I have arrived!!!

Day 1 and 2!

**WARNING** This will be a SUPER long post, just because I am writing my week one as I go through orientation. I don’t post them immediately because I don’t have a long period of time (writing my blog posts on bus rides) and because I don’t always have internet. Enjoy my first week as I slowly post them! 

Day 1

I HAVE ARRIVED!!!! After a 13 hour flight, I have finally landed in Taiwan!WEEEEEE. Currently, it’s cloudy outside (since it’s 6:30 in the morning…) but it’s going to get sunnier later! Even without the sun, it’s super humid outside and REALLY bright. Also, it’s 81 degrees already -__-….

My flight was not as great as I had hoped it would be. First, the food was just disgusting. I didn’t expect much, but it was gross. The arrangements were nice and there was a variety of side dishes so I guess that sort of makes up for the disgusting entrée. However, thanks to my brother (life saver!) he bought me a carne asada burrito that saved me from hunger, except it made me really thirsty since it was a little too salty :P. Plus, I even got two meals on the plane, not counting the burrito. They served dinner first (at 1:30am, so I’m not sure that constitutes as dinner…) and breakfast a few hours before we landed! Breakfast was a lot better than dinner, but still, the scrambled eggs were kinda gross. Lol. Thanks to snacks and the huge burrito, I made it through the flight without starving. Yay!

Dinner

Breakfast

Maybe I was just cranky for not sleeping more than a couple of hours on the plane ride, but my seat was super uncomfortable. From my perspective in the aisle seat, my seat was definitely smaller and more narrow than the other seats. I was so cramped, but maybe it’s also because I’m fat…haha JK…but really, the seats were so small. I couldn’t even fit my backpack in the under seat carry-on area! It was a lot more narrow than the middle seat which made me kinda upset. Oh wells, I had to stuff it in the overhead bin. As for not sleeping, I, for some reason, CANNOT fall asleep on the plane. I can in a car, bus, train, or anything that has a rocking motion, but I just can’t fall asleep on a plane for the life of me. So, I just ended up watching countless movies. At the end of the flight my eyes were like O___O. haha, but later on in the day it was like -__-. Buahaha. 

AND I ALMOST LOST MY CHECK-IN LUGGAGE! Ugh, I am such a failure at life sometimes….The stupid immigration line took so long to get through that by the time I went downstairs to claim my luggage, my flight’s luggage was already gone! I had to ask a lady to direct me to my flight’s ramp. I looked like such a lost tourist. Lol. 

After I got my luggage, I had to wait for my internship people to pick me up at the airport. I thought it was going to be a long 3 hours wait, but luckily I met some people from my internship and we just sat together. One of them was even from my high school! What a small Taiwanese world. LOL. I skyped with my parents a bit and then hung out with the kids until the TTT people came to pick us up. 

When I got to the first location of the internship, we just ate lunch and bonded with our group. My group has a whole variety of people and we’re all so different, but we all get along. 

After lunch, we listened to the mayor of Taoyuan county speak and then we listened to this prominent writer. It was all kind of boring, but since my group was seated in the back, we just fooled around and talked.  We got these awesome goody bags with this really nice porcelin tumbler and these really nice re-usable utensils, plus other really cool stuff. They must’ve spent so much money on us since we have 300 kids participating in this program. CRAZY.

When the speeches were done, we rode in these super asian tour buses (9 buses total) and rode to Taichung for dinner. Dinner was super fancy, but unfortunately, the food wasn’t even that good. Haha. It was actually kind of bland and the meat was all super fatty. But the performance during dinner was really entertaining. We had many different Taiwanese indigenous tribes come and perform songs and dances for us. It was so cool!  After dinner, we just headed to our “dorms” for 2 nights. If these were the dorms that I had at school, I would ALWAYS live on campus. It was literally an apartment, with a kitchen, huge living room, dining room, AND laundry room. It was amazing. Plus, A/C was free, so me and my roommates just blasted A/C all night. Haha. It was too good. The only downside was, we didn’t have wifi.

Our Asian tour buses! There's even KTV and microphones lol

Since I was super jetlagged and had stayed up for a good 36 hours or more, I instantly knocked out when the lights were turned off. It was nice. Haha.

The living room of my "dorm". Super big

Day 2

I woke up earlier than the rest of the girls in my room since I was jetlagged. It’s kind of nice waking up early, but I know I won’t be able to do it after a couple of days when my jetlag wears off. T___T. Guess I have to make the most of my jetlag. Surprisingly, I am not tired at all, but that will change soon. Haha.

Today, we traveled to many places in Taichung. Right after breakfast we had this team bonding activity, but with all Asians, everything is a competition,. Unfortunately, it was a jump roping competition. -___-. It would’ve been nice if it was one v. one, but NO, it was our group vs. another group. We had all jump at the same time…and there are 12 kids in every group. BLAH. We didn’t even make one jump. LOL -__-. Ultimate fail. With no surprise we ended last, but oh wells, our group bonded over our loss by making up excuses on why we lost. LOL. The top 3 places won these HUGE watermelons, but I don’t even know when they’ll be able to eat it, haha, since our schedule is PACKED.

UGH BUT I AM SO MAD. I had only stood outside for less than 10 minutes and I had already been bitten twice. -__- right after I put on bug spray too!!!! These mosquitoes know where the fresh meat is at…Ugh, now the bug bites have swollen and are HUGE. It’s like a huge lump that is super itchy but it also stings at the same time. I hate mosquitoes -__-. 

Right after the jump rope competition, and everyone all sweaty and mosquito bitten, we had to listen to two more keynote speakers. The first speaker was so awesome and interesting. She came to talk to us about the Creativity Lab, where artisits/designers work with engineers/scientists to make these amazing works of technological arts, or media arts. It’s amazing how much we’ve come since pencils and paper. *Note to self, must attend Taipei’s Flora Expo since their main attraction is created by the Creativity Lab. The flowers in the expo interact with you! If I get a chance to go, I’ll definitely put more details up* The second keynote speaker was SO BORING. It literally was like a business/econ lecture…nothing special to note here haha. 

After the speakers, we were off to our next destination! For my bus, we went to a couple of Taichung’s top sites. First we went to the world’s largest power plant. Yes, you read right, We went to a power plant. -__- Of all the places they could pick….It was alirhgt I guess. Next, we went to a steel factory. This was actually pretty cool because we got a VIP tour and got to see how the steel was made. We got hardhats and got to walk around in the factory, except it got REALLY hot, but it was so cool! Not many people can get a tour in steel factory. *I feel so special :D*

As I said previously, our days are SUPER packed. Wake up at 7am and don’t get back until 10pm. 

Today, my group definitely bonded. We are a weird group. We’re super social with each other and our counselor is super cool, but we don’t talk to anyone outside of our group. Haha. I try to and have other friends, but I rarely get to see them! 

Our last destination was the Feng Jia Nightmarket, but we ended our tours a little too early so we chilled at this park until we got to go the night market. It’s so awesome. Our counselor each gave us a 100 NT to spend at the nightmarket for whatever we wanted, but what’s even better, he paid for all of us for our foods. FREE 100NT! He is super awesome! He even gave us little cell phone pouches that have a map of Taiwan on it. WAH I FEEL SO SPECIAL! No other group has it.

The nightmarket was sooooooo crowded. -__- sweaty people everywhere. It didn’t help that we got the weirdest looks from the locals. Haha. AMERICAN PEOPLE INVADING. Literally, there were like 300 kids roaming night market. My group stuck together and ate all kinds of food. The popcorn chicken was SO juicy and delicious. And the boba, stinky tofu, and shrimp omelets. YUMMM,. There was just too much to see and too much to eat! Can’t wait until I’m not on a schedule and spend more time eating and shopping. Hehe. However, nightmarkets are not a place to go eat dinner. I was so hungry after leaving the nightmarket. Haha. Those foods are good for late night snacks, but they’re not very filling for a meal….

I was so tired after returning from the nightmarket that the girls in my room and I just knocked out right after we showered. Orientation has been so much fun so far, but also so tiring. Can’t believe it is only the second day and we still have so much to do!