Week 4 & 5: 29.9 – 12.10.2014

03.10.2014 I went to Maokong which is a suburb of Taipei and there it has some tea houses and hiking trails. To get to Maokong one can take the “Maokong Gondola” from the Taipei Zoo station.

04.10.2014 We wanted to go hiking at the Lion’s Head Mountain. To get there we had to take a train and a bus. The local train took 1.5 hours and the bus ride was another 2 hours, on the way back we took the high speed rail from Hsinchu station which took only 30 minutes to Taipei. So I think it is definitely worth to take the high speed rail over the local train.
The way was much longer than what we expected it to be and so we could not start the hike before 3 pm. Because we had to be back in Taipei at 7 pm, that left us only around two hours for hiking. But the hiking trail and the view were beautiful.  

In the 5^th week there was the Taiwanese National Day on the 10^th of October. We planned to do some travelling outside of Taipei for this weekend but when we checked the flights and train tickets it turned out that everything was fully booked. We checked different places and sometimes it was even not possible to find a bed in a hostel. So we stayed in Taipei for this weekend.

On the morning of the National Day we went to see if there was something interesting going on. In some places the streets were closed and the air force did a fly-by but that was all we could see.

Tianen Temple

A insect

Hiking Trail in Maokong

A wooden squirrel

Flowers next to hiking path

Maokong

Huge Spider

A Butterfly

Hiking at the Lion's Head Mountain

View from the Lion's Head Mountain

Another insect

Flowers

Empty Zhongshan South Road on the National Day

Taiwanese flag

Front gate of the C.K.S Memorial Hall

National Theater

National Concert Hall

Week 3: Taipei and Keelung 21.09 – 28.09.2014

The third week in Taiwan and this week was the first “real” school week.
I was enrolled in a math course called “Management Mathematics” and I attended the class in this week. My math background was not on the level what it should have been and I thought that I would need too much time to fill the gaps. Furthermore the teacher said that he is not sure if he will continue to do this course in English after the mid terms so I decided that it is not worth the effort and dropped that course. And with this I had my schedule together.  
This week was also the start of the general Chinese course. I have Chinese classes twice a week on Monday and Wednesday from 18:30 – 21:15.

On Saturday I was in Keelung City and also visited the Yehliu Geopark. Keelung is one hour train ride away from Taipei and to get to the Yehliu Geopark from Keelung  it took around 45 minutes by bus. In the Geopark you can see many stones and rocks but it is definitely worth a visit.
Keelung has some temples but they close at 5 pm and I was there too late so they were already closed. I think from there you might have a good view over the city so next time I should make sure to be there earlier.

On Sunday I went to the Baishawan Beach (white sand beach). It is close to the MRT station Tamsui and from there you have to take a bus. The beach was really beautiful and the waves were not too high.

Keelung City

An eagle

Harbour front

Yehliu Geopark

Rocks

Yehliu cape

More rocks



The park 

Coastline

Lion statue

Temple (主普壇)

Statue of Goddess of Mercy

Statue of Goddess of Mercy

A bell in the Jhongjheng Park

Baishawan Beach

Baishawan Beach

@ Shilin Nightmarket

@ Shilin Nightmarket

@ Shilin Nightmarket

@ Shilin Nightmarket

First week at school 14.09 – 20.09.2014

On Sunday 14^th September there was the registration for the Chinese course and the replacement test. I have no Chinese knowledge so I skipped the replacement test and just went there in the morning for the registration.

On Monday the 15.09.2014 was the first school day of the semester. In August there has been two online course selection periods. In the first one I managed to get into two courses and in the second stage I was not able to add more courses. That meant I needed to go to every class I planned to take and ask the lecturer for a permission number. With that I could add this course in the course add/ drop period. Basically you have two week time to add more courses or to drop them.
After that you still can withdrawal one course until December. So the selection system is quite different from the procedure at FHNW in Switzerland.

The first week was more about collecting permission numbers and listening to some introductions about the course… Only in one of the courses there was a “real” lesson.
At least I got a permission number for every course I planned to take, after the first week I had signed in for 18 NTU credits (18 NTU credits = 36 ECTS credits). So I would be able to drop one of them in the second week, because I want to take 15 credits this semester.

And I bought a second hand bike on Thursday morning. Or the bike sale starts at 8 am and they only have 25 bikes per day so people were there quite early. We were in the waiting line at 5 am and we got the numbers 22 and 23. The price for a bike was 400 TWD (around 12 CHF).

In this week I also got to see more from Taipei and the surrounding area.

A "magic" permission number

 

Mengjia Longshan Temple

Mengjia Longshan Temple

Tamsui Presbyterian church (Tamsui Mackay Memorial Chapel)

Tamsui Red Castle

At the Yangmingshan Nationalpark

A flower

Sunset at Yangmingshan Nationalpark

Sidewalk

Panda at the Taipei Zoo

At the Zoo



Monkey

Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall

Taipei 101