My life in Taipei has begun to follow a routine. I wake early around 5:30am. This is not because I need to but because it gets light here in July very early and the curtains in the studio apartment I am renting are not of the block out variety. That said, I tend to fall back to sleep for another hour!
After a simple breakfast, I pack my bag and head off to school. The train system in Taipei is excellent. I am only a minute walk from Zhongxiao Dunhua station. I take the train to Taipei Main Station where I switch lines and head out to Taipower Buildiing Station. It only costs me 25 Taiwan dollars and if I leave the apartment at 8:45am, I can easily get to the Taipei Language Institute by 9:30am.
Classes at TLI are working out very well. My three teachers are all entertaining and very skilled at keeping me on task. One teacher goes through vocabulary whilst a second helps me labor through the texts required for the reading comprehension parts of the HSK Chinese proficiency test. My third teacher covers news articles.
Actually my favorite part of any lesson is when we do get off track and just exchange stories about my life in Singapore or their life here in Taipei. That is when it feels very natural and it also forces me to express my ideas and tales in Chinese.
When classes conclude at 12:30pm, my current routine is to first head back to the apartment to offload my books and to have a spot of lunch. My initial plan to cook has been somewhat thwarted by the fact that my apartment's kitchen is very limited and secondly, there is a lot of very yummy food around. My favorite has to be Japanese.
Thankfully I have also found a government gym near the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Unbelievably cheap at 50 NT dollars for an hour it is a well equipped if somewhat busy gym.
Actually my favorite part of any lesson is when we do get off track and just exchange stories about my life in Singapore or their life here in Taipei. That is when it feels very natural and it also forces me to express my ideas and tales in Chinese.
When classes conclude at 12:30pm, my current routine is to first head back to the apartment to offload my books and to have a spot of lunch. My initial plan to cook has been somewhat thwarted by the fact that my apartment's kitchen is very limited and secondly, there is a lot of very yummy food around. My favorite has to be Japanese.
Thankfully I have also found a government gym near the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Unbelievably cheap at 50 NT dollars for an hour it is a well equipped if somewhat busy gym.
No comments:
Post a Comment