Never Before Seen

I was feeling nostalgic/waiting for MinGW to download/install so I don't have to go to the lab to do my C assignments (mid-semester CS student funk is... prevalent...ugh.) So I made the process go faster my having my computer do MORE things. Like pull images off a disc from 8 years ago when I was an exchange student in Taiwan...

I've never shared this images with anyone else and I thought now was a good time.

View of the apartment building from the MRT station

My 'sister' Alice, she left for Germany a month after I got there

Mama, Henry, Alice and Papa Lin. It's weird seeing Mama with her hair long, she got it cut not long after I got there. It made her look younger.

Puppy, the last member of the Lin family. Don't let cultural stereotypes fool you, Chinese people love dogs. As pets. All of my host families had a dog.

All the exchange students who went to my school in Papa's university office. He taught business and I helped him translate a textbook while I was there, and he gave me an author's credit for it. We're in his office in this picture.

I ended up editing a lot of the English versions of grad student's papers, and they paid me in goodies. 

The courtyard of the apartment complex. We lived on the 12th floor. Papa asked me where 'Troubled  Waters' was and what the bridge was like...

We lived on a river, in the mornings there would be old people doing Tai-chi and in the evenings, street performers. I am fairly certain that Taiwan is a nation that runs on sleep dep.

The MRT ran all over Taipei and the train system got you everywhere in Taiwan. I think a lot of people who travel to foreign countries really miss the public transportation systems. I would voluntarily give up my car if the governments here made it easier to get around.

In side the train car, and Mama with her haircut. When SARS was going around, it smelled like a hospital in here because they were sterilizing the cars at every station.

It's kinda weird, but all I remember from Taiwan are the bad things. I thought memories were supposed to get better with age. I think it's because of when I went to Taiwan (SARS & the Iraq war in the same year) and where I was in my life it became the cause of a lot of conflict that totally wasn't the experience's fault.

I'm glad I have these pictures to remind me of the good times.