February 10, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: A Change of Heart Vividly, I can recall, the various mornings I’d rise early, go to my notebook, and sit by the window. After about five or so minutes of staring out to the lake daydreaming, I would put my pen to the paper and write. I couldn’t tell you how long I would write for, because I’d get lost in my fantasies. Every time I write–even now–I forget all sense of time. An hour or so later, I’d be ten pages deep into my scribbling and ranting. Someone from my family would inform me it was time for breakfast and I’d leave my imaginary world, knowing I’d return to it shortly. That, then and even now, is one of my favorite times in the day: writing time.
January 27, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: How to Pack To Move Abroad When I accepted my job to Taiwan, I was over the moon ecstatic. Living abroad was something I’d always wanted to do, ever since I could remember, and it was finally happening. There were so many things to straighten out and prepare for, but by God, the most annoying of them all was packing. Yes, that’s right. Packing.
January 16, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: My Lizzie Moment Growing up as a late 90s to early 2000s kid, Lizzie McGuire and Disney were all the craze. Honestly, I think everyone wanted to be Lizzie McGuire at some point in their childhood. She had Gordo and Miranda, and then she even got a movie where she met a handsome Italian pop singer (who turned out to be terrible in the end, unfortunately) and she sang in front of thousands of people, and still got Gordo in the end. But mostly, I wanted to be Lizzie McGuire for one solid reason: that Vespa ride in The Lizzie McGuire Movie.
September 19, 2018 Where (And How) to Learn Languages Abroad About a year ago, I began seeing a tutor to learn a fair bit of Mandarin. The whole situation lasted about five months, before things were cut off and we both went separate ways. In that time, I made it through two and a half textbooks. So I like to tell people I learned what I like to call “survival Chinese”. I can order food, drinks, read numbers and basic signs, and ask for help for specific things. I recognize about 40% of what is said, and from what I do know how to say, I say it correctly. Only 50% of the time. Like I said, survival Chinese. I’m proud of it, even if I didn’t get as far as I originally intended to at the beginning of it all.
August 18, 2018 The Beauty of Using Tinder Abroad Back in the states, I remember when Tinder first became a big thing. It started out as just a small dating app that most…
