Beginnings...

Well,

It's official, I'm starting a blog. ( oh joy) knowing that i'm Half way around the world has motivated me to keep at least one line of communication back home.

Hang in here, this will be a long post...

Travel over here was PERFECT. I got jut about 3-4 hours of sleep the night before I left so i dozed on the plane to ORD and such, but I say it was perfect because I was able to set my sleep pattern to over here ( not that it was much different than my usual sleep pattern. ) When I arrived at the Airport, I luckily was lucky to get my Taxi from the Airport to NCTU ( National Chiao Tung University). There was one other Exchange student from Colorado that also flew in at the same time. Linda Chang and I and talked about our worries and excitements about coming over here from the US. As her parents were chinese she knew a little chinese, soo, she is in my Mandarin 1 class. We keep up and grab dinner lunch occasionally. It sure is nice to have someone that has similar background and just wants to talk. Bizarrely... I mentioned i did Science Olympiad in Hs and Grade school.. ( 7 year state champ...etc) and she did SciOly as well. ( so we had a bunch to chat about... she was never state champ, but her sister asked for my autograph when she heard i had 5th at nationals in Picture this ( oh the days...Tholen, Lahey, Stump).

Anyways, back to my adventures. Arrived on Campus and there were A LOT of people on campus ( at 9:30 pm)... kinda surprised me. Got to my dorm and found out I have one roomate from Panama,Louis. He is cool and he speaks english good enough to communicate. ( untill now no other roomates have shown up... ( in a 4 person room) SOO, i have a lot of space and everything is really laxed with us. Wanna sleep.. just go. ( the other will be quiet). It humors me because his sleep schedule is stranger than mine. ( yeah... it's possible.. ) i usually go to bed before him. For example, i went to be ~ 12 or 1 and i rool over a 5:30 and see he's still up, I wake up at later and see he'a asleep.. ( all good) i get up at 9 or so for class and he then is getting up too.. ( WhAA??) cool.. cool... so then i come home after dinner ( ~7) and he is in the room.. i go to the bathroom and come out.. and about 2 hours later i realize he's asleep. He wakes up and then starts homework about midnight... so who knows.. luckily I can sleep through anything.

Weather... here.. SUCKS.

OK, let me clarify. it's hot and humid all the time. After about 2 weeks i'm not sweating continously like i was at first, but it's still not the AC .. or Cool weather I had in California. I got to bed and wake up with just a bit of sweat... walk over to dinner.. bit of sweat.. getting better every day.I Don't know if I've been getting enough Salt... oh well. Been drinking a lot of water, tea.. etc. ( side note.. coffee you buy in the store is all Instant... blah)... let me just say I don't think our window will ever be shut.. or our fan turned off ( our fan is awesome.. it's not one of those stand up ones.. it's on the ceiling and rotates to hit most all of the room).

Next.... How about my trip to Taipei my first weekend in town.

So, i get a call ( yes i got a phone) from one of my friends I met in Illinois inviting me up to Taipei to visit Night markets and see stuff, then the next day there would be other exchange students coming up. So i am up and he shows me around the bus station ( big place) with all the markets and some of the cool gadget places. ( cool stuff.. not to badly priced either). We kinda look around for a camera for me so i can get an idea on the prices (because of my Failed Ebay experience.) After that we grab some food and we visit some markets kinda begin to get a layout of what is around. We go to a night club and had a fun time. It's strange to be in a country and see all the influences that America has on them over here ( Music, and everything reminded me of the US).

Next morning I meet up with Linda and Boon ( guy from Singapore) and we all had our own chinese speaking friend.. so it was an interesting day. We saw the mall at Taipei 101, national Forest, night market. I took the bus up to Taipei and took the train back ( the train was 3x the price.. but Soo awesome and fast. )

FOOD.. is everywhere... There is a lot of Rice/noodles. Chicken is popular ( OK.. it's not like the chicken in the US.. it is different hard to explain.. but it is different. ) In the dinning hall I've had a lot of interesting things. Dumplings, strange soups, Porridge but in general, all it is good. Since I'm fairly proficient at using chop sticks I've had almost no trouble eating. ( I know no one was concerned. ) Milk Tea = Excellent

When I was in Taipei those guys definitely got me to try new things. Ducks blood, Stinky Tofu, Fried muscle, Squid, some AWESOME fried rice.

===Classes===

5 classes

Mandurin 1

Intro to Flat Panel displays ( FPD)

Digitial signal processing (DSP)

Transportation Economics

Data Structures.

Each one is 3 hours... and I really thought my hardest would be DSP but surprisingly it should be one of my easiest ( she said it would be easier than Calculus.. WOOT). Every class seems fun but will definitely give me a run for the money as DSP and Data structures are my ECE required classes. Fortunately all my classes are in english ( with slight Mandarin ( chinese) to help the other students who don't know english as fluently as I do).

Starting to slowly meet people on campus. It's kinda hard just to walk around and Say HI as most people don't speak english natively. But it is strange, Most of the international students here are actually from Europe ( france, Switzerland, belgium). so it is interesting to see who I meet. I've only met a few from the USA.

=====OK, now for some Multimedia...=====

Here is the national Forest i saw... as these pics are from my phone it's not as awesome as it could be.. .but it really was beautiful.

Taipei 101... Very Beautiful building ( used to be tallest building in the world... or might still be.. idk)

One of our Dogs on campus... they are everywhere ( luckily they are pretty tame and don't bark and beg too much for food.

... Night markets.. This one doesn't have too many people in it because we awere inside eating pretty early.. but usually it is wall to wall.

FOOD. Squid with egg and other dressings.

Chicken steak with noodles... or something like that

coll ceiling fan... kinda loud but neccisary to have in order to sleep comfortably

and here is my room... Toilet on the right... Shower on the left. ( kind strange to have a mirror in the shower... never have watched myself shower before)... then my desk is first on the left ( kinda get a brief glimpse of my bed.. just a pillow and a mattress... then my Louis my roommate on the back right... and.. Yeah.. that's my room.