Don't know why you say goodbye I say hello

"A change gon' come." Sam Cooke is always right, and this time is no exception. I'm finally going to start blogging about my Taiwanese summer. For the first two weeks, I slacked off. Check out my hilarious, talented, diligent and handsome friend Ryan's blog about those two weeks (Ryan, that'll be 500...NTD): http://adventuringtaiwan-ryan.blogspot.com/

Pretty neat, right? Just assume all his brilliant insights are mine, and check out how truly awful Taiwanese water is for hair. Right? Right. Ryan, thank you so much for keeping up your blog, if you hadn't no one would even believe I'd been there. The image of me sitting in my Columbia house, blinds drawn, drooling and ranting about Taipei is enough to gross anyone out. But, I was there! Proof!

But, now I'll do my own blogging, mostly because I'm the only one here now. The class group left this morning around 6:30 am this morning. We passed around hugs outside the bus, and I forced a few friends into obligating themselves to Skype, gchat and Facebook lots. I wish I had said more about how much I really loved getting to be on the trip with them. It wasn't all sunshine and puppies, but I missed them enough to immediately feel sad when I was back in my hotel room alone. You guys had me playing Purple Rain! Just kidding....right?

I had a great time with the class, and even though I ran ragged on very little sleep it was so worth it to learn as much as I could as fast as I could and try to soak up parts of the experience and the people. It definitely wasn't easy, food adjustments, people adjustments and space adjustments weren't easy at all. And we acted foolish a few times, but not in any disproportionate way. I know this is entirely self-indulgent, but I really have to just write about how nice some of the hang out time really was on this trip. We had some amazing conversations, and I learned so much about the people I travelled with (even people I knew really well before the trip), and I definitely learned a lot about how our world can operate, change, motivate and discourage. I think I'll leave it at this: If the world were left in the hands of some of our group on the trip, we might not have it all right, but I think it'd be pretty impressive. And everyone would wear Jersey Knit Cotton. Why? Because it's elegant.

So, two week chapter closed (don't worry, we'll write more when we all get back to Columbia!), and internship chapter opened.