Hello, National Taiwan University

Hi everyone, It has been one week in NTU. So far (Tai Da) NTU has been treating me well. I am in a class of 5. Well, it should be 6 of us, but one Canadian guy who has stayed in Beijing for 2 years found that book 3 is too easy for him, so he changed to more advanced level (there’s book 1-5 for basic level). We study 3 hours daily, from Monday-Friday. It seem very short, but trust me, 3 hours a day is enough to learn foreign language. It’s like your head is already full of new words and grammar, and you cant just take more of it. haha.

Everyday, my class have (ting xie) dictation. So we need to review, learn and memorize all the difficult traditional chinese characters after we finished our class. And for me, i need more than 2 hours just to learn 15-18 new words/day, and another 1 hour to memorize the meaning. Besides the everyday (ting xie), we also have (xiao kao shi) mini test on every Friday. so i need to learn extra on Thursday. Every Wednesday, we have to do loads of homework that to be submitted on Friday as well, and I took about 3 hours for do my first homework. So i say, 3 hours is enough. haha.

I think My teacher is quite good. I like her teaching method. She would start with teaching us new words, give us an example on how to say it in a sentence, and asked 5 of us to make our own sentence. She also has a lot of questions to throw to us, and she will patiently listen to our answer and correct our pronunciation and grammar.

The international friends are friendly (even though we are not that close yet). People told me that NTU has more westerners than asian. Which i think it’s quite true. haha. But as for my class, we have 3 cute Korean girls and 1 hot Brazilian girl. haha. and believe it or not, There’s no Indonesian in our batch. haha. They said another school named NTNU (Shi Da) has more Indonesian.

NTU is one of the largest university in town, and i heard its quite tough to go here as well (if you are taking undergraduate / post graduate). I lost my way when i first came to ‘Tai Da’. I thought it will be easy to find my building, but apparently it was not. I had to walk for about 30-40 minutes to find the ‘Foreign Language Division’ building. For more visualisation on how big NTU is. Please see below pictures. haha.. *I went jogging this morning, just to capture this pictures. hahaha*niat.com*

**Above and below is the Royal Palm Road, which is the Main road of NTU, if you are going by the Main entrance, surely you will pass through this road. This is the road that always appear in Meteor Garden drama. haha.**

**Below is the administration building, very classic, i love it. haha*

**And Below is one of the Department Building**

**NTU has a lot of sports field, they are really into sports stuff i guess. They have this baseball field, basketball court, tennis and volley court, football field, running track, and a huge indoor sport stadium*

**Here is the Big indoor sports stadium. They has a very big gym, indoor swimming pool, fencing, etc2. We still need to pay the monthly / yearly fee too. Ranging from 200-500 NTD / month (which is about SGD 10-25/month) depending on what package that you take*

**Here is the Library where i spent my 3 hours of homework. It feels like in National Library in Singapore with Orchard Library ambiance*

**And if you just want to read books, chill, or even ‘pacaran’ by the lake, you can go here anytime. haha*

**But it gets a little eerie at night. haha. Well, even though there are still many students who go for night classes,  cycling or jogging or just passing by at night (cause most student stayed in NTU dorms). It still give you a chill. haha. Maybe because most of the buildings are very old and huge tress are everywhereee*

I intend to join one of their clubs. But im not sure if chinese language student allowed to join in. =( But i heard their clubs are all extreme. Their yoga clubs is conducted at 7am, and their dance clubs need to practice every night. Guess all the students here are very enthu in both studies and their interest. haha.

Guess thats all for now. Hope you enjoyed the ‘little tour’. haha.. Good night!