I will be living with host families throughout the year (although I'm still unsure as to how many-- somewhere between three and five), and my first host family consists of a mother, father, and two sons... One of these sons will be going to Hungary on exchange, however, and the other will be leaving soon after I arrive, to go to school in Switzerland. I will be going to a high school, known as the Kaohsiung Municipal Wunshan Senior High School.... it seems like a very interesting school, and focuses on maintaining an "international perspective", as it says on its website. Language classes are very important to the curriculum, and I've learned that much of my class time, at least early in the year, will consist of instruction in Chinese. Speaking of Chinese (Mandarin Chinese is the predominant language spoken in Taiwan, although there is a distinct Taiwanese language as well), I have been trying to learn some before I leave, and know some basic phrases, vocabulary and grammar. As everyone seems bent on telling me, it is one of the hardest languages to learn. Probably the most challenging aspect in my opinion are the 4 tones... when speaking Chinese, each syllable has a different tone, and getting the tones wrong while speaking can lead to awkward misunderstandings, and ultimately just sounding stupid. However, as I've worked on Chinese, it appears to be a very logical language, grammatically speaking, so hopefully it won't take too long for me to catch on.
To give you a bit of information about Taiwan, it is a relatively small island (sometimes I just stop and think about how cool it is that I'll be living on an island), about 110 miles away from mainland China. It's relationship with China is famous, as Taiwan (technically known as the Republic of China, but not to be confused with the People's Republic of China, which is mainland China) claims independence from China, but China does not recognize its claim. The state known as the Republic of China was founded in 1949 on Taiwan after the political party known as the Kuomintang fled to the island, after being defeated by the communist party on the mainland... this involved the migration of about 2 million people to Taiwan from China, and the two countries have had a tense relationship ever since. It's a somewhat confusing history, so I won't go into any more detail here, but it's also really interesting, so feel free to go read more about it! A few more quick facts about Taiwan are that it has a population of about 23 million people, its currency is the New Taiwanese Dollar (about 30 are worth 1 US dollar), and it is 13 hours ahead of central US time, which will make for some interesting skype dates. My city, Kaohsiung, has about 1.2 million people in it (a bit larger than Northfield), and is a port city, which I think should be quite exciting and different.
That's all for today, but hopefully you'll continue to read my blog posts about my life in Taiwan, and the crazy adventures I hope to have there!
Until next time, zaijian!
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