Week Eight Top Five

1. Nutella is a popular breakfast food for my host family I had a nutella sanwhich everyday for breakfast this week. I am certainly not complaining!

2. Taiwan uses the Republic of China calendar This calendar is the same as the Gregorian calendar except that year one is 1912 to commemorate the first year of the Republic of China. So, this is year 106. Months and days are written in the same way as in the Gregorian calendar.

3. In Vietnam, people eat stillborn duck eggs to rid themselves of bad luck My Vietnamese classmate mentioned this in a class discussion this week. I had not previously known this was a custom. While I certainly don't find this appetizing, I'm glad to know this fact!

4. The history of the simplification of Chinese characters is fascinating In my Chinese characters class, we have been studying the history behind the simplification of Chinese characters. I hadn’t realized the first proposal for simplification was put forth long before Mao came in to power. In fact, the first formal list of simplified characters was released in 1935, although it was suspended just a year later. I have also learned about the different ways characters were simplified. It is very interesting to learn about this part of history through a Taiwanese perspective since traditional characters are used here.

5. This is now the longest I have been away from home It’s hard for me to believe that I have been in Taiwan for eight weeks now. Previously, the longest I had been away from home was seven week when I went to Zhuhai, China through NSLI-Y for a summer. In some ways I feel like I just arrived in Taiwan but in other ways I have been here for forever. Two months down, seven to go!