend the rest of the week with us. The next day however, Leelah came down from Taipei and we went to the big amusement park that is near my city with her family. We spent the whole day on the park doing everything as many times as we could. Around 5 we left and went out to this dinner with her family. They had told me it would just be some family and friends so I figured there'd be like 12 people there but when we arrived and got settled we had 5 tables COMPLETELY full of local Rotarians and other family of Leelah's. And with this being a Rotary dinner in Taiwan, there were tons of drunk, red-faced old men going around to every table making toasts and every time they came to our table they'd push Whiskey and Gaoliang in our faces not taking no for an answer. So this was where I tried the famous Gaoliang of Taiwan. Here's a tip, don't try it. It's 58% alcohol and tastes like hand sanitizer. Anyway, after a fun night my host dad came to pick me up and told me about his days as a 19 year old where he could drink two bottles of it without passing out (like a boss). I was surprised anyone could take that much with out dying so needless to say I was impressed. The next three days were me traveling some more, then on Monday, I went to watch the SUPER BOWL! With the 13 hour time difference, it started at 7:30 am in Taiwan so I stayed up all the previous night and took a 5 o'clock train to Taichung to watch it in an American sports bar with my friends there. I had a great time watching it with everyone there even though my Steelers lost. I went home pretty much immediately after though because I was dead tired. I got home and then slept until like the next day ahaha.

This next day after the Super Bowl was sadly my last day with this family. I spent most of the day packing and then we all ate one last dinner that my mom made, which was delicious of course. Then we all got in the car and went to my next family. My Dad told me about my next family as we went. My next Dad was named P.P (Past President) Stainless and this was because he was the vice president of the largest stainless steel company in Taiwan. So he told me they were pretty wealthy but I didn't realize how much until I got there. In the garage area, my mom had a really nice Lexus SUV and my dad had a super fast coupe Lexus sports car. We had a really nice garden (extremely rare in Taiwan) complete with a pond filled with fish and grass (also really rare on residential property). When I got inside I just saw more. The entire floor of the house was made of the granite my house has on our kitchen in America has on the counters. And we had like a 70 inch tv and even like a personal heat treatment radiation thing to help with sore joints and the works. It was a very nice house and my room was on the first floor right off the living room. It was small compared to the rest of the house but it felt very homely and I really liked it. I had another Japanese bed and bed side table and then I just had to find places around the empty cupboards for my stuff. They told me right away though that I was only going to be staying for 1 month and 3 weeks because my older sister had to go back to university in Japan then. So I knew right away that I wouldn't have much time with them but I really enjoyed what I did have. Anyway I lived with my host mom, host dad, little sister, and older sister. I also had an older brother but he was only home on the weekends sometimes because he went to university in another city. I didn't do too much with this family unfortunately because I didn't have much time with them, mostly just go out to eat sometimes and play basketball with my host brother and his friends sometimes. The most memorable thing I think was on my second day with them. I woke up at maybe 10 o'clock to a few police and my family talking very calmly with them. It took me a little while to realize they were police because everyone was so calm. I asked what was going on once they started taking pictures of the office, and my sister said that last night we had been robbed. Nothing major was damaged but the thief did manage to get 10000NT (over $330 US). The rest of my time with that family was mainly spent going to school and coming home to watch tv or something, and going to hang out with my friends on the weekends to travel.

After a month and half with them (to the day actually) my host dad came into my room and just randomly told me I was switching families the next day because I didn't have school. I was shocked since I hadn't expected to switch until the following week and I hadn't had any previous warnings about it. So I spent the rest of the night packing the endless amounts of stuff I had accumulated since I've been here to switch families. The next day at 10 or so I got all my stuff and put it into the car to switch with my mom and older sister. I really like my third house because it was really close to the train station (only 5 minutes walk) and I had hoped that my fourth would be close too. Sadly we drove pretty far away probably twenty minutes walk from the train station so I wouldn't be doing to much of that. I just hoped that they had a bike for me to use to get there. Again I was disappointed to find out I didn't. This hasn't been too problematic yet because I've only been with my family for a little over a week now and I've only had to go the train station once (my dad just drove me) but this could be a little troublesome since I'll be here for the next three months and I do lots of traveling on my weekends and having a bike is really important for me because I don't want to inconvenience my family by always having to take me back and forth to the train. Anyway, none of this really matters since I really like my fourth (and last) family. I live with my dad, mom, older brother, and younger brother. My parents are really nice but it's my brothers that make living here so much fun. My older brother (only older by a month) has to work and do homework a lot but he's really fun to hang out with and my younger brother is the cutest thing ever. He is so engaging and is the most un-shy person I've ever met....ever. He comes to wherever I am and just watches what I do most of the time and when I ask him why he just says he's curious. He even likes to watch me do my homework which is a little weird haha. But he's great. He always comes to my room and plays with my games and talks with me. Like right now, as I'm writing this, he came into my room, picked up my Nintendo DS and just started playing whatever game is in it, asking me how to play and stuff. I've only been with this family a little over a week (and only half of the days but I'll get there soon enough) but I can tell I'm going to really like it here.

The reason I've only actually been with my family half of the days I've been here is because from last Friday until Sunday, I went on a huge trip with all the exchange students from the districts in Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung to the outlaying islands of Taiwan, called Penghu. I think I remember them saying there were like 100 or more islands when the tide was down but on average it was like 80 or something. I don't really remember. All I know is that we went to like 8 of them on the whole trip and we saw quite a few but I think most of them are too small to actually do anything on. Anyway, I woke up on Friday at like 5 am, got ready, and was all set to go at 5:35 to get the bus at 6 like my Dad had told me to be. I waited for a bit because I thought that maybe I had misunderstood my Dad, but once it was 5:55, I knew he was asleep. So I went and knocked on the door and he woke up saw the time, screamed and got dressed in three seconds. The next thing I know he was pushing me out the door and telling me to call my friends who were waiting for the bus so they could hold it up. We flew there and luckily made it on time since the bus was late. Once we all got on the bus, we went to Chiayi to pick up the exchange students from there. They were pretty ticked that the bus was twenty five minutes late but once they settled in everything was ok. We kept going south, got to Tainan and picked up the students there, then made out way to the Kaohsiung airport. We had sometime to kill before our plane so we did what all tourists do: take ridiculous pictures! After some fooling around we got on board our twenty minute plane to Penghu. The plane was small, of course, and we flew into a military base but other than that, it was a normal trip, just really short. Once we were there, we got right onto the bus we were sharing with the district from Kaohsiung (really small district) and went to lunch which was a giant seafood buffet restaurant called Pescadores (fishermen in Spanish) and it was really weird seeing Spanish actually on a building since it had been so long. Since the restaurant was a seafood buffet, there wasn't much I could eat so I pigged out on dessert mostly which was fine by me haha. The events that followed lunch are in a jumbled order in my head so I don't remember which came next so I'll just say everything that happened until dinner. We went to see wind turbines, temples with coral underneath them, museums, and little markets. Every place we went was really nice but I liked the turbines the best because they were right next to the ocean. And since people usually don't build wind turbines where there isn't any wind, there was a really strong sea breeze that washed over us. It was the first time I had really smelled the ocean since I'd been in Taiwan and it actually made me a little homesick for the first time. I didn't experience that strongly then but the next day I did but I'll tell you about it later. Anyway, we ate dinner at some fish restaurant again and then they gave us the rest of the night to explore downtown of the island that we were staying on. I went out with a bunch of my friends and we just went around looking at all that downtown Penghu had to offer (not much haha) but at some point we made our way to the harbour. One of us had the bright idea of jumping in so a few of us did. It felt great to be back in the ocean after such a long time. After we had to go back to the hotel for the night but our first day in Penghu was pretty nice overall. The next morning at 6:30 we all woke up, had breakfast and got on the buses to go into the day. They took us to a harbour where we all got on two different boats. These boats took us out to a bigger boat a couple thousand metres off shore where we fished and ate barbecued oysters (actually really good). After a few hours of fun, we left on the boats to somewhere else exciting accept I forget where. The whole day we just went around from island to island looking at temples and buying stuff until we got to this one suspended point near the beach. This is where the “real” homesickness hit. I put quotes around real because it was the most I've felt in Taiwan but it was still only a little. I guess seeing the ocean so close and feeling the strong, salty sea breeze really hit home for me. I don't really go to the beach much back in Florida, but I live on an island and there's no where to go to escape the salty breeze that I'd grown so fond of and when I'm home, there's not one day that I don't see the ocean because I have to go over the bridge to get to school or to my friends houses or anything really. So while we were at that place, I just stood against the wall thinking about everything back home and staring out at sea. It was really nice since I've never been really able to to lose myself in my thoughts like that while I've been here. Everywhere my mind has been so filled of Chinese or something that I felt so peaceful at that moment. I probably could have stayed there all day had my friend Susana not come to take some pictures of me that kind of snapped me out of my trance. It brought me back to earth and made me remember that I was here in Taiwan, not Florida, and that I had so much to go do that it wasn't worth it to think about home anymore. I had to go enjoy my time in these beautiful islands while I was there.

So we all go back on the boat and went to some other island for lunch, which was guess what? More fish. Yeah......I didn't each much then either. After lunch we got back on the boat and went to yet another island to go squid fishing which was actually really fun. Squid move by sucking in water and then propelling themselves forward by jettisoning it out behind them. Where's the fun part you ask? Well when they get close to the surface the water shoots up out of it and if you're pretty good, you can aim it at people. I hit many unsuspecting victims with a nice jet of squid water. Needless to say they weren't too thrilled by it hahah. Once we had our fill of shooting people with squid, we got back on the boats and went to another island. it certainly seemed like there were 100 of them that's for sure. At this island we got little water shoes, a net, a bucket, and gloves but no one was sure what exactly we'd be doing with them. Our questions were answered when they led us out to a rocky beach where first they had look for little craps under rocks. Then they had us looking for big crabs under bigger rocks in the water. This was fun but we all wanted to know what were going to be catching with our nets. After walking through more rocks and water and passing the occasional blow fish, the tour leader guy had us all gather around this group of 4 or so smallish rocks to show us what the nets we for. He rapped the net around the rocks, then took one by one out to reveal a fish camouflaging against them and then caught it and put it in the bucket. Then he set us out to go catch some. Our group caught maybe five but the leader through out like 3 because they were too small to keep. I guess they planned on eating them at some point, I'm not sure since I don't eat them. Maybe thirty minutes passed and then we walked back to the place where we left our shoes and washed off a bit. We thanked them and then went back to the boats to go back to our main island so we could eat dinner. It was...wait for it....wait for it..... MORE FISH! I had never been more sick of seeing fish in all my life. We literally had it every meal while we were on those islands. How can that be all they eat there? All I had was rice every meal but I guess that's not too much different from most of my meals in Taiwan. I've lost like 10 pounds here while sitting on my fat butt most of the day. I can only imagine what kind of shape I'd be in if I actually had time to exercise (school takes up most of the day light and then it's too “dangerous” to go out and exercise alone). So after dinner we went back to the hotel and they gave us free roam again to go where we wanted. We just wandered in the other direction this time until it was time to go back to the hotel. We woke up the next day bright and early but this time nobody cared because we were going to the BEACH! My first time in Taiwan and it was pretty wicked. Right along the shore was old coral and rocks so it hurt a bit but they had some nice sand back a bit and the water was nice, not cold at all but not too warm. and the beach had lots of water vehicles that took us around on Banana boats and all those other fun little raft things. There were even boats that took us out some so we could snorkel. There wasn't much to see, just some dull coral, but it was more than we have to look at in Florida so it was still pretty cool. We spent all day here and then around 3 we went to get lunch and catch our planes home. So with a nice fresh sunburn and a new appreciation of Taiwan, we head home. I really think I need to say it, but this was one of the best trips of my life. I can't wait to see what the rest of the year has in store for me, I just hope it doesn't go by too quickly. I only have three months left after all. Well that's all for now folks. Until next time.