|photo: the paper boats that some Taiwanese primary students made and gave me|
Long time no see!
It’s been ages since I last posted something here. My life in Taiwan has been so good so far, just a little too busy.
In the past few months, apart from studying, I also worked for a cultural and educational project to promote culture exchanges in Taiwan. I got the chance to go to a primary school in Chiayi County to have some activities with the kids there. That was probably my most memorable journey in Taiwan until now.
I also made friends with many people, mostly Taiwanese, and shared lots of nice memories with them. Of course there were bad things happening too (it’s impossible to live our lives without some conflicts in daily life anyway), yet overall I am very thankful for the life that I’m having.
It’s winter in Taiwan now. Yet the weather is so unexpected. The average temperature today is 26 degree while that of tomorrow will be 15 degree… My body had a hard time getting used to this, so I am having Chinese medicine three times per day now ;__; I heard that it would get colder in Jan, though.
In Taiwan, whenever you buy something from a store, they will give you a receipt with a 8-digit number on it. Each receipt is a lottery ticket and the government will announce the winners every two months. For Sep-Oct, I had 5 winning tickets and got 1000 NTD ~ It was nothing big, yet very fun ^_* I spent that amount on buying coffee and chocolates for my housemates and classmates (and myself, too :3).
I am in the second semester now. My new teacher happens to not really like me, which is sad because I like her quite a lot. Life is not always easy -“-. There is a Chinese composition contest in my school right now and I have composed a Chinese poem as my entry there. However I strongly believe that by the end of this academic year, I would cry in shame when I re-read this very poem (if I dare to do so at that time) hahaha.
Some notes on daily expenses in Taipei (1 USD = 32 NTD now)
- an average meal for student: 50 – 150 NTD
- a cup of tea/ coffee: 30 – 60 NTD
- a glass of beer in a bar: 150 – 300 NTD
- an apple/ kiwi: 10 – 20 NTD
- city bus fare: 15 NTD/ way
- metro fare: 16 – 55 NTD/ way depends on the distance
- public bike: 5 NTD for the first 30 mins of every ride, 10 NTD/ 30 mins later on
alienmeo 
I recently read a book about France in the late 19th century that talked about how difficult it is to give equivalent monetary values from earlier time periods. Instead, what is useful is to give prices of typical items, as you did in your post. So, maybe some day in the future, some historian will thank you for this post. 🙂
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