Gotta get the boring stuff out of the way...Well the past week has pretty much consisted of going to class everyday. been pretty eventless during the weekdays. we've had to do some stuff each day for hofu's building energy class, some ecotect and eQuest. and our other professor Mr. Wohlgemuth's class has been kinda interesting but the class itself takes up most of the day and we've had to do some research for the class, he gave us our final project this past friday, doesn't seem too difficult. The project is due this Thursday and we have to give this presentation on it, but eh, after that the rest of our time here should be pretty chill. Onto the more fun stuff...

This past Friday, after Mr. Wohlgemuth's class, we had dinner with the president of the University's Architecture department and some taiwanese grad students as well as some of the professors. The dinner itself was delicious and it was a lot of fun mingling with everyone. After dinner we went back to our dorms to nap cause we had been up late the night before. and then some of the grad students took us to this really popular karaoke place. i'm going to post pics and videos up soon. we were there until about 3am singing our hearts out, having appetizers, and drinking, it was a lot of fun. next day we slept in and went shopping around 3pm for clothes. Stacey, one of the tawianese exchange students that went to cal poly, showed us a really good place to buy clothes. I bought a bunch of asian styled cloths. One of which was this sleeveless korean hoodie. it's pretty sweet. Also bought a new wallet, bracelet, and some glasses. After shopping we went to a new night market which i have a short video of. It was really big, we were exhausted from shopping and didn't have time to go through it all. So we're gonna go back another day. not sure when though. Today Melissa, Cindy, Tam, and I went out everyone else stayed in. I'm really glad they can speak the language here. otherwise i feel like we'd get lost so much easier. I mean sometimes it seems Melissa and Cindy get lost despite there advantage but, it's much easier to find our way again. We went to the 2nd tallest building in taiwan and looked around some of the malls they had there. A lot of technology there. The girls did some browsing while i did some browsing. It was good. For dinner we went to this delicious ramen place.

7 hrs of classes

today seemed like forever just cause of the 2 classes we took with hofu and Mr. Wohlgemuth.
We woke and got ready. got some breakfast and we saw hofu in one of the cafeterias. he left a bit earlier than us to prepare for class. after we were done eating we walked over to the architecture building and went up to the 8th floor where i class was. We had hofu's class from about 9am-12pm and it was just like taking hofu's class at cal poly pomona. we have some assignment due monday where we have to look up some stuff on ecotect. after hofu's class we went to go grab some lunch before we had to start Mr. Wohlgemuth's class at 1:30pm. After we ate we pretty much all bought some snacks to help us stay awake during his class. It was from 1:30pm - 5:30ish pm. We were all pretty restless by then. For the most part the class is boring but there some interesting things in there. After that we talked about what to do this weekend. We couldn't really agree on what to do other than making a visit to Taipei 101 a "for sure" thing. After discussing that, Marie, kenny, and I went in search of the gym. We felt restless from class and exercising seemed like a great idea. We found a relatively small weight room which i thought was perfect but Marie and Kenny wanted to do some cardio. Unfortunately there were no cardio machines. So we just went back to the dorms and I got ready and went to the gym to work out by myself. It seems like its pretty empty most of the time but we'll see what happens when school actually starts in a couple weeks. Kenny came over to the weight room after i had been in there for like 30 min and told me he'd be eating in the cafeteria that was just down at the end of the hallway from where the weight room was. So i finished up some last crunches and went over to see where they were. They all wanted to go out so i told them i'd go back to the dorm and shower and then we'd venture out into the city. So we did and we just walked around. Marie and Nicole did some shopping/gazing around some of the shops and i tried some foods. It was fun. Lang found an ice cream stand and then suddenly everyone else wanted some. It was perfect for the warm humid weather here. We found out about a water park here too which we intend to visit sometime during our stay here. After walking around the city for a couple hours we just came back to our dorms and drank a bit and played some games, and then slept. Today starts day 4 =)

Day 2 Thur

Woke up today around 2am. the thunderstorms from this morning had woken me up. went out to the balcony and watched the thunderstorm for a bit. it was pretty cool being able to watch it from the 15th floor. after that i went' back to sleep. woke up about 4hrs later around 6am. after that i couldn't sleep anymore. i went online to check stuff and then went out to breakfast with everyone. we all decided to go look outside of campus for a place to eat. by the time we had chosen a place to eat it was already brunch time. haha. food was pretty good. a little more expensive than on campus, but eh, that was ok. after that we went walking around a bit and saw some little shops here and there. after walking around a bit in the city we came back to campus and got some notebooks and stuff from our rooms so that we could take notes in class. we went to go buy snacks cause the class was going to be 4hrs long, so we did that and then went to class. everyone seemed pretty bored from the lecture/discussion going on. the class has to do with preparing buildings for future use and what the best way of accomplishing that is. i thought the class was kind of interesting a certain times and boring at others. everyone else just seemed to be bored. after class we went back to the dorms and relaxed while cindy and melissa talked to some of the other students that were in our class. 3 taiwan students that we had just met were going to take us to the night market to show us some good places to eat. we all met up at the front gate of campus around 6ish and went walking into the city. the night market was pretty cool. lots of lights on a relatively small street and lots of places to eat and shop. we tried out food from a few different places. it was fun. did a lot of walking. after the night market lang, kenny, and i purchased some beer and came back to our dorms. marie joined us for some drinks and we just chilled. talked a bit. shared some laughs and now its time to catch some zzz's.

Day 1

when i arrived at the airport i thought i was going to be much more nervous than i was. it was still hard to believe that we were actually going through with going to taiwan.
it mean it all seemed so surreal. it seemed like it took forever for the plane to actually take off. we arrived at the airport at around 10:30 and didnt' take off until about 2am. I ended up getting a seat next to lang lor. the take off was fine. didn't feel much at all. i pretty much slept for about 5-6 hours and then watched some movies/dozed here and there for the rest of the 8 hours.
it was pretty cool flying near and over thunder storms. once we were getting close it was getting
much more exciting. we were all anxious to land and ready to settle into our dorms. we arrived in taipei at around 6am and from there we were taken to the school. Once on campus we were pretty much orphans until someone claimed us. I guess standing in front of the international building with tons of luggage kinda gave us away. We were taken to our dorms which aren't too bad and claimed who was getting which bed. kenny, lang and I are in one dorm room and marie and nicole are just a couple doors down. Melissa, cindy, and tam have there own studio apartments. After we settled in hofu met us at the dorms, told us a couple things and went back to his office. we were all pretty hungry so we went to one of the cafeterias on campus. It's pretty nice, the food here seems so healthy and good. After we ate we went to go see hofu so we
could use his internet connection to contact our families, since hadn't had internet yet. after that we came back to our dorm rooms to shower and rest. after a bit of resting hofu dropped by our dorms and notified us that the "it" guy was ready to set us up with internet so we had to take our laptops over to the architecture building. The guy had a lot of trouble for some reason setting up the internet on my computer and it still doesn't work right. after that we came back relaxed a bit more and then went to go eat when melissa, cindy, and tam had come back from settling in their apartment. after eating we were planning on going to one of the night markets but we were all exhausted so we decided to come back and finally catch some z's. it was one of the longest days ever. but day 1 is over and day 2 begins in the morning. sleep time.