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Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Taiwan: Day 15 – Cooking Class

Today was a more relaxed day, which I definitely appreciated as the last few days had been quite hectic and filled with activities. Our main activity for the day was a cooking class, where we learned to make zongzi, which are dumplings with sticky rice, pork, squid, egg yolk, mushrooms, boiled peanuts, and a few other ingredients. We cooked the pork belly, added sauce to the rice, ad completed a few other preliminary steps, which were quite easy and a lot of fun to do. The hard part came after – we had to wrap all the ingredients into bamboo […]

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Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Day 9

On Day 9, we visited two temples located right next to each other, which were more tourist-heavy spots. I loved the design of these temples because they were more tower-shaped, with one resembling a tiger and the other a dragon. We got to scale both pillars and see some of the surrounding area, featuring giant statues of Buddhist gods and smaller stone statues that lead up to the big statue. We finished the academic part of our day with a visit to a smaller local temple. After our learning objectives were met, the group and I decided to go to […]

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Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Day 9, Taichung – National Taichung Theater, Lukang Historial Town, Fongjia Night Market

Today we went to the National Taichung Theater, the Lukang Historical Town, and the Fongjia Night Market. We got to the theater about 20ish minutes before they opened so we killed some time by having a little talent show. April showed us how she could turn her arm a full 360 degrees because she’s double jointed, Joelle and Professor Chen gave individual vocal performances, and Ayden told us a hilarious and wild story about a time he was on the New York subway. At the theater I had a coffee with a scoop of matcha ice cream in it which […]

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Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Day 8, Hsinchu/Taichung – Hsinchu’s Old City

This morning we checked out of our Taipei hotel and took the high-speed rail to Hsinchu. The train ride was quick, quiet, and smooth and felt more like riding on a plane than a train, especially when a beverages cart rolled down the aisles. Everything was clean and there was more than enough space between each row, making it easy to move in and out of the seats, even when the seat in front of me was stretched back. It was a bit surreal how quickly we went from a dense cityscape to open stretches of countryside, and then into […]

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Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Day 15 – June 3, 2025

Today was a refreshing break from the more structured and information-heavy parts of the trip. We had a Taiwanese cooking class, and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and hands-on activities so far. It was a good change of pace to focus on food and technique, and to be actively involved in creating something from start to finish. We watched as the chef taught us a few steps and then went back to our stations to try to repeat those steps on our own. It was fun and I got to try tiny shrimp which wasn’t […]

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Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Day 7, Taipei – Hong Jaan Printing Co., Dihua Street

Today we visited Hong Jaan Printing Co., owned by Professor Chen’s brother in law. He had mentioned this stop during our pre-trip sessions and described it as a very small print shop, so I came in with low expectations. I pictured something old-fashioned—maybe hand-cranked presses like the ones I saw at the Benjamin Franklin Printing House on a middle school trip to Boston. But as soon as we arrived, I realized that I was very wrong. The shop was full of large, industrial-grade machines and impressive prints hung around the workspace. It was clear that this was not just a […]

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