This semester Milan Pijnenburg, Global Project & Change Management student, will be blogging about his experiences and adventures as an exchange student at Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan.
Hello, and ni hao readers! In this new blog I will be taking you on a journey of the marvelous lifestyle of a Dong Hwa student. Particularly, my first experiences here on campus. First of all, it is important to note that in Taiwan everyone decided to go live on the west coast of the island, and therefore only one in twenty people live in the east.
Social experiment
My university is located on the east coast, and if that weren’t enough they decided to build it literally in the middle of nowhere surrounded only by rice fields and a handful of towns that are no more than a few streets big.
Therefore there is a ‘social experiment’ like situation of 15.000 students all living on, or around campus, of whom most have never lived on their own before. Most people live in dorms that host two or four people in one room. I share my room with guys from Japan, Indonesia, and the Czech Republic.
Big pile of cash
On my first day of school I had to pay my tuition fee with a big pile of cash, that I acquired by withdrawing the maximum amount from the ATM for a few days straight before arriving. Then, the entire school could select their courses, opening just a few days before the beginning of the semester. Therefore, back in The Netherlands I had zero clue what I would be studying at all here in Taiwan, but luckily when I opened the course selection I was not let down.
Crazy frog facts
If you are a big fan of Kermit, you can follow the crazy frog facts course, if you’re always lost in life then the sense of direction course could suit you, and if you like camping in France, then maybe pétanque (jeu de boules) would be your fit, just to name a few of the hilarious subjects (for credits!) that are offered here.
And to accommodate everything, they build an enormous campus. It will take around thirtyfive minutes to walk to the other side, and it’s equipped fully with – among others – a golf court, a baseball field, ten restaurants, and three 24/7 convenient stores.
Tall pretty guy from the Netherlands
And finally, there are in total fifteen European people studying in this Uni, and being a pretty tall guy makes me feel somewhat of a celebrity here. I’ve had multiple people taking pictures of me in class, of which only one classmate actually asked me directly if she could send a picture of me to her mom to show that she is in class with a tall pretty guy from The Netherlands.
Celebrity status
As you can imagine this entire lifestyle is 180 degrees different than in Zwolle, and really something to slowly get used to in the first weeks, especially the celebrity status of course ;). However, little did I know how many amazing sides this environment has, and how much I have learned from this experience thus far. In the next blog I will be taking you in all the things I have learned and experienced here.
