Travel - ‘Best part of Taiwan is the people’

Three weeks ago, I said goodbye to my family, friends, Greater Sudbury, and Canada to begin a year-long adventure in Taipei, Taiwan.

It didn’t really sink in completely until I was hugging my parents goodbye at the airport, and it finally hit me, hard. I had to let go and walk onto that plane by myself. I won’t hug my mom and dad again for a whole year. I was more scared than I’ve ever been. But somehow I let go, took one last teary look at my parents, and walked away. I was heading out on a Rotary Youth Exchange. This fantastic program, sponsored by Rotary International, sends thousands of students all over the world each year.

Never in a million years could I have predicted the events that were to follow. Culture shock would be a major understatement. It is clear this will be the experience of a lifetime.

I landed in Taipei after a 22-hour expedition that included a six-hour layover in Seoul, South Korea, where my camera was stolen and a nice young Mongolian man asked me to be his girlfriend (I respectfully declined).

My host family met me at the airport in Taiwan and brought me to my new home. Despite the language barrier, they were so welcoming that I immediately felt at home.

I’ve been here in Taiwan for a little over two weeks now, and I’m still just trying to process everything I am experiencing. Nearly everything is different, and for a 16-year-old girl from Sudbury who has never been abroad before, every day is a sensory overload.

The first thing I noticed was the stifling heat and humidity. It’s been well over 30-degrees Celcius with high humidity every day. Everybody sweats all the time, and it’s completely normal. No one even looks twice at the man in the elevator, drenched, because he stepped outside for five minutes to have a cigarette.

Coupled with the heat and humidity are the crowds everywhere. Let me put it to you like this: Taipei is roughly the same geographic size as Greater Sudbury. However, Taipei has three million people. Essentially, when you live here, you give up any notion of “personal space.”

The language difference is a challenge I immediately had to face. I was fortunate to find a wonderful woman in Sudbury who taught me Mandarin Chinese for several months before my departure. So, at this point, I am able to get the gist of conversations happening around me. Luckily, many of the younger people here speak some English, so that is definitely helping with the transition. The best part is my Mandarin is improving by the day.

Taiwanese cuisine is delicious, but difficult to get used to because it is much more, well, adventurous than Canadian food. A few days ago I tried a dish that loosely translated, is called “pig’s blood pudding.” The dish is made from pork blood and rice, cut into a rectangular piece, and served on a stick. It didn’t taste half bad, but trying to comprehend what I was chewing may have made it a little bit more difficult to enjoy. I can tell you I’ve become addicted to pearl milk tea (sometimes called bubble tea in Canada). I would live off pearl milk tea if I could, and I highly suggest you try it.

The best part of Taiwan is the people. They are polite, friendly, efficient, and get straight to the point. My host family and their extended family have truly adopted me as part of the family. My host sister, Tammy, and I go shopping together, we go out to eat together, we’ve done karaoke together (karaoke is huge here), and she has introduced me to her friends who have been fantastic.

Although many things are difficult for me right now as I transition through the culture shock, I can already tell this is going to be the time of my life. I am thankful to the Rotary Club of Sudbury and the Rotary Sunrisers, as well as my sponsors, for making this year possible for me. To any young, adventurous teenagers out there reading this right now, I recommend you contact one of the Rotary Clubs in town and apply for this life-changing program.

I’m off to my new school in the morning via the high-speed transit rail. Tomorrow, my class is heading up to the mountains surrounding Taipei to learn about horticulture and landscaping. More on that in my next dispatch.

Faith Fraser is a Rotary Youth Exchange student from Sudbury who will be in Taipei, Taiwan for the next year. This column will appear every six weeks during her trip.