Waking up at 6:30am sucks. I haven't had to do this since CHEM115 as a freshman or ever during spring break. Whatever. I'm a man. I can tough it out, or something. Since we had to be on the bus at 7:30, and I like to shower, I skipped breakfast; I normally don't eat breakfast to begin with. We took the bus down to CNCCU for some opening ceremony, but then my dad and the Dean at Krannert got stuck in traffic, so we were waiting for awhile. After a few short speeches that aren't noteworthy, we went on a tour around the CNCCU building (CNCCU is the School of Commerce at NCCU, if you haven't figured that out), which was pretty cool, though it felt kind of old, like a lot of Taiwan does.
Unfortunately, in a study abroad program, one must study (and not just a broad). We had our first of several 2-hour classes to come at 10:00am, with a lecture that went completely over my head. Since this study abroad program is titled, "Emerging Asian Markets and Economies," and I'm a Computer Science major, I have nothing to do with, well, this entire trip. I sat through, pretending I was interested, but not learning much at all, since it all just zoomed over my head. Luckily, I'm not the only person on the engineering side, so I can safely feel like I'm not the only one feeling like an idiot.
Come lunch time, we had Taiwanese food. It was funny, because I was the only one at my table that ate a substantial amount, being accustomed to Chinese food. Everyone else thought everything was disgusting, so I merrily helped myself to whatever I wanted. I don't really know why they didn't like any of it, since it's relatively normal food (no tongues, brains, or intestines involved!), but I suppose I'm heavily biased, being Asian and all.
After lunch, we had a lecture that was even more boring, and I half-dozed off several times, so I really don't know what happened during this class. It didn't help that the room we were in all day was pretty much frozen solid, so my brain was in a comatose (read: whiny) state. Even if I was in Management, the class was taught by a guy with a pretty monotonic voice, and most of the people thought he was boring anyway.
We went back to the same place as lunch for dinner, and it was pretty much the same story. I heard Patricio, one of our students from Argentina, totally freaked out when he saw a whole fish being served, with head and tail both still attached. Other than that, it was pretty uneventful.
After dinner, we went to the night market in Shilin. We split up into groups, and I ended up with Jeff, my team leader, and Kelly, our Taiwanese friend that made sure we didn't get lost/killed/etc. Jeff kept trying to bargain down for some dress shirts, but he got turned down pretty instantly every time. We saw some interesting stuff; we made Jeff try on a velvet coat that looked incredibly snazzy, but I couldn't convince him to buy it. We tried out some food at Kelly's suggestion, like some breaded spicy chicken, dumplings, and bubble milk tea, all of which were pretty tasty. On our way back to the MRT ("Mass Rapid Transit"/subway system), some cops pulled into the market, so we got a video of all of the unlicensed vendors clearing house, which was pretty amusing.
After we got back, we found out that the students that were guiding us wouldn't be doing so any longer, since they had class (apparently taking us around was part of a class). Kind of sad, but oh well. They were very friendly and considerate, and had much better English than I expected. Oh well. Spent more time zoning out to Goo Goo Dolls before going to sleep.
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