Right now I am sitting next to Vivian in the living room of my host family. She is on facebook with her mobile phone and we just put our pictures of today on my netbook. We took sooooo many pictures today! Especially group pictures with other participants we met today. But let me start at the beginning:

Today we got up very early in the morning and drove with the car to Taipei to the headquarters of ChungHwa Telecom. This is where Jack works, the father in my host family.

There we met other participants and got on a bus to Yilan. The bus drive was very funny: Our guide encouraged the participants from different countries to each sing a song in their native language. Those of you who know me better can imagine my reaction: I can’t sing and I don’t know many German songs!! So actually I sang the only thing that came to my mind: “Alle meine Entchen….”

At a short stop we visited LanYan Museum to take some pictures of the view:

In Yilan ChuHwa Telecom has a submarine cable station. First we heard a presentation about submarine cables. I found it especially interesting because we had discussed a case about financing the construction of a  submarine cable in university last semester. So to see these cables was nice. Such a small cable carries so much information across the bottom of oceans! To make sure that a damaged cable does not lead to data loss, another cable station in Taiwan is connected to the station in Yilan as a backup. If one of those stations has a damaged cable, they can send the information via the other station.

After a short lunch we drove on to Yan Ming Mountain, this is where ChungHwa Telecom has a satellite station. So we saw many big satellite receivers outside of the building. Inside we saw an impressive video about satellite technology and general information about the company. I think it is amazing that three big satellites can cover the satellite communication of the whole planet!

Our next stop was Taipei again. First a short break and a visit of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.

Then we went to the Sheraton Hotel in Taipei for dinner with the CEO of ChungHwa Telecom. There were 13 international guest and their host families on four huge tables. During lunch we all got to introduce ourselves briefly to the whole group and share our first impressions of Taiwan. It was a very nice evening and it was great to meet some other participants.

Tomorrow I will hopefully be able to work on a blog entry for sightseeing of yesterday and post it in the evening.

Good night!! 🙂