Yihuality

Dienstag, 7. Oktober 2014

The Mangroves

Two weeks ago a friend of mine and me went to the Mangroves near Tamsui. We went to the MRT Station Hongshulin. You can directly walk to the Mangrove Swamp Exhibition Center, where you get information about the place. A nice servant of this centre told us that the actual path (a wooden construction leading you through a small part of the mangroves) is out of service because they need to repair it. After short disappointment we went out and just took the path, despite his advice not to do so, and surprisingly there were many other people walking on it, so we had the impression it will not be dangerous. At the very end of the path was a small electric generator and two workers fixing something at the balustrade over the river, we could easily pass them. We even saw people with a bicycle driving through, and there was no sign or anything at the exit (from our point of view) of the path.

We had a nice – but way too short – walk through the mangroves, saw many crabs in different shapes and sizes, dragonflies as larva and grown up in different colours and a huge grasshopper (I would guess Great Green Bush-Cricket, but I am not sure!). The grasshopper was interesting, because we surveyed it digging a whole and we assume it was laying eggs right in front of our eyes. The whole was too deep to look inside and we didn’t want to destroy it, so we cannot be sure.

Here are some pictures to get an impression:

The path..

..impressive trees..

.. a look backwards.

Caterpillar in the air.

Dragofly larva.

A grasshopper, digging a hole..

laying eggs..

..done!

Me, wondering about the grasshopper!

Crab-fight!

Tiny Crab.

Sunset!

An egret searching its dinner.

Cat chasing dinner

silent during dawn.

Interesting tree...

Stay positive!

Yihua.

Studying gets stressful

Already three weeks studying at National Taiwan University passed and I have to admit studying here makes you work! It is becoming more and more stressful, perhaps this is due to my course selection but I think you can take the workload as common. Of course I am contributing to this stress by travelling during the weekend, but it is kind of the last chance to catch some sun and have good weather, so I have to take my chances in October!

Back to the tough part of life: I am doing 17 Credits that are composed of the following courses (the order is according to their importance to me, the numbers in brackets are the credits I get): Chinese (3), Corporate Social Responsibility (3), Ecology (3), Academic Presentation in English, Field Geology II (2), Agriculture in Taiwan (2), Taiqichuan (1).

The way courses are conducted differ a lot from Germany. In Germany it is sufficient to basically prepare for one exam at the end of the semester, it does not matter if you go to the lecture, if you prefer to study alone at home its fine, too. If it is a seminar you are required to read texts, but nobody checks, it is your own choice to read and be able to engage in a class discussion or just don’t. For your grade a presentation or an assignment counts alone.

In Taiwan we have many tests in class and in most of my courses participation is part of my final grade. Also attendance is taken, and the Professor or the Teaching Assistant keeps recording if you actually engage in class discussions. Other classes give bonus points of you are good in pop-up quizzes (small not announced tests). My Chinese Class is the most stressful for me, last week we already had two quick writing tests, our teacher read out a sentence and we are supposed to write it down in traditional Chinese characters. This kind of test required a lot of studying for me, because I didn’t study traditional characters before. For my presenting class I already had to prepare two short talks, for ecology I was supposed to read about 150 pages until last Thursday, and even in my sports course, Taiqichuan, there will be a test next Monday. I am sure the Germans will agree with me, that 17 Credits here are worth a lot more than 17 Credits in Germany!

My schedule turned out to become even nicer than before, I still have no class on Friday and Thursday now ends at 12.20. I can use the long weekend to travel through Taiwan and enjoy its beauty. During October I try to travel a lot to have good weather for some water activities and hiking. I hope you enjoy my stories about my trips!

Stay positive!

Yihua.

Mittwoch, 24. September 2014

Latest Adventures Part 2 – University

Since a little more than a week I have my student ID card! I get discount with this card almost everywhere, food on campus is very cheap, I have access to printing centres, the library and I even can drive Metro with it or pay in certain stores, if I want to. Very convenient.

Finding suitable courses conducted in English was a difficult and exhausting challenge, because for some courses it is not possible to register online. You have to go to the first lecture and ask for a code. In some courses we were even asked to fill out an application form to get admission for the course. For the reason you cannot be sure which courses you will be allowed to take the first week is basically running from course to course trying to get as many admissions as possible to have a variety to choose from and enough credits in the end.

I was lucky and now I am very happy with my schedule. I chose one Chinese Course above my assigned level – I take the challenge (at least for me it is, because I forgot a lot) and do Elementary II. Today I had my second class and it is fast and tough. Especially writing and reading traditional characters is hard for me, but my goal was to get better in Chinese so I gonna work hard.

This Weekend we had a typhoon. Everybody was talking about it, and some people were very scared before, eventually it was just raining. And since this weekend it was raining the whole week.

I already start missing some things from Germany: getting coffee at home whenever I want, German beer (I never imagined that would happen!) and of course my loved ones back at home!! What I definitely gonna miss back at home are: the Taiwanese people, the mature mango with its slight lemon flavour, and milktea.

Stay positive,

Yihua.

Latest Adventures Part 1 – The Hike

I got my Laptop back, I already blogged some pictures; I am healthy again after lying in bed with a cold the first studying week, so it’s time for blogging what happened here the last three weeks in Taipei!

I went hiking to Zhinan Temple, which was very exciting, and my first hike alone! My plan was actually to hike up to Maokong, unfortunately it started raining heavilgy as I was around Zhinan Temple and I chose a shortcut to go down again. As you can see in the pictures it was still very beautiful especially after the rain. By the way, rain is not cold here, it is just wet. And a lot of the precipitation directly evaporates, when I look up into the sky I feel like seeing more drops than actually reach the ground. For me it felt like being in a steam sauna.

The nature here is awesome, for me totally new and just beautiful! I am always astonished by the huge leaves of the trees. And the huge colourful butterflies! Even the giant spiders are really interesting; they are most of the time high enough in the mountain but still look very impressive by their size.

I was a little bit disappointed because ‘hiking’ here means mainly stairs. I read in another blog that they have to build up stairs due to the dense vegetation. They also do it for more safety on highly frequented paths. Next time I gonna ask some of the locals for nice paths without stairs, because my knees didn’t like them very much.

After my hike I did something stupid: I drove home with the Metro, approximately an hour and didn’t cover myself in dry clothes. That’s how I got my cold. It was really annoying, but the hike was worth it!

Stay positive!

Yihua.