Welcome to Tainan!

Hello from Tainan! We’ve officially made it to our 3rd and final city here in Taiwan (as my friend noted, “Wow that’s a lot of Tai-named cities!”). Only 3 days here and already it’s felt like a whirlwind of adventures and exploring this new city. 

09.02.2026

Another day, another 2 hour car ride down to Tainan! We arrived in our final city (!!), dropped off our bags at the hotel, and quickly made our way over to the NCKU campus. We officially began our project with the NCKU students by doing introductions, before they gave us a very extensive tour of their campus. It was cool to see all their buildings and hear much of the history, given that this is the oldest city in Taiwan. We decided to get settled and wanted to reconvene to play some volleyball… which quickly tuned into rain volleyball as the typhoon rains began to come down and yet we didn’t stop playing, soon drenched to the bone. Jaz and I took a quiet night in after that, getting a whole 9 hours of sleep!

09.03.2026

Karaoke!

Volleyball in the rain

First brainstorm session
for our new project

Our first official day of workshops began bright and early at 9am, where we learned about a circular economy, which was really interesting for me. I could probably have told you a half-answer for what a circular economy was, but this was a very in-depth workshop that allowed me to fully understand the nuances of a circular economy and my own role in it. I thought the workshop was very engaging and took us through the process of objects that connected to our every  day, which felt much more relatable. Our day continued with getting into our project groups to begin brainstorming our final project, while also considering the tools of a circular economy. I’m excited to continue working on it and see where it progresses, because our group clicked super well! We’re planning on creating a modular furniture piece that has multiple uses… check back to see if that ends up happening in a later blog! After a long day of brainstorming, we did some vintage shopping in the East District, before meeting up with NCKU friends for a classic Tainanese dish – beef soup (so delicious, highly recommend!!). We then had a mini city tour from the students, before ending the night with some karaoke with UW and NCKU students!

09.04.2026

Vintage film store

Sunset in Yuguang Island

After a late night, the rest day was much needed (although I did wake up to do my fantasy football draft at 9am)! With no concrete plans, we leaned on the NCKU students to pick out some fun activities, starting with brunch at a little cafe, before going to check out a nearby film store, which was my highlight! We stopped for a refreshing snack (some mángguǒbīng or mango ice) and it was decided that the weather was nice enough to head to the beach, so we headed out to catch the sunset. It was so lovely to touch water again!! And we watched the sunset and sky become more and more beautiful, more and more orange, as all the colors faded into one. It was then of course dinner time, which meant another delicious, traditional Taiwanese dinner, one of the best meals I’ve had this entire trip – WOW SO GOOD!! And bonus, I got to ride on a motorcycle for the first time! One of the NCKU students, Ethan, went with us to the beach and we all got to ride on the back – one of the coolest experiences ever, zipping through the streets, passing all of the glowing signs. We decided to burn off our delicious dinner by YouBiking back to the hotel, which has quickly become one of our favorite modes of transportation (although a little scary, when you’re biking in the road with cars and motorcycles!). 

                        

                         First motorcycle ride

Feasted for dinner

Dinner remains...

As our trip comes towards the end, I feel so grateful to look back and reflect on all of the very cool experiences that we’ve gotten to see, eat, and live through. Some of these especially include pottery painting in Yingge, the views of the countryside of Pinglin, and our newfound friendships with the students from NCKU, many of whom are featured in pictures from today’s blog! The next few days will be very academically focused, so for now, here’s a lot of the fun that we’ve had. Only 2 more blog posts to go!