German(y) in Taiwan

It has been two weeks again since I last published a post now. Although I have been taking notes and collecting short texts about interesting topics to discuss, events and exciting encounters and even more cultural observations,  somehow I just did not find time to compose a cohesive essay.

Hualian and my first encounter with my AIESEC hosts

My, my... A recovery of my laptop is not in sight. Luckily, however, before it crashed I had already uploaded some of my pictures from Hualian to facebook, which again provides a download function. Somewhat complicated, but this way I can now post about my trip.

Culture shock? No! Culture rocks!

Welcome to the show again!

I am afraid, though, today there is not much to see. My laptop is on strike, the windows starting data is damaged. So with my laptop's operating system on vacation, my many pictures are inaccessible and I can only write to you, unsupported by images. (Yes, the rather aliterate among you should stop reading by now -  there are no shiny pictures to come, you can skip the whole text ;) )
Thus, I have to abolish my initial plan to tell you about my recent trip to Hualian, because I cannot let words go about it without adding some pictures of its magnificent nature. As I still have to revive this little blog here, I will for now resort to formulating my observations, ideas and thoughts on Taiwanese culture. The post about Hualian is in stocks! (In case I ever get my old friend running again...) But now, let me tell you of some cultural experiences in this strange place far from my home.

Hiking on the Caoling Ancient Trail

Hi everybody!

So the other day, it was a Sunday to be precise, I was lying in bed pondering on how to spend the day. On the one hand, I somehow felt really exhausted and just wanted to slumber away the whole day, on the other hand I did not want to waste the given time to explore Taiwan. Upon weighing up these choices, I finally decided I had to cherish every moment while I am here, thus  forcing myself to get up.

Taipeh Impressions Part III

Welcome to the last (I promise!) post on my trip to Taipeh.

Though it is already one week ago now that I returned from Taipeh, I still am not finished writing about it... There are so many impressions I would like to share with you, but words are hard to find at times, especially when I am distracted by all the other work I am doing here on the farm, most of it also revolving around developing concise English formulations for our webpage, writing other entries on other blogs, answering customer requests and last but not least even quite an amount of Chinese-English-translation works (I have to say I really like the latter part, as I feel it helps improving my language skills a lot).

Taipeh Impressions Part II

Good morning and welcome (again? :) ) to our little blog!

I am sorry for the delay on this sequel of my trip to Taipeh, but today I will continue to introduce further lovely sights in and around Taipeh that I visited during my stay there.

Taipeh Impressions Part I

Hi again everyone!

Today I want to tell you about my trip to Taipeh last weekend. This time I can especially address those among you who prefer to look at pictures and like to skip text, since I got a few nice shots to share with you!

My trip was an amazing experience, thanks to a good friend and her family who hosted me, showed me around the city and literally even gave me a ride to what might have been the rim of the world, haha. But more about that later.

I have so many impressions to share that I think I am going to split this into two, or maybe even three posts, so wait for more.

The world after Christina: Typhoon arriving.

Here we go again - my post number two!

I hope I did not leave you guys hanging for too long... I just decided to double my efforts in writing these paragraphs, since our dear boss Tina just revealed an interesting train of thoughts to me. Namely, that male individuals supposedly face more troubles writing about their emotions and experiences than females. I deliberately took this inspiring idea as a hint that I should do something about the hunger for entertainment of you all. :D

Now that Christina is gone the farm feels like a completely different place. Though we have only known each  other for two weeks, I sense that a great buddy has just left. And not only that, my mentor as well! At this point I would like to express my appreciation for the great introduction Christina gave me to everything and everybody around here. Thank you!

My little knowledge of Chinse might be a big help to me, but who is going to do all the designing and creative work now?!

Be it to my liking or not, I guess I have to try discovering all the programs and functions to do all that on my own. It seems like from now on I am going to benefit more from my work here than I could possibly have anticipated before.

Currently, the farm is comparitively derserted, as many visitors have cancelled their reservations for these days after a warning of a major typhoon arriving on Thursday had been published. Maybe it is just me being oversensitive, but I think I felt some nervousness in the air today in the morning. However, according to the latest news the typhoon has slowed down a great deal and is now believed to arrive at nighttime or on Friday.

While people on the farm are mostly waiting for the typhoon to pass by, annoyed by the effects of it drawing nearer, I for my part am actually a little excited to experience the first typhoon in my life.

Although I suspect that afterwards I will be just as annoyed by and nervous about future typhoons, I still cannot help my excitement in these moments.

I just hope that this typhoon will not undermine my plans to go to Taipeh this Saturday and explore the secrets of Taiwan's heart.

During the last couple of days, we had many activities and visited several places, all of which, in fact, were really fun and beautiful. But it is also nice to have some unhurried hours like today and I am going to indulge in that now.

So thanks for reading and hope to welcome you again to our blog (now it's all MINE! :D)

Niklas

Hi there, this is Niklas from Germany!

Hey everybody!

I am Niklas from Germany and the "new" intern at Toucheng Leisure Farm. Although I have been here for 10 days already, this is my first post on our blog. Now why did it take me so long to publish it?