The People of Taiwan - My First Day
So, after sleeping for 4hrs. (lets just say I was filled with anticipation) I awoke at 8:30a.m. ready to start my day. First off my roomie Johnson from Texas rode with me to Kojen school #2 to meet with the director Christine. Now excuse me for prejudging, but from what I heard about Christine I was expecting a pettit woman with a strong Chinese accent to come and greet us. Instead, a rotund short Asian woman with an American accent approached us. She later told us that she lived in New York City most of her life, and has only been in Taiwan for around 5 years. We conversed for a while and during the conversation I found out a lot about Taiwanese culture. Like for starters an inverted swatstica is a peaceful sign meaning the place serves vegetarian food. Now this really threw me for a twist to find out this information because I never thought I would be searching for buildings with swatstica as a retreat. (hmmmm, who knew?) Well since we are on the topic of Taiwanese Culture I feel it is a good time to dispel some of those stereotypes that are completely false about the people and the country.
1.) "I am not a giant". Contrary to belief Taiwanese people are not as short as you may think. As I stand at 5'6 I am really not that much taller than most of the people. In fact I would say at least a third of the people are taller than me (and I am not talking about 1 or 2 inches).
2.) American influence is big here, so you will not have a hard time finding American food. So far I have seen Pizza Hut, Dominos, Macaroni Grill, TGIF, Chili's, McD's, Burger King, and Starbucks just to name a few.
3.) The city is very clean in fact the public buses have televisions in them, and the subways are graffiti free. Now don't get me wrong there are alleys and some streets that are shaddy looking, but you'll find that in any big city.
4.) I'd say just about everyone under the age of 25 knows the basics of speaking English. About 1/4 to 1/3 of the older generation know how to speak English to a degree. So it is possible to get around without knowing any Chinese, however knowing a little Chinese would of course make life a little easier.
-Ok Back to the Story
Christine took me to the local hospital to get treated and boy was that an experience. As I waited I was approached by the first black person that I saw since I landed. I thought to myself, "No way, I can't believe there is another African American here besides me". Prior to seeing this guy it was me, myself, and I forming the percentage of African Americans on the island. After, he introduced himself, I soon realized that although he was black he was definately not African American. We talked for a bit, but it was kind of hard to understand him. He was definately from a country in Africa and I couldn't find out which one he was from because he had a strong accent.
After, being tested at the hospital for diseases, I observed a couple of classes, then I was free for the day. Now here is where it starts to get interesting. The Kojen secretaries gave me directions to get home since they relocated me to different Kojen institute to observe classes, and well lets just say they were not the best directions. At first I feltl pretty confident like I was going the right way and everythingiwas ok, but when I approached the corner at which I thought was the corner with the bus stop and did not see the bus stop I knew I was lost. So what do you think most people would do in a situation like such as this? Ask for directions, get a cab, turn around and head back to ask the secretaries again, "Oh, no, no, no". I decided to choose option D, which was to make the most of the situation. I toured the big streets of Taiwan, that if I do say so myself resembled Time Square. I found a TGIF, Mcd's, and several other American stores. Since it was a Friday night the streets were packed and all of the stores were as packed as ever. I walked around for a good while until I decided that it was now time for me to get back on track and figure out how to get home so I made my way to the local MRT station (Mass Rapid Transit).
There, I asked the ticket guy how to get home. Now that was extremely difficult since he knew little English. We gestured for quite a while until he called for his co-worker that could speak a little English. He walked me to a bus station nearby and told me what bus to get on and when to get off. He truly went out of his way to help me and I was highly grateful for his assistant. I tried to tip him for his services but he would not accept (evidently, it is not common to tip around here as this was also the case at all of the restaurants that we visited).
Overall, the day was long and exciting and the people of Taiwan were more hospitable than I could ever have imagined. If my experience today is any indication of the time I am going to have here, I am going to have one adventurous trip.
-- Next Time, HITTING THE CLUBS IN TAIWAN
1.) "I am not a giant". Contrary to belief Taiwanese people are not as short as you may think. As I stand at 5'6 I am really not that much taller than most of the people. In fact I would say at least a third of the people are taller than me (and I am not talking about 1 or 2 inches).
2.) American influence is big here, so you will not have a hard time finding American food. So far I have seen Pizza Hut, Dominos, Macaroni Grill, TGIF, Chili's, McD's, Burger King, and Starbucks just to name a few.
3.) The city is very clean in fact the public buses have televisions in them, and the subways are graffiti free. Now don't get me wrong there are alleys and some streets that are shaddy looking, but you'll find that in any big city.
4.) I'd say just about everyone under the age of 25 knows the basics of speaking English. About 1/4 to 1/3 of the older generation know how to speak English to a degree. So it is possible to get around without knowing any Chinese, however knowing a little Chinese would of course make life a little easier.
-Ok Back to the Story
Christine took me to the local hospital to get treated and boy was that an experience. As I waited I was approached by the first black person that I saw since I landed. I thought to myself, "No way, I can't believe there is another African American here besides me". Prior to seeing this guy it was me, myself, and I forming the percentage of African Americans on the island. After, he introduced himself, I soon realized that although he was black he was definately not African American. We talked for a bit, but it was kind of hard to understand him. He was definately from a country in Africa and I couldn't find out which one he was from because he had a strong accent.
After, being tested at the hospital for diseases, I observed a couple of classes, then I was free for the day. Now here is where it starts to get interesting. The Kojen secretaries gave me directions to get home since they relocated me to different Kojen institute to observe classes, and well lets just say they were not the best directions. At first I feltl pretty confident like I was going the right way and everythingiwas ok, but when I approached the corner at which I thought was the corner with the bus stop and did not see the bus stop I knew I was lost. So what do you think most people would do in a situation like such as this? Ask for directions, get a cab, turn around and head back to ask the secretaries again, "Oh, no, no, no". I decided to choose option D, which was to make the most of the situation. I toured the big streets of Taiwan, that if I do say so myself resembled Time Square. I found a TGIF, Mcd's, and several other American stores. Since it was a Friday night the streets were packed and all of the stores were as packed as ever. I walked around for a good while until I decided that it was now time for me to get back on track and figure out how to get home so I made my way to the local MRT station (Mass Rapid Transit).
There, I asked the ticket guy how to get home. Now that was extremely difficult since he knew little English. We gestured for quite a while until he called for his co-worker that could speak a little English. He walked me to a bus station nearby and told me what bus to get on and when to get off. He truly went out of his way to help me and I was highly grateful for his assistant. I tried to tip him for his services but he would not accept (evidently, it is not common to tip around here as this was also the case at all of the restaurants that we visited).
Overall, the day was long and exciting and the people of Taiwan were more hospitable than I could ever have imagined. If my experience today is any indication of the time I am going to have here, I am going to have one adventurous trip.
-- Next Time, HITTING THE CLUBS IN TAIWAN
posted by Bob | 3:44 PM
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