A rabbit in Taipei

Taipei is CHAOS! Taipei is loud. Taipei is traffic. Taipei is lots and lots of traditional Chinese characters written on big vertical light banners. Taipei is 100 scooters accelerating simultaneously on a red light. Taipei is 101 visible from every corner of the city. Taipei is million of alike-looking Asians.Taipei is low clouds and high buildings. Taipei is the fringe of the world but tries hard to be its center.

After I left Starbucks I spend hours looking for a tourist office where I wanted to get a decent map and some inspiration for me non-university life. On the way I stopped at a Chinese place to get some food and I realized that I could not read the menu nor order any food so I simply pointed at the menu and received rice with tofu and some stuff I could not identify…

Later today, after I managed to get a map, I went to the Sun Yat-sen memorial hall where the ‘Lantern Festival’ is currently on display. And because we just celebrated Chinese New Year all the lanterns are bunny-rabbits.

The walk was amazing and when I just got back I met my new room mate, Alex from England. He majors in politics and international relations, so we might have some topics in common. Next to that he is a very active person and there is a Facebook group named ‘Alex and his ego’, which might fit his personality quite well. We cleaned up our room together, which was as dirty as it can get and walked across the nightly university campus, which is covered with palm trees but right now it is cold and rainy and the whole campus was deserted. Oh boy I am looking forward for the beginning of classes. Here's an idea of the kind of place I stay in. What you don’t see is the missing heating that gets everyone shivering.

Tomorrow will be orientation day. It’s supposed to be 24 degrees and sunny but so far all the forecasts have been wrong. Before, I meet with Elisa to check out some cool places. Her friends from the night before seemed to like me since one of them posted that she thought I was handsome and that she would like to have a European boyfriend.