One of the favorite memories Deanna Laforet will take home with her to the UK will be her participation in the Mandarin Training Center’s dragon boat team last month.
“It was so much fun training for the race, and it was even more fun participating in it,” said Laforet, who has been in Taiwan for almost a year now. “Where else would I have had such a chance to take part in a cultural festival this way?”
PHOTO COURTESY OF DEANNA LAFORET
Laforet, in her mid-20s, came to Taiwan to improve her Mandarin after receiving an undergraduate degree in Chinese at a British university.
“I wanted to brush up on my Mandarin and also take the opportunity to live in a different country and try to understand it, at least a bit,” she said. “I enrolled in classes at the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University, and it was also important to take advantage of being in a Chinese-language setting and environment.”
“I was able to meet lots of Taiwanese people, speak to them, get to know them as individuals, go to movies, lectures, read the local Chinese-language newspapers,” she said. “It was also important, I felt, to leave the university language school bubble and go off campus and walk around, visit museums and parks and get out of the city when I could. The 10 months I’ve spent here have been great.”
In her spare time, Laforet did volunteer work at the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU).
“I wanted to get a better understanding of the country’s environmental situation and get some work experience in this field,” she said. “I feel there is certainly too much of a throw-away lifestyle here in Taiwan.”
“In terms of environmental awareness and policies, Taiwan unfortunately is not as developed as one would hope,” she said. “Fingers crossed that this changes in the near future.”
Laforet said two of the things that were particularly important to her this year in Taiwan were “my volunteer work at TEPU, seeing the NGO [non-governmental organization] sector here, being part of it and making a small contribution — and being on that dragon boat race team.”
Her time in Taiwan this year was well spent, she said, adding that “the Taiwanese are very friendly and welcoming, and living here has definitely been easy to adapt to and a lot of fun.”
When asked what she might tell people in the UK about Taiwan, she said: “That it is worth considering coming to Taipei. I believe Taiwan is a very underrated travel destination and a fantastic insight into Asia.”
“It has beautiful scenery, vibrant cities, interesting Aboriginal cultures and has done some great preservation of Chinese cultural heritage,” Laforet said.
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