Blog#6 : My summer vacation in Taiwan (Thao Nguyen)

    Hello everyone! 

    What have you been doing lately? Are you enjoying your summer vacation?

    I had an extremely wonderful summer vacation this year and I am going to share with you now: "My three-week study in Taipei, Taiwan".

    The purpose of this summer vacation was to study Chinese language and the culture of Taiwan. Just three weeks? Yeah! It's not long but it was enough for me to know generally about Taiwanese people and their culture. Spending this vacation with me were eight students: three from Gakushuin University, four from Gakushuin Women College, two high school students: one from Mie province and one from Fukushima. We lived together like a big family in a dormitory of Togo University and spent three weeks there with joy and peace. This was probably the happiest summer vacation in my life. Here we are:

In a Japanese room of Togo University
(with 1 senior, 2 teachers and 2 Taiwanese students.)

Pineapple Cake Lesson

     We had Chinese lessons five times a week, in the morning from Monday to Friday. In the afternoon of Monday, Wednesday and Friday we had Cultural lessons learning about, for example, how to make Rice dumplings 粽子 for Tango Festival, make 凤梨酥 - the famous Pineapple Cake of Taiwan, or do the famous Chinese 'paper-cut' etc...In Tuesday and Thursday, we studied Taiwanese children 's fairy tales and songs.

     On the first Sunday of our trip, we visited Gugong ‘故宫‘ - Taiwan National Museum. It is one of the biggest museums in the world with more than 690,000 pieces of ancient Chinese artworks. All of us were very excited to see the famous 翠玉白菜‘Jadeite Cabbage‘. There were so many tourists who came from the China main land that we had to line up for about thirteen minutes to reach the place of the Cabbage. It was a pity that we could not use our cameras, therefore I have nothing to show you now.
    

Gugong 's Main Gate

    Next, have you ever heard about Night Market in Taiwan ? If you visit Taiwan, people there will probably guide you to a night market. Night market 夜市 is one of the most popular traits in Taiwanese culture. Every night, night markets are liven up with light and noises, and the special smell of the famous Bean Curd 臭豆腐 ( called 'choudoufu' in Chinese ). Some of us could not stand the smell of it, but to tell you the truth, I am in love with this Choudoufu. Although Night market has everything you want, food, drinks, clothes, shoes, daily essential items...it is still the market of the youth. Taiwanese young people always go there with friends.

      Not only in night markets, you can enjoy fabulous Taiwanese food on the street. My favourite is 麵線 'mianxian' or 'misua', one type of soup noodles with pork intestines. This one was incredibly delicious. I still remember the first time I ate mianxian is on August 10th, when we eight people went to Taipei River to watch the Firework Festival. I believe both mianxian and fireworks are unforgettable to me.

lol great!great!great!

     Here is my video about this firework festival. I am so sorry because this video is not clear, but I hope at least it could show you how it was.
      Thank you. Hope to see you soon!