July 8-12

I'm sorry in advance, I'm getting slower at writing these weekly/daily blog posts. I honestly do try and get them out closeish to the time of when the events happen, but I forget. And I see a lot of things on the weekend and am constantly doing work for class. I forget. Sorry.

Also sorry, I don't have any cool pictures from the week.

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July 8 I finally had finished translating my paper on the US-China trade war into Chinese, and let me just say translating five pages of Chinese is exhausting. It took me 2 weeks in the office to get that done. Nonetheless I completed it! Next step, learn about what happened at the recent 2019 Osaka G20 Summit meeting.

July 9 was a bit difficult for me to figure out what I was supposed to be doing at my internship. I finished writing my first paper on Monday, and was tasked with a new paper. However, I didn't fully comprehend how the topic related to Taiwan and their interests. After a step back from the dilemma and a brief explanation, I finally understood how it was of interest to the DPP. Being able to take a step back to look at the problem being posed before you is exceptionally important.

When I arrived at the office, there was a small little gift on my desk and I was at first confused, but then I looked around and other people had also gotten the same thing. As of July 1, Taiwan is in the process of eliminating plastic straws from their drinks. This will heavily impact the boba drinking culture, however they are still figuring out ways around this dilemma. The little gift on my desk were two metal straws (a normal drinking one and a larger one for boba)!

July 10 after understanding getting past navigating the irrelevant news from the G20 Summit in Osaka that isn't pertinent to the DPP, I wrote quickly wrote my English paper. I even had time to begin translating it into Chinese. I noticed that this paper was going to go quicker, not only because it was 2 pages rather than 5 but also because I already had a lot of vocabulary from my first paper that I could apply to this new one.

Just to paint the scene for you. The DPP has three floors of office space and I work on floor 9 (they use floor 8, 9, and 10). Floors 8 and 10 always seem like they are a bit more lively because they actually have decoration and color on their floor. I work on what seems to be such a white floor with very minimal decoration. That's because floor 9 has the giant conference room. Stuff actually happens on my floor. I have yet to be in the room when it isn't in use (Not sure that I am actually allowed in the room), but I want to go in and take pictures. It is MASSIVE. I have come to terms that it is not uncommon for me to walk into the office and have a random crowd of media people just taking endless pictures of some diplomat in the party.

July 11 was relaxing in comparison to my other days this week. Mostly because it was Thursday, and I didn't have my internship. So I took the afternoon and just worked on my assignments for class the next day. It was great to be able to sit and relax after class rather than going straight to my internship.

A great part of the evening was when I went out to get dinner. The other day I saw a sign for falafel and I knew that I had to go try it. Needless to say it wasn't nearly as amazing as real deal in Israel, but it was pretty amazing.

July 12 was a pretty big day. The CET students banded together and celebrated Chunling's birthday in the office. We got her a stuffed cat (because she LOVES cats) and a cake. One thing I love about Chunling are her reactions to things. Everyday I walk into the CET office and I always hear her go "豆豆！" But in this wonderfully excited tone, and it always makes me happy to come in and talk with her. She's so excited about basically everything! It's wonderful!

The rest of the day went by in a blur, up until 19:57. At 20:00 every single ICLP student had to click into a link that would allow us to sign up for a language mission (More to come on those soon. Just wait!). If our computers were slow we'd be out of luck, and they count towards our final grade for the summer. So basically there was some screaming and frustration. Basically there was a fair amount of heart pounding as it reminded me of check-in for Southwest. You don't want your signal to give out on you because otherwise you're going to have an unpleasant experience on your flight. If you didn't get the language mission you wanted you'll have an unpleasant few hours at your event.

Last thing of the week. I have the BEST dad ever! Again. More to come later.