Summary

I've been in Taiwan since early May, and a lot has happened, but I feel like it wouldn't make much sense for me to just start writing entries. The purpose of my trip to Taiwan has three parts: to build on the Mandarin Chinese I studied at Middlebury, to intern at the headquarters Democratic Progressive Party (the DPP) in the international department, and to help Dr. Rigger by informally researching how young Taiwanese (ages about 15-30) feel about their future as businessmen and women -- especially how they feel about potentially working in China.

I originally arrived with David Crane and Becky Nolin. The three of us stayed with Andy Liu's parents for about a week. You can see the three of us together in Andy's apartment sitting on the sofa. During those first two weeks, we spent a lot of time with Andy, Andy's mom and dad, and Dr. Rigger. Dr. and Mrs. Liu took us all over the place, including into the mountains about Taipei. We also got to meet the president of the Taiwanese legislature, and Annette Lu, currently the vice president of Taiwan. Our world changed quickly at the end of our first two weeks when we moved out of the Liu's house and into the extra apartment of Candi Kao's family. By then, Andy had gone to Australia and then on to the U.S. for summer courses at Brown, and Dr. Rigger had also left us.

I began studying at the Taipei Language Institute (TLI) in the mornings and then also working at the DPP office, and this is what I've been doing everday since - class in the morning, work in the afternoon and evening. Both have been great experiences. Work usually ends around 6:30pm, and then I explore the Taiwan night scene with friends. During this first month, I got to spend a lot of time with my flatmates David and Becky, and two Davidson alumni, Bryan Stevinson '03 and Emily Drew '04. They've both been here for about 9 months, Bryan has been taking Mandarin classes at National Taiwan University, and Emily has been working as an editor at the Taipei Times, one of the best English-language newspapers in Taiwan.

The picture with everyone standing around is of my class at TLI and my two professors. The two students next to me are French, and there is also usually a girl from South Korea, but she wasn't here this day for the picture.
In this picture (you can sort of see part of my head to the right) I'm shaking hands with the president of the legislature, and David and Becky are in the middle. The legislative president is a member of the KMT (Guomindang) party, the oldest party in Taiwan, and the same party that Chang Kai-Shek led in the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after World War II. They fled to Taiwan in 1949.
The woman in a pink dress in the middle is Annette Lu, the VP, (a DPP member). We are standing outside of the office building where I work. There's a good chance she will run for the Presidency in 2007 when Chen Shui-bian steps down as president, but most people don't think her odds will be good of winning. The sweetest aspect of this picture is the fact that Andy Liu is in it (standing on the right).


Here's what happened over the next few weeks (I actually kept track of these few events):
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6/02/2005
Hanako Kawabata, a Davidson student who is part-Japanese, came to live with us for a week, and right now another Davidson student, Park Mcarthur, is here for a visit, along with a PBS producer filming our every move, as she films a documentary about handicapped students traveling in Asia (for those of you who don't know her, Park moves around in a wheelchair). If all goes to plan, this documentary will air on PBS in the next few months.
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6/03/2005
This past week we lived with two Presbyterian missionaries in the South of Taiwan who have been in Taiwan here for 20 years, (in areas called Hengchun and Kenting), spending their time growing their church, teaching, and working at the hospital. They had interesting thoughts on Taiwan and Christianity in Taiwan. Their three sons are very lucky -- they've grown up fluent in English, Chinese, and a native Taiwanese dialect.
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6/11/2005
Today, Saturday, was the Dragon Boat festival in both Taiwan and China, when 36-person teams race along rivers/canals in long thin boats that look like dragons. One of my friends at the office is involved in the races and his dragon boat team, so David, Becky and I got up very early and went with him to his race. Their team happened to be missing three people, so we all got to participate in the race! There's one man sitting in the front of the boat banging on this big drumb as we time our strokes to the beat. It must have been pretty neat to see us in these very long boats sliding through the canal, with 36 people dipping their red paddles into the water at the same moment. We lost the first race, but we won the second one. It was a great morning.
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