Nobody has so far been able to explain to me how it was that the Mid-Autumn Festival turned into the national holiday for BBQing, after making a stop at Hotpoting, but there it is - Moon Festival in Taiwan, as well as in other East-Asian countries like China, Korea, Vietnam etc. is usually celebrated with the family and friends doing BBQ. Just like Israel in Independence Day, the whole city gets covered with smoke and exotic BBQ smells. People do BBQs just about everywhere - on the street, next to the 7-11s/McDonalds, in the middle of road interjections, roofs, balconies and by the smell of it in my corridor - also indoors.

The Mid-Autumn Festival (Simplified Chinese: 中秋节; Traditional Chinese: …

As I was walking around Tainan and enjoying the peculiarities of Moon Festival, I got a pre-scheduled call from a popular radio show in Israel’s Reshet Bet called “The International Hour” that discusses recent events from all over the world.

Here’s what went on :
First introduction of the issue - “The day after tomorrow, the 26th UN convention will open and Taiwan tries once again since the UN favored China get the UN to accept Taiwan as a member. Taiwan also tries to get international attention by other means, like getting the torch to stop in Taiwan, but it seems that the Chinese are not very happy about that. We’ll say Hello to Fili from Taiwan…”
But I was already …

Held this last Saturday, was NCKU’s “Welcome Aboard” day for the new international students. It was a very well-arranged day, and I just love how cute and adorable the Taiwanese are (whether they want to or not). I’ll let the videos do the talking…   Games - girls and boys necking each other Mutli-cultural performances - Vietnamese singing Mutli-cultural performances - Bolivian dancing   Students clubs - The Toastmaster’s club   Students clubs - IEAS…

A week ago I got an e-mail titled - "I am glad to be your receptionist~!!!".

Hello !
My Chinese name is <removed>. English name is <removed>.
I’m your receptionist. <personal information removed>
I ‘m a junior student majoring in Account. If you want to visit anywhere in NCKU or have questions you want to ask, you can contact me!

I was confused for a few seconds, till I figured out what "receptionist" means. So I wrote and got this back:

I interpret receptionist as a voluntary student who help foreign students out when you start a new semester in NCKU. (usually 1 voluntary student to 2 foreign students). <…>
Please write some questions you want to know so that I can prepare what …

I’m currently starting my first week of school in NCKU at Tainan on the southern part of Taiwan, supported by the Taiwan scholarship. The Taiwan scholarship offers 30,000NT$ per month for students for a period of 3 years. Usually, when I tell my Taiwanese friends about this scholarship and that I’m studying in Tainan, the response is usually - "oh, you are SO lucky! Tainan is very cheap, so this scholarship is really too much.
Now, after over a month in Tainan and figuring out the basics here, I finally know what the Taiwan scholarship gives a foreign student in Taiwan and how much things cost over here, so - jumping to the bottom line - it is not "too much", it …

About an hour drive from Tainan to the east is a Tainan County’s Monkey Mountain.
 
The mountain forest jungle scenery has a lot of temples, big and small, dedicated to different Gods, some with beautiful gigantic Buddha statues.
   

John was doing field research for me by …