Taiwan Opened Its Heart to Us

Helloooo readers! It’s Akeel again, here to give you all one final post about my time here in Taiwan. I just want to preface this post with a huge 感谢你们！That means “thank you all”! You’ve stuck with me throughout this awesome three week experience, and even though you may not have been with me physically, it was always nice to see the views on this blog increase every week. Hopefully you enjoyed reading it at least as much as I enjoyed writing it! Now with the formalities out of the way, let’s dive into this final post!

祝你生日快乐艾莉！(Happy Birthday Erica!)

Throughout my stay here in Taiwan, I’ve encountered so many wonderful people. From our TamKang liasons, Cindy and Travis, to my Chinese teacher, 孟老师 (Ms.Meng), people have dedicated so much of their time to making us feel at home in a country that, for most of us, is extremely foreign. That said, this week I felt it would be appropriate to discuss the hospitality of the people of Taiwan. As you may remember from my last blog post, Taiwan has a strong Confucian influence, and it is especially highlighted in their interactions with foreigners (10 points to whoever can name the Confucian quote that applies to this). For example,  Cindy, Travis and our two local student friends Elaine and Vina also helped us to plan a surprise karaoke party for one of our American classmate Erica’s birthday this past Tuesday! Now when I say helped, I mean booked the place, helped work out the time with us, met us at the subway to take us to the place, and stayed and did karaoke with us. It was probably the most fun that I’ve had here in Taiwan outside of...well New Year’s Eve which we also spent with Cindy, Elaine, Vina, and two of Cindy’s friends! I’m not going to say that there aren’t people in America who are willing to give up their New Year’s Eve celebrations to show foreigners what the celebrations are like in their country...but I definitely feel like they are few and far between.

That brings me to the topic of my absolutely awesome teacher, 孟老师. This small woman has probably the biggest heart of anyone that I have ever encountered in my life. She’s also one of the best Chinese teachers that I’ve ever had-- second only to my first Chinese teacher, 龙老师(Mr. Long). From the very first day of class, Ms.Meng greeted us with a bright smile and helped us to get to know our classmates very quickly through humor and in Chinese (with a few english words thrown in if we looked super confused). From then on, she made learning Chinese extremely fun. She acted out words, drew pictures, made funny noises, made us sing and share information about ourselves and even had us solve Chinese riddles. The icing on the cake, however, is that she has consistently gone out of her way to bring us Taiwanese candy and tell us about good Taiwanese restaurants in the area. She even bought the entire bubble tea, during one of the breaks, on Tuesday. Yeah, the entire class. Was it expensive? Eh. Was it kind? Unbelievably.

This first of Travis' remarkable selfies!

If that isn’t enough for you,our first weekend in Taiwan, we went to our program director’s nephew’s wedding (we got there in time to watch a bit of the wedding rehearsal which happens a few hours before the wedding). If that seems a bit weird to you, don’t worry-- it was weird for a few of us too! Don’t get me wrong, all of us were excited to go and see a real Taiwanese wedding, but...it was a wedding. And we were foreign students whom the bride and groom had never met before in their lives. Despite that fact, however, we received the warmest greetings, signed the wedding banner and even had the chance to take a picture with the bride and groom! We were actually so warmly welcomed that at one point, it felt as though we were the main attraction, and not the bride and groom! That would never have happened at an American wedding...like ever. We left with carry out boxes of food that they would have served at the wedding-- we didn’t have the time to see the actual wedding-- and hearts warmed by the kindness of the family. Our director’s older sister then proceeded to split the cost that went into all of us American students eating at a vegetarian restaurant this past Tuesday. Then gave us all presents. For anyone keeping score, that 一万(10,000) points for Dr.Liu’s family and 0 for 美国 (America).

I could honestly go on for probably a good five pages on all of the hospitality that we’ve received on this trip and I still would be able to address all of it, nor would I be able to express the gratitude that I have for each and every person who I’ve have the honor and the pleasure of interacting with on this trip. I am definitely going to miss Taiwan and all of the friends that I’ve made here; this country has definitely earned its title as “The heart of Asia”.

Peace, Love and 台灣,

Akeel (埃克利)

I think this one is self explanatory.