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. 

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. 

Pictures

Hiking to Zhinan Temple

Zhinan Temple

View on Taipei after Thunderstorm.

 

TRIP TO TANSHUI AND SHILIN NIGHTMARKET

This was a trip with my NTU Volunteer Kiki!

Fresh for eating, just pick the prettiest.

Food Court on Shiling Nightmarket

fresh fruits

famous oyster omlett

LONGHSHAN TEMPLE

Stay positive,

Yihua.

Hiking - Cold - Studying

You can recognize already by reading the post-title that I had a quite busy time the last three weeks!

Since last Monday my courses started - and also socializing with locals and the other international studetns - I had to ran across Campus last week to make sure I get the courses I wanted. It was exhausting but it worked well and my schedule is fixed now.

Last Monday I also got my Laptop back!! I am really glad about this, it made organizing my schedule way easier.

For the reason that it is already late and I am a little bit busy with my work I just gonna upload some picture now and promise to blog my 'not-anymore-so-new'-adventures this week! 

Some of you asked me about the name of the blog, so I wanna clarify this at least. "Yihuality" is based on to words: Yihua, my first chinese name (in characters: 衣樺 in pinyin: yi1hua4 (1=first tone, just high; 4=fourth tone, from high to low - speak 'iechua' with german pronounciation or ee-hu-a with english pronounciation) and reality. It's meaning is that I am blogging about my reality in Taiwan. Hope you like this idea!


Stay positive,

Yihua.

At a second glance

I finally moved into my own room in the dormitory! I like it a lot and it is bigger than expected. It feels very well to have an own room again. I still have to adapt to the taiwanese behavior to go out to eat. As a german this is very hard for me, because I am used to cook myself at home. Here there is just one small kitchen in the whole dorm (its 13 floors...) and there is just one plate and a rice cooker. Students don't need to cook here, because eating on the Campus or nearby is so cheap. Friends already showed me around and there are a lot of restaurant very close; also vegetarian ones. I could never imagine eating this huge amount of meat, even if I would not be vegetarian. You can have meat three times a day, and also in lunchboxes a huge portion of meat is included. (I wonder how all the girls here can stay so skinny...)

The taiwanese care about there students and provide everything that is needed on Campus. They are very keen to make it as convinient as possible for their students so they can focus on studying. Food, office supplies, ice cream, products from the NTU farm (yes, this University owns a farm and the quality of its products is very good!), Post office, Police office, rooms to study, waffels, drinks and even a gym for free and a huge sports centre with squash, badminton, swimming pool... you don't have to worry about anything! And nearly everywhere you can get a discount as a student.

On Tuesday I brought my Laptop to a Place called Digital Placa and with the kind help of Shino I found a guy who is going to fix it. I can pick it up next week and then I will load up some pictures! I don't have Wifi in my room, and I don't like it too much to sit in the Lobby for it. Until today I also had a problem loading all my devices. Here the power points just provide 110V, so I needed to buy a "converter" because my devices all need 220V - since I use this everything loads as fast as always and I am able to write you this Post!

I like the food and the drinks more and more. Until now my favorite drink is Milktea, it is not real milk, but soy milk with black tea, ice and sugar. It has a very refreshing and not too stronge taste. Everybody can choose how much ice and how much sugar he/she likes to have. This is a very consumer friendly way of providing drinks in my eyes. I also like the famous Bubble Tea even if the taste of the red beans is very strange for me.

Today I went to Wufenpu to buy clothes and - I am honestly surprised - the taiwanese clothes fits me (I chose a larger size than in Germany but still, compared to all the skinny girls I am a giant, or at least hips are giant...). I bought a lot of new T-Shirts and short throusers because I recognized I just don't have enough clothes for this climate! At first glance the clothes I bought seems to be a good quality for a very cheap price. So now travelling around can come, I got a room, I got furniture for it (and more pillows), I got clothes and I know where I can go to eat. Thanks to Chuling Chou I already have met so nice and friendly taiwanese students I feel so save and welcomed that I am sure Taipei will be like a second home for me soon.

Stay positive,

Yihua.