One week ago I arrived to Taiwan. Three days ago also my roommate Magalie from France arrived. Before she arrived I had spent most of my time just walking around in the area – checking out what shops we have here and of course exploring the nightmarket. I didn’t know any other people yet. Now that she is here we can explore together. 🙂

Yesterday registration at university started. So Magalie and me went to the International Office. There we received a folder with a lot of information on Feng Chia University and the Chinese Language Center. Included is also a course list for the Chinese courses. Today I will compare this list with my schedule for business courses to see which Chinese courses I can take. The Chinese Language Center also offers extra courses on some Friday mornings to topics such as Chinese games or Chinese painting. We also got information on the Sports Center of the university. For 200 NTD a month we can use the swimming pool. for 500 NTD we can use the gym for the whole 6 months. Aerobic fitness flat rate is a bit more expensive: For being able to join all the courses for 6 months we have to pay 2000 NTD.

At registration we tried to find out where to go for lunch on that day. We wanted something simple that is easy on the stomach, as Magalie felt a bit unstable after her travel. It was a bit difficult to explain us the place which the women from the International Office had in mind. Finally they called our partner students to find somebody to take us there. Our partner students were busy working but they introduced us to a friend of them: Sandy took us to a place where they sell rice soup. It really was a nice dish for an upset stomach: Just a simple soup with rice inside and a bit of fish.

Feeling much better after our lunch we went to meet other exchange students. A group of three French guys was eating at McDonald’s (which serves very similar food than in Germany or France) and Magalie and I met them there. They had been traveling together around Asia before their arrival in Taiwan and here they rent a flat together. It took them five days to find a nice flat here with the help of an agent. Their building is apparently really nice – with a swimming pool! But they have to take a bus to get to university as it is a bit further away.

After they finished eating we decided to pass some time until the nightmarket starts. With the help of some nice people in a Tea shop we found a place offering massages. There was a board with a list of offers also translated into English. I chose a 20 minute neck and shoulder massage for 200 Taiwan Dollars. Some of the employees in this place are blind, the women who did my massage was one of them. They have a device in their pockets that helps them to time the 20 minutes. The others thought that the massage was too strong, but I always felt that massages in Germany are too soft, so I was totally happy with it 🙂

Afterwards we met Martin – a student from Ohm University in Germany – and another French student at Feng Chia university. With our big group we walked along the streets of the Feng Chia nightmarket.

Martin ordering food at the nightmarket:

Martin tried these grilled sticks with different sort of meat. He was told that for buying five sticks he can get one for free. Unfortunately it didn’t taste good… Both Martin and I tried and we didn’t like it. I guess the problem for us was that the vendor used a lot of spicery to cover the meat in. In defence for the nightmarket I have to say that this is the first thing I tried there and didn’t like.

I ate a sandwich (the ones used for hotdogs) with noodles inside! That is maybe not the most healthy food choice but it was really yummy! After eating we went to a hotel bar close to the nightmarket. For my taste it was a bit too posh and also I didn’t like spending more for my beer than for my dinner 😉 There we sat talking a bit for the rest of our evening. At our arrival back in the dormitory, Magalie and I met some of our neighbours in the hallway.