On a little island in the Pasific :D (Taiwan)

Well, I had been quite busy for the first few weeks because of settling up here and partially because waking up in the morning (7 am!) made me quite slepy in the afternoon. However I guess I should finally write about something here, now that I finally managed to change to afternoon class :D. A lot of thins have happened in these 3-4 months that have passed so I am trying to keep it short about each topics and focus on the basics.

              

The beginning of my exchange student life here was somewhat a shock as the teacher spoke 95% of the time chinese so I had difficulties understanding her (not to mention her fast pace of talking!) and sometimes I still dont get but somehow I have managed since then. From the start we have had an exam every Monday and usually test everyday and homework most of the time, which varies from reviewing the next chapter to 5 writing 300 character story about your home country O_o. However, after some time I got ''used to it'' as far as one with relaxed (lazy) finnish education can, and managed to improve from quite a bit my score from midterm to final term..Oh and did I mention, unless I get at least 80/100 as my final score, they are going to charge me for all the lessons I had. These folks really know how to motivate exchange students as well :D!

Jiaozi with soymilk

In any case, the time I spend in school is relatively limited so I have been eating out at restaurants every meal, which is not that big of a problem as you can get lunch here with 1,5-5 euro depending on the restaurant.  In addition to being cheap, the food is also very tasty :). Korean and Japanese food is also readily available everywhere,  though the variety of restaurants serving chinese food alone is quite impressive.

Bicycling in Taipei around 2 am

Taipei city has excellent biking opportunities, which I used extensive especially during summer, the biking lane goes along the river so it has a nice city view and most importantly, you get away from the constant traffic and noise (SCOOTERS!) that takes place on the streets. Besides, Taipei city has very convinient bike rental system called easybike, and after you register you can rent a bike for maybe 1 hour 20 NTD= 50 Euro cents, and all you have to do is to find a nother bike rental station to return it back. All in all, biking is probably on of the best sport opportunities here.
 

In September my parents and my brother from Japan came to visit me, and we went to a lot of different places, mostly around northern Taiwan since I didnt have vacation that time but my parents did visit the south as well. Below are some pictures as examples of the places we visited, nice time :), even though the weather was a bit rainy. However, nothing quite compares with the scenery of Taroko (futher below)

A house in Jiufen that reportedly gave inspiration to the Movie ''Spirited away''

An absolute must (along with bubble tea :P), this place is basically a huge gorge, and on the bottom of it there is jade carved by the flowing river. In my opinion it's the most beautiful natural wonder in Taiwan, possibly in the world as well. I went there with my mom and dad and walking along the ridges looking to the inner gorge was absolutely a breathtaking experience. This place is constantly under a lock-down because the taifoons, earthquakes and rockfalls that occur throughout the year, so if you have an opportunity to go there, you better go to see it! During the 1960's many people lost their lives when building the highway and still the storms cause considerable damage to the infastructure around here. I shall conclude this post to these pictures, I'll cover the different topics later!