Leland Blanchard
Provider: Project GO
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
2024 Summer

Much of my time studying abroad is spent studying. Class, (mandatory) tutoring, and homework takes up about 7 hours of my day – all involving some aspect of Mandarin Chinese. Typically, each day’s work involves learning 50-100 new vocabulary terms and various grammatical patterns. The course itself emphasizes spoken Mandarin – so most of our in-class work is conversations between classmates. Even though we’re given a lot of work, my classmates and I still manage to find time for fun.

A picture of one of our lessons – we had to role play and read out this scenario. I had no idea what was going on here.

Our first few weekends have been filled up by program-organized trips. Typically, via tour bus, all students in my study abroad program will see various sites around Southern Taiwan. Our first few weekends took us to Tainan and the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cultural Park. Tainan, the oldest city on the island, was especially cool – one can see remnants of the Dutch and Japanese colonial periods.

An old Japanese building in Tainan. All of the plaques were in Chinese, so I had to Google Translate everything.

Evenings are left to us to do whatever we’d like. On an ordinary Friday, Saturday, or Sunday night, I accompany my roommate, Chris, and a few of our friends to get dinner and hang out somewhere around Kaohsiung, where our host university is located. Friday nights are reserved for Cijin Island, a few metro stops and a short ferry from our hotel. On Cijin Island, one can find fresh seafood, manicured beaches, and Cijin Sunset Bar – where foreigners outnumber locals.

Every week, my friends make a pilgrimage to Cijin Sunset Bar. After Cijin, we ride the ferry back to the mainland and take YouBike (Taiwan’s bicycle rental system) to Brickyard, a local hangout.

A picture of the beach at Cijin Island. My tutor tells me the sand isn’t naturally black, it is a result of the pollution from the factories around Kaohsiung.

Most of my time is spent with my American classmates. We come from a variety of schools and majors – from computer scientists at Purdue to Asian Studies majors at USC. However, we all are ROTC Cadets – from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and even the Space Force. Much of the time we are accompanied by our tutors at dinner – they’re undergraduate students at our host university. We usually speak in Chinese about our plans for that weekend or about our American universities.

In Taiwan, I’ve discovered a version of myself that is far less uptight. Taiwan Leland is a much easier Leland to be around. It’s probably because, while studying abroad, I have zero responsibility aside from doing well in class. When I’m not in class, I can just relax and have fun with my friends. I’m going to try and bring parts of this less-uptight version of myself back to America.

The view from the ferry to get to Cijin Island. There is a small population that lives on the island, but most passengers are tourists, from Taiwan and abroad.