Starting off inTaipei, Taiwan

Welcome to Taipei. I'm staying in Xinyi, a pretty popping area (this was recommended by a friend JY who loves Taipei). My airbnb is ok but I have to walk up stairs to the bed and the ceiling low. I did get sick as I was leaving Japan which was almost certainly from this women in my class that was coughing, sneezing and claiming how sick her kids was... grrrr

I have an anytime fitness near me which is great and I plan on continuing with early morning workouts. Like Japan, convenient stores in Taiwan are pretty magical and contain everything. I did sign up for a night market food tour which was pretty good, nothing blew me away but I also didn't have their pork dishes. 

Despite feeling pretty sick, I showed up for class. I am at ShuoHao Language center. The school itself was not very impressive inside, especially compared to Coto where I was taking lessons in Japan. Like a lot of schools in South America, this teacher was outsourced, which I don't like because in that case the school usually takes a finders fee (although we did use their office). However, my private teacher today was AWESOME, and we covered a LOT of material, her English is great, and we actually worked as a really good time going back and forth!

It was incredibly fortunate that I took my last week to review ~150 Kanji characters which has been coming in useful. Also, lots of the structure of mandarin is similar to Japanese, in someways it's easier! Although pronunciation is almost certainly going to be the biggest challenge, I have lots of great apps to help accustom my ears to the sounds and tones. 







 

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