Moving back to Taiwan!
garfaldo
July 28, 2009, 09:11 PM posted in General DiscussionI've been mulling it over for awhile and finally pulled the trigger. I'll be moving back to Taiwan in August to study Chinese at ShiDa University's language school. I'm so excited, and can't wait to meet up with you guys while over there.
I've kinda been absent from CPOD from awhile but am looking to start getting active again. I'm not going to be doing much except studying Chinese for atleast another year or so... ahh... this is the last ditch effort! lol
If anyone knows of some apartment deals around ShiDa or Da'An hit me up please!
Oh and Calkins we definitely gotta meet up!
Talk to you guys soon,
Nick
calkins
July 29, 2009, 12:11 AMHey Nick,
Glad to hear that you're coming back to Taiwan! I will see you at 師大, if not before.
Miantiao, I have to disagree with you. I go to 師大 and the experience is great. The classes aren't too big (no more than 10 are allowed, mine has 7), and English is rarely spoken (except maybe in the very beginning classes where it's used as a crutch).
My class is very diverse: 2 Americans (one being me, the other is an ABC), 2 Japanese, 1 Vietnamese, 1 French, and 1 Columbian. So there's not a lot of room for speaking English anyway. My teacher is great, in her 60's and has obviously been doing this her entire life, yet she has tons of energy and is hilarious.
Nick, I'll keep my eyes and ears open for available apartments. Here's a great site for apartment hunting...all in Chinese though.
Hit me up when you hit Taiwan dirt!
miantiao
July 29, 2009, 12:23 AMhey calkins
must have changed since I was last in taiwan. great to hear you're enjoying it there mate.
just putting in a plug for my old school, where they had a strict no-english policy. which wasn't too hard to enforce since the teaching staff knew none.
I had a few friends attend shida at the time and i'm only going on their own experiences. didn't mean to offend : )
i lived in the hills of xindian, used to walk past shida on my way home( huge school), i'd get the bus from gongguan to xindian, but a couple of times a week i'd walk all the way back to the foot of the hills and take the little bus.
been watching a few taiwanese films lately and i do really miss the place. this film is fantastic 流浪神狗人。
calkins
July 29, 2009, 12:27 AMmiantiao, no offense taken at all! I have heard that enrollment is down about 25%, due to the economy, so that may have something to do with it being a bit better now than say 5 years ago.
garfaldo
July 29, 2009, 12:06 PMThanks for the input Miantiao and Calkins! I've also heard WenHua is a good school and much cheaper. I guess I'll just see how things go when I get there. Oh and thanks for the link Calkins.
Miantiao I used to live near Gongguan too... awesome area. I taught at the Kojen language school just across from NTU.
Oh hey, do either of you know if you can open an bank account over there without an ARC?
I'm so stoked... David Tao, my favorite Taiwanese singer, is also releasing an album shortly after I arrive.. can't wait!
miantiao
July 29, 2009, 12:26 PMhey garfaldo
i used to love shopping and eating around the 公馆 area. would often get a belly full of 锅贴 or 炒面 to fuel my trip back to 新店. i'll have to take my girlfriend(mainlander)to taiwan and do the scooter thing along the east coast and taroko. maybe organise it for next year's music festival at 垦丁 if its still going. had such a good time at the last one i went to in 99 that i forgot how much of a good time had and had to rely on some canadian friends to tell me all about it.
i don't know what an ARC is bloke.
miantiao
July 28, 2009, 11:57 PMhey garfaldo
师大 is not an ideal place to study mandarin. classes are full of english speaking students and tend to be a tad large.
i spent 11 months at 淡江大学中文系 TamKang University's chinese language faculty. class sizes were limited to 5, and my classmates were all koreans and japanese, one semester there was also a turkish bloke.
the instructors were great, for two semesters i had an older lady from sichuan province who's stories were both tearjerking and hilarious. she hadn't seen some of her rellies for 40 years.