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Saturday, May 24th, 2025

5/24

Today we visited the Taiwan Art school and met with Daniel, a current theater student, and David, a recent graduate. We started the day with a tour, where we saw the different buildings for each field of study. We then went into two different art museums on campus. The first was a student art gallery, where there were two stories of student’s abstract art on display. The second was another museum that was more focused on traditional looking paintings. What I found really interesting about both of the museums was that none of the artwork was behind glass or roped […]

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Saturday, May 24th, 2025

5/23

Today we visited a technology convention where we went on a tour of the Gigabyte Technology company led by Liam Quinn. We got to see new technology from Gigabyte that submerges computer centers in water to combat overheating. I am not very technologically inclined, so it was interesting to hear about recent advancements in the industry, and still surprises me what engineers have been able to innovate and the capacity that these new learning language models have.  Later in the day, we visited a shrimp fishing farm. This was a significant experience for me because I have never been fishing […]

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Thursday, May 22nd, 2025

5/22

Today we visited two temples. The first, Lungshan temple, is a Buddhist and Taoist temple located in Taipei. I learned many traditional aspects of Buddhist and Taoist worship, including that in temples, you always enter at the side with the dragon, and leave at the side with the tiger. People who visit the temple often bring offerings, including flowers, incense, and vegetarian foods. This is because non-vegetarian foods are indicative of a blood sacrifice, something unpleasant to both the offeror and the deceased. I also noticed how the offerings at Lungshan were always placed on a red plate before being […]

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Thursday, May 22nd, 2025

5/21

Our first stop this morning was at AIT, the American Institute of Taiwan. We heard from Christian Koschil, who told us about the mission of the AIT, as well as his position in the organization and how the history of Taiwan has impacted the organization’s mission and goals. What I found most interesting from his presentation was the distribution of FDI into Taiwan. Taiwan’s top source of FDI is green energy, primarily in wind, followed by solar. However, Taiwan still imports nearly 97% of their energy to meet their high demand for energy in the semiconductor and technology industry. I […]

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Thursday, May 22nd, 2025

5/20

When traveling across the world to a new continent, there will inevitably be differences in culture. Some of the largest culture shocks I experienced on my first day in Taiwan revolved around the language and food. Although English is a lingua franca, there are still many street signs and labels that are only in Chinese. This creates barriers for non-Chinese speakers to navigate Taiwan. Furthermore, I found it hard to choose my meals when the labels were in Chinese, and there are many foods I am unfamiliar with.  Furthermore, within our first few hours here, we saw some symbols resembling […]

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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025

4/23/25

Today I am making my first post at our third Bucknell in Taiwan meeting. Today we discussed travel plans and logistics of our trip. My personal goals for the trip are to try new foods, talk with locals, and learn more about the culture! However, I am afraid of getting lost and offending locals.

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