DANI in TAIWAN

The past few days in Tainan have been packed with both work and exploring the city. On Friday, my classmates and I were focused on our project, preparing to present our early concept ideas in class. After that, we did some brainstorming exercises, which involved us each coming up with several more ideas and then sharing them with our team for additional feedback and reflection. Once class was over, I decided to unwind by myself at a nearby café. I grabbed some coffee and food and spent some time catching up on work. I really value these quiet moments to recharge since most days we all spend together going from one activity to another. After a while, I felt ready to meet up with my friends, so I headed back to get ready, and we went out to explore more of Tainan that evening. The city’s nightlife is slower than I expected and usually requires a reservation, but we eventually found a busy outdoor Korean BBQ spot. The atmosphere was lively, and we had a great time just relaxing and enjoyi

Tuesday we officially began running through team brainstorming activities to start getting our ideas onto paper. Although many of us arrived a bit sleepy, we quickly got into the process and filled a poster board with sticky notes of our ideations. For lunch, my team member Shika took our team to a local restaurant where we enjoyed personal size hot pot and taro ice cream before returning to campus to continue brainstorming. Once in the classroom, we completed some finishing touches on our presentation before heading to our hotel to finally rest. As a class we were all pretty exhausted so this rest time was needed! For dinner our entire class of 17 met in the hotel lobby to have dinner together. Fortunately, we were able to find a restaurant that could seat us all and got to eat spicy fish soup and fried chicken. We ended the night with bubble tea and made our way back to the hotel on foot.  Wednesday we took a charter bus to Taichung from Tainan, which is about 2 hours north heading t

Since my last blog we’ve had a very calm day and a very busy day. Sunday was another off day so we mostly relaxed and explored. We got recommended by one of the students here to go to this capybara cafe and they have literaaal capybaras!! Also the best fruit tarts! I got a grape one and it was the perfect combination of fresh fruit and creamy whipped topping. Once we finished eating our fruit tarts and taking photos with the cute (and sometimes feisty) capybaras we took an uber to a nearby street popular for being a food and clothing area. Here, we thrifted for unique items and explored all the shops hidden away in alleys. Me, Sydney, and Pfeifer took the cutest photos at this photo studio shop we came across and got ice cream before eating at a japanese restaurant as we hid from the rain storm. In Taipei, where we were before Tainan, we lucked out with it being sunny for the entire duration of our time there. However, now in Tainan it basically rains every afternoon so make sure to ke

We’ve had a busy few days as of late and made so many new memories. I’ve been taking photos and videos of everything to document it well and when we have a slow moment, which isn’t very often, I look through my camera roll and get to relive those moments! Since the previously mentioned tours and experiences, we've completed our project with SCU students. In just a few short days, each team was able to respond to the cultural hackathon prompt with our found materials that we purchased on Taiyuan Road and create something that represented our shared perspective of Taiwanese culture. Although we all felt a bit pressured with such a short time frame for our projects, we all persevered and accomplished our goals! After presenting our projects, we all celebrated our hard work with a delicious brunch meal and dessert at ACME where we all were in awe of the interior design and architecture of the building. My personal favorite aspect of the building was the giant floor-to-ceiling wavy wall

Since arriving in Taiwan, I have enjoyed every moment of every day. Each day we experience a busy but exciting day of learning, laughing, and my favorite; eating. So far, we’ve visited many places that have inspired me such as the Taiwan Design Research Institute, Trash Kitchen, the National Palace Museum, and the Vision Base space at SCU. With each visit, I’ve gotten to see how traditional culture can be intertwined with the future possibilities that are unlocked with new technology. These experiences have also further guided me in the direction that I’d like my career to go. For example, getting to tour the TDRI, I saw how the design teams there collaborate, have their own work space, and the type of projects they get to work on in this particular work environment. During this visit, I think a lot of us will remember this building for the fun and unexpected experiences like the all black and white pool table or the ball pit that a few of us jumped into during the guided tour of TDRI.