Today (5/25), we started the day by having a class that involved reflecting what we have learned so far. I found hearing everyone’s thoughts insightful and interesting because everyone had different things that spoke to them. Additionally, things that stuck out to some people were sometimes things I didn’t think about myself.
After our meeting, some of us headed out to the train in order to find something to eat. We took the train a couple stops before getting off and wandering around. We found this restaurant and while part of the menu was in English, the younger women who worked there did not. Luckily, this younger local lady was more than willing to help us and wrote our order down. We also found out that this restaurant was a family restaurant passed down to the current owner, also the chef who was there. I thought the food that they served was some of the best I have had so far and learning about the background of the restaurant made it even better.
We then headed back to Riverview hotel and met up with our group before heading to the Taiwanese University where we met with some students. One thing that shocked me while talking to the students was that they took 7 classes at a time and all of them had final exams. If I were to have this schedule, I think I would have an extremely hard time balancing swimming and extracurriculars. Another thing that shocked me was while we were in the gym, I noticed there was a dress code for women. There was a sign that had pictures of two different women with different lengths of shorts. One of the women had shorts longer than her fingers and there was a checkmark and the other had shorts that were shorter and an x through it. I found this surprising because I only saw one of these signs for the women and not the men. I think this was also a culture shock because in today’s day I feel like women are not normally limited in what they must wear, but in this gym they were limiting the length of shorts in which women wore.
I didn’t see the dress code sign so I am glad you pointed that out. That is really shocking to me given the modern culture in Taiwan.