The Roving Reporter

Back to school...

Posted by: Amy Reiter

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 5:16 AM

Today has been a wonderful day. We met a group of very kind, fun and funny Rotarians, and they hosted a lunch full of food I enjoyed eating (noodles, tofu with brown sauce, asparagus and lots of fish and chicken for the meat-eaters) and then they took us to tour a school.

Some of our tours have barely touched the surface of what we were seeing, but today we met with and asked questions of several faculty members and administrators of Fortune Institute of Technology. They talked about admissions, schedules, financial aid and showed us all around the school, including inside the classrooms and dormitories (some of which had four people in a little room -- it made me remember not nostalgically my freshman year dorm days!).

I'll be writing an article about the education system here in the next few days, so I'll have some photos and more information then. In the meantime, an article about the trip with people talking other than me ran in Monday's newspaper. Here's the link: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2007/03/19/trip_to_taiwan_shows_culture_full_of.

We also went to King Hong Industrial, Ltd., the 480th biggest business in Taiwan. They make thousands of kinds of office chairs, including the ones we sat in, which had a backing material that conformed over time to the shape of your back. The tour guide, the son of the owner of the factory, said the company shipped 2.5 million chairs a year around the world, including to Costco, Office Depot, Sam's Club and other chains. So check your chairs -- they may have been born and raised in Kaohsiung.

Tonight we have a Rotary meeting in our wonderful hotel, The Grand Hotel. It's done in traditional Chinese style on the outside, with an amazing view of a lake that if I can get out of bed early enough tomorrow, I plan to jog (slowly, with breaks) around. We'll be here three nights, with Internet connections and nice people at the front desk who are good at giving directions in English. At this point, that's all I need for happiness.

I've been slacking on my word-of-the-days, so here's a few to catch up:

Wan an = good night
Zaoshang hao = good morning
Duibuqi = excuse me (to apologize for something)

And, to sign off...

Mingtian jian = See you tomorrow!

Amy

Comments

Be the first to share your opinion!