The First Night Out

After we left Dr. Chin's crib a few of us were still restless, so we decided to go out on the town. This seemed to be a huge ordeal and a clash of cultures. There were two sides, the crazy Americans looking for a good time and the conservative and studious Taiwanese who really don't condone gallivanting around town. The guy responsible for us (Danny) really didn't think it was a good idea to go out in a country we are not familiar with, but us naive Americans rebelled and went out anyway.

Ivan, Jeremy and I met up with Becky and Paulina who are the two girls that came here with us. We stay at a christian university so the male and female dorms are separated and neither sex can enter the others building. So we had to walk across campus to meet them. Soon after we met up we realized that we had no clue what we were doing. Taiwan is not really a party places and this huge town we are in has around 4 or 5 bars. We didn't know where to go and stopped by a 7-eleven which is everywhere here. On this tiny island is 4,744 store locations. They are so popular that the same pass that is used to pay for public transportation can also be used as a debit card only at 7-elevens. While there we ran into Edgar who was our guiding light. Edgar is from Mexico City and is doing biotechnology research at the campus we are staying at. The other students had met him before and recognized him. He was extremely helpful for two reasons. He spoke English well and he was from a culture that also likes to party.

So we finally arrive to a bar Called the River. It was fun and we had a few drinks but Edgar told us that there is another bar down the street that has a cover charge but it is all you can drink there. We decide that the other bar (Hen-House) was a more economic choice and went there. We had a great time and I got to know my peers in this camp a lot better. We also met some nice Taiwanese people and some fire dancers from New Zealand. All in all it was a great night except for the fact that Danny got worried about us and rode his bike around looking for us and almost called the cops.