Today I made the trek from Chiayi to Kaohsiung (pronounced Gow-shung). As a side note, try breaking the habit of typing “sh” when pronouncing that sound. I have to remind myself every time I write it that the “h” comes before the “s.” Anyways, I left the familiarity of the practice hotel where I had lived the whole time I have been here (except for my time in the Philippines). After cleaning the place, which took longer than expected, I got a taxi and went down to the local train station. An hour and 15 minute train ride later I was in Kaohsiung (that took me at least 5 seconds to type that time). Somehow I got confused on where to go and took an emergency exit down to the main level. Yup, even with all of this traveling I am still an idiot when it comes to simple things. I am able to travel to different countries, but don't expect me to find the stairs.
I met two of the people from Wenzao University, Scott and Tina. As Ray and Emilie pointed out, Tina is a very common English name for the Taiwanese to adopt. As they say, the Taiwanese “are still stuck in the '60s” when it comes to American names. They took me to a street close to the station where I was able to get lunch. Since they speak English I was actually able to know what I was ordering. The pork noodles were tasty and cheap. The meal cost NT50.
After that, we went back to the station and took the MRT to the Kaohsiung Arena stop. The students told me that the KMRT was different than the MRT in Taipei, but I thought it was pretty similar. It only opened a year ago, so the facilities were really nice, just like the rest of the public transportation facilities. Luckily Scott and Tina were with me because there was one difference when getting the token. In Taipei, you just look at the map and the fare is on each stop so you just enter the token amount in the computer. On the KMRT, there is a map that you physically have to press the stop you want. It is really convenient, but the map was so new that I wasn't able to tell that I had to press it. I just kept hitting 20 and wondering why the screen wasn't changing. But once the snafu had been settled we were on our way.
From the stop we took a taxi to the school, and the school covered the fare. Awesome! They gave me a quick little tour of the campus and then took me to the dorms. The dorms are also in great condition. The main problem that I discovered is that there are no mattresses at all. Apparently when they said to bring bedding materials, they meant all bedding materials. It looks like I will be spending the next three weeks sleeping on a wooden board. Oh well, I can tough it out.
While I was in the room, they also made me fill out a few forms and explained some of the rules of the building. The best part about going through the rules was finding out that I was already breaking one. I found out that alcohol was not allowed in the dorms, which makes sense. Normally, this would not be a problem, as I am not a degenerate drunk and don't carry booze on my person. However, when we got out of the cab, we made a brief stop at a tea stand. I decided to try my first Heineken green tea. When they were going over the rules I was still holding the tea in my hand. Tina and I both just looked at each other and decided that I was just holding tea. Crisis averted.
By the way, Heineken green tea is pretty awesome. It tastes much like green tea, except it still has the kick from the beer. Since I liked that, I am going to try the recommendation to go with the Heineken green tea with passion fruit next time. I am surprised that they don't serve it in America seeing as it combines the two amazing ingredients of beer and tea. It's gotta be one of the healthiest alcoholic beverages on the market. After drinking it, my body seemed to be confused. It didn't know whether to be tired or awake. Right now I still feel kind of drowsy.
And that's basically where I'm at right now. Both Scott and Tina had to do other things, so I am just sitting in the room typing this up waiting for 6:30 to come when we will go out for dinner. This is not going to be posted immediately because there is a problem with the internet. The school configured the internet so that you need to type the IP address in before you can access the network. Unfortunately, they only have the instructions to do it for Windows operating systems. Since my computer runs on Ubuntu Linux we were not able to figure out how to configure it. Later on we will try again. If worse comes to worse I can always borrow other peoples computers long enough to send out e-mails and update the blog.
Anyways, I am really excited to be here and already had a chance to look at the itinerary and it looks amazing! There are so many trips and other events that I am really looking forward to. And I would like to thank Taiwan's Ministry of Education in advance because there is no way that this could cost $250US without their help. With all of the stuff that we are going to do, the actual cost for all of this is probably at least three times what I paid. All in all, it looks like this is going to be an awesome three weeks. I'll be sure to keep writing for the blog, even if I am not able to post the entries very often. Take care friends.
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