So to pick up where I left off, I have already been through almost my second week of classes now, but ill fill you in with the first week. My class on Monday is IT project management and it is from 9am-12n. We went around the room introducing ourselves by telling where we were from and what experience we had with project management. The majority of the class is in their late 20's to 40's and have many years of work experience so when it came to me all I could say was that Clark and I started a project management club at our undergraduate school in our college of business. We had to start from scratch to create a good system to pass on the next semester to the new president and vice president. It was a great experience and a large task for me to take on, but a great experience and most importantly brought me closer with ASU and a member of the Deans Council Student Advisory or DCSA which consist of all the presidents and VP's of all the clubs in the college of business. At the end of the class we had to create a group for our team project. To jump back a second, while the introductions for going on a man name Maurice who is probably in his early 40's said he had his on scuba exporting company so I was interested to talk to him more. My group came to be me, Maurice from Canada, Mickey from Pakistan (note that not all middle eastern are terrorist and are really great individuals to get to know), and Muggi from Mongolia. They all seem to be very intelligent and since I’m the youngest in the group by maybe 20 years they thought I could be the computer expert of our group. I was talking to Maurice about my interest in scuba diving and he asked for my height and said he could give me a full body wet suit he has laying around the shop. I offered to pay him for it, but he refused and the wet suit ended up being brand new and fit great. I look forward to working with this group throughout the semester.
My Tuesday 6:30-9:30pm class is BDM business decisions methods. Since it was the first day we just went the syllabus and I would later find out that all of my classes will have group projects. We did have a guest speaker from SIU southern Illinois university who ASU beat in football during play offs awhile back. I was not really impressed with his presentation or his school which they had an exchange program with NCKU. I feel ASU has a better International business base which we do have a major for, so hopefully when our vice dean or chancellor comes to visit NCKU along with Clark and I next semester/year we can hopefully set up an exchange program for our schools. Anyways we got through the class and formed groups. My group is Clark and I, and a guy named munkuu from Mongolia. Should be a good group of guys.
For Wednesday I had MIS managing information systems at 6:10-9pm which did not last but have the class. My teacher is Dr. Victor Chen who is a good friend of my professor from ASU Dr. Charlie Chen who was on my Japan/Taiwan study abroad trip. To get through this class we went through the basics and did not get to form complete groups. This past Wednesday we still did not come to a conclusion on groups. After class Sander and I was meeting up with Pablo from Bolivia who told us about a foreign soccer team and to come play on Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoon. The team travels around playing all the other foreign teams from cities all over Taiwan. Sander and I both had a great time and met many more people a lot from Canada, then a guy Dan from England, and some south Africans and lots more, but it is so hard to learn so many new names especially when I’m bad about remembering names anyways. This past Wednesday was even a better night, my conditioning was still terrible but I played a lot better and almost had a few goals, but did get an assist from a throw in back post. I met another few guys who live my same dorm. Tony and Ullee are both from the northern part of Italy and I don’t remember seeing Ulle play, but tony is a great player and is a nice guy. They travel a lot on the weekends around Taiwan and I plan to make some trips with them in the near future. I didn’t get home from soccer until 12, but went out to the bar to meet up with Sander and some other Estonians who were hanging out in town. I ended up learning so much about Estonia from talking to sander and his friend Indrek. They all grew up learning a few languages and Indrek was a couple years older than sander an since Russia dominated much of Europe during the soviet union he was raised to learn Russian, along with Estonian, English, and some German. The winters are very cold there and they have months where night fall is only for 3o minutes and then months where there are only a few hours of daylight. Also an interesting fact I learned is that Estonians do not like knights. Knights called a meeting over 800yrs ago with some kings or high power officials to have negotiations, but ended up killing all there kings so they are known to Estonians as not noble people, but liars and the exact opposite us Americans or kids grew up with the king Arthur stories to fantasize about. Indrek was extremely brilliant and said he had the most useless or random knowledge than anyone which from the conversation did not fall short of being true.
Anyways back to the classes. I am not signed up for any Thursday classes, but now my Chinese course that started today is from 3:10-6pm. It was a lot of fun and the class seems to be very beneficial, but it’s going to take a lot of studying and practice to really learn the language.
My Friday class is from 6:30-9:30 and its MOM multinational operations management, but every time I see the acronym I think of my mom (love you). This is going to be a great class because we will have a lot of guest speakers including the President of Ford motor co. Jeff Nemeth. We will also have a weekend trip to Taipei to visit the Ford motor plant which I really look forward to.
So last Saturday was just a hangout day, I pretty much just played around the room watching movies and waiting for the COOKOUT trip.
So the COOKOUT was probably the highlight of my trip so far. We all met on campus by the Kuang Fu gate where 3 tour buses picked up our huge group of IIMBA students and their families who joined. We split up into groups of eight and were given 1000NT or $31usd to shop for groceries to cook for dinner. My group was Clark, Marcin and Ola from Poland who are really nice and great to hang out with, Anthony, and David from Malaysia, Cory from USA and Sarah from Taiwan. We ended up spending around 1500NT which every group ended up doing, but had so much food from chicken strips to squid on a stick, and bird hearts. Yes that is true bird hearts and they were actually really good. Another unusual food I ate was rice that had been soaked or marinated in pig’s blood for many hours then scooped out and mashed into a rectangle to be put on a stick like a Popsicle. The ones we had really did not have much taste, but I hear the ones at street corners are a lot better. They gave each group a box of coal to start our BBQ with and all the plates and utensils to eat with. On the blog sight are the photos from the cookout everyone can check out. Before we started cooking we had a small tour around the park which included a short boat ride tour around a dam. We were lucky to be the first group to go so we had some day light left to see our surroundings. There was one hotel overlooking the dam which was very high-end and cost around 7000NT a night around $250usd. It was a nice relaxing ride before we began the big party. It took a while to get our fire going without lighter fluid, but it turned out great.
After we had the majority of our food cooked, I began walking around to other groups to check out their food and just be social. Everyone's food looked great and it was interesting to see all the different ways people prepared their meals. So I was approached by Sarah from my group to sing karaoke with her so we picked out the song "wanted dead or alive" by Bon Jovi. It came for our turn and as I looked around I was standing alone in the spotlight without Sarah insight. Clark was nearby so I called for him to sing with me and us Lit Up the Stage. hah it was a great time and I think everyone enjoyed it. Everyone had a few drinks in them so I think we may have sounded ok. After about another hour they started playing some Spanish music and that was when everyone came together and danced in circles and lines and even our Head Director Dr. Wu was dancing in the middle of the group which got everyone in an even better mood. We took lots of pictures throughout the night and finally around 10:30pm the party started to slow down. I thought everyone would have been sleeping on the bus ride home, but it was like the party never stopped. We had karaoke going the whole way back and some group singing. I believe there are a few pics from the bus or maybe even a video in my Picasa web albums. Overall the cook out was amazing and I hope we get to have another one next semester.
As for the future, I am going to be able to pick up my ARC card alien resident card Monday, I'm wanting to get a scooter hopefully tomorrow so I can drive to soccer practice this Sunday at 3pm. Hope everyone back home is doing great and I will probably wait to write my next blog in a few weeks probably after my scuba trip 10/10. I love all of you and thanks again for reading my blogs.
Love Always,
Logan
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