Final Day!

July 23- Today was the last day of the program. It was really a bittersweet moment finally getting through the research project. We had been working on it a lot in the past few weeks, but it solidified the fact we would be leaving Taiwan soon. I wanted to take a quick moment to thank everyone in the program. All the professors and speakers did such a good job and I have learned so much in this past month. The speakers were extremely knowledgeable and I can only hope to be able to have as much interest as they do in there chosen fields of study. I wanted to thank Jack and TAs for coming a long with us and putting up with our sometimes ridiculous antics. It can be hard trying to move around 16 students around the country and I have to give you guys a lot of credit. Finally I wanted to say thanks to all of my fellow students. We really had some amazing times throughout the trip and some memories I hope to never forget. The NTU students really helped getting around Taipei and helping in language barrier situations. Overall, I hope to be able to meet up with people in the program again somewhere down the road. I wish everyone the best and it's sad to say this is my final blog! I will miss Taiwan and hope to come back soon!

The Zoo!

July 22- The major outing for today was heading to the Taipei Zoo! The heat cut short our time there, but our "backstage tour" was pretty neat in itself. We finally got to see some of the live poisonous snakes, including the 100 pace snake. I also got to hold one of the snakes, nonpoisonous of course. My favorite part of the zoo was seeing the tigers. There eyes are so piercing and you can see how much power they possess.

We headed back to campus after the zoo and had a bit of project work. We're almost done with everything now so just got tie up a few loose ends tomorrow before the presentation. We headed to KTV for a bit at the end of the night. I wish they had more KTV's in the US. One more day left tomorrow. Still cannot believe it.

Last Lectures

July 21^st- The rest of the time here will be a little more lax than the past few weeks have been. We finished up our last two lectures today and will have a bit more free time to explore Taipei before leaving. I really enjoyed both of the lectures today. One was on the Aborigine people of Taiwan. The lecturer was really knowledgeable and I especially liked hearing about the dynamic between keeping native cultural identity as society advances. Overall, the US could take a few tips from the Taiwan government. The native people here assimilate better into modern society and create a good dynamic between keeping the culture alive without shutting themselves off from the modern world. A lot of the Native Americans in the US have issues coming into the modern world and by shutting themselves out, they don’t allow for any advancement of there society.

The second lecture of the day dealt with food security, economic development and environment. Food scarcity is definitely a big problem for many countries. I think that this really needs to be addressed more and I think that Taiwan has a lot better agriculture techniques as compared to the US. One thing I’ve really enjoyed seeing in Taiwan is the closeness you are to the food you eat. In the US the amount of prepackaged food is disgusting. I really hate looking at labels of food and only being able to understand what half of the ingredients of the food is. By keeping food closer to the farmer, you allow for higher quality food in my opinion. The US is so focused on production; I think we are really killing ourselves. It’s so disappointing to hear about food scarcity and then compare that to the obesity in the US. There is some sort of balance that the Taiwan people seem to have that the US is missing.

As you can see above, I did really enjoy the lectures today. I can’t believe the program is wrapping up in two days! I must stop thinking about it!

Traveling

July 20^th-We made our trip back to Taipei today. This was probably the longest time we have driven straight without stopping, but I got the opportunity to take a nice nap on the bus. We made two stops today; one at the earthquake museum, and a biodiversity center. The earthquake museum was a really interesting place. They museum was centered on an old junior high school that had suffered terrible damage from the 921 earthquake. The strength of natural disasters is overwhelming. The old track had been partially uplifted during the earthquake and the many of the buildings had collapsed. In the museum we got to experience a simulated earthquake. It didn’t really seem too terrible but I think that was because I knew I wasn’t in any danger.

After the earthquake museum we went to the Agricultural Research Institute. Our time there consisted of a lot of discussion about GMO’s. This is one of the current issues that I have been really interested in lately. It was interesting comparing the US to Taiwanese outlook on the GMO future. The Taiwanese people seem a lot more conservative when it comes to GE food. I really enjoyed taking the tour around the facility and seeing a lot of the research that they perform.

The rest of the day we spent driving back to Taipei. My face definitely lit up once we got into the city. I feel a connection to Taipei and I’m definitely going to miss it here.

Last Day in Xitou!

July 19th- Today is the last day in Xitou! We worked more seriously on the project today. I got a good amount of the paper done. We tried to get a bit of analysis out of the way by talking to some of the people who work at the plantation. What they did tell us was kind of dissappointing. It seems that the soil doesn't affect the plants as much as we had thought. I think another one of the big issues is the complexity of soil. It is pretty difficult to make decisive conclusions about the plant soil relationship. Soil conditions can be within a certain range and still allow for good plant growth. I guess we will have to see what happens when we test the pH back at NTU. 

I'm excited to go back to Taipei. I have always grown up around big cities and I enjoy living in a more chaotic atmosphere I suppose. I'm really happy we had the opportunity to go to Xitou though. I definitely cannot see that type of plant life anywhere in the US.

Exploring Xitou

July 18- The focus of today was on our project. Because we had finished all of sampling the day before, my group and I had a little more free time than some of the others had. In the morning I spent some time hiking around the park. I walked over to some of the major landmarks of Xitou. I stopped by the sky walk, giant tree, and the rainbow bridge. The sky walk was a really cool area that allowed you to walk eye level with the towering trees. I was disappointed by the short length of the sky walk but still thought the view down to the winding trails was great.

I met up with a few of the other students at the sky walk and headed with them over to Giant Tree. I didn’t stay at the Giant Tree too long before heading over to the Rainbow Bridge. I loved the walk up the Rainbow Bridge Trail. It was narrow and wound through the trees and over small streams. The trees parted at the bridge to larger flowing river. Of course, I had to spend a few minutes taking it all in. This included snapping a few photos. Afterwards, I descended back to the dorm for lunch.

During the afternoon I went over to the Monster Village for my third time. I tried the apple bananas they were selling at a stand there. I really enjoyed the taste, but I think I may have enjoyed the color more. The taste really wasn’t to far from a normal banana. I also bought some breads at a store in the village. Brooke and I waited in line for probably about a half hour before getting to the front of the line. It was worth it though and I enjoyed everything I purchased.

Later on in the night, I spent some time discussing the project with the group. Tomorrow will be a bit busier. We are hoping to get as much done as possible so that we will have some free time once we are back in Xitou. 

Project Work

July 17-We started off the day with two different lectures. The first one dealt with statistics. It was very useful to help get an idea of the best way to analyze the data for our project. Our group was also able to find ways to decrease extra variables when we collect our soil samples. Our second lecture dealt with soil biodiversity. This lecture was pretty interesting and also related a lot to our project. I have never taken a soils class previously. There is a lot more to soil than meets the eye and the amount of living things within soil is quite amazing. I have been interested in organic farming for a while and it was interesting to hear a bit about DNA hybridization. We had a bit of time after the lecture to full proof our data collection technique. The soil lecturer helped a lot with this.

After lunch our group went out into Xitou to collect our data. We walked to four different areas (Cedar Forest, Ginkgo Plantation, Coniferous Plantation, and Bamboo Plantation). Each area had individual characteristics and I’m interested how our laboratory soil analysis at NTU will turn out. I’m probably going to write up most of the data we collected tonight. It’s quite a short time for a research project so I’m going to take full advantage of the time we have.  Having the internet back at NTU will give us a better ability to analyze data.

I ended the day at a Japanese style market right outside the gates. Me and Tian-Lin trekked out there tonight. I love the atmosphere in the market and I will be heading back there before we go back to Xitou. They had some really interesting apple bananas. The vendor explained that although the bananas were shaped normally the red color distinguished them. Apparently the flavor is a mixture between both fruits. I’ll definitely be purchasing those pretty soon to try out.

Well going to get to bed early tonight. I think I’m going to do some hiking around Xitou tomorrow in between data analysis. Seems like I still have a lot to explore before we leave!