This article is going to be full of reflections and may sound a little harsh or even manipulating. At least I ended up venting a little bit of frustration. Since you can't take pictures of thought, I have decided to illustrate with some calming pictures I took a late evening in rainy Taipei City, northeastern part.
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A comment on my other blog, sander.zunavi.dk, made me think a little. It was from a blogger stating she had followed me for a while, who's going abroad with Rotary to Taiwan. Nothing strange about the comment, reading it made me feel good, but it also reminds me something:
I have only written about all the good stuff and quite easily made everyone think that Rotary in Taiwan is just the nicest bunch of people out there.
Not good.
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Because the thing is: My year in Taiwan, albeit a great experience and definitely the most eventfull year of my life, Rotary was like a big ugly nimbus hanging over me all the while, threathening to ruin it all, and in the end they did. I decided on going back one month before planned because I just couldn't stand them anymore.
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I can't promise a very long article on this subject just right away, but I would like it very much to be a little warning to those who are going abroad with Rotary. Going abroad is a great experience, especially if you can make all the little things work out nicely. I would however personally encourage anyone to try other ways and let Rotary be a last resort. Their system sucks.
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Now, I've only had most of my problems with Rotary in Taiwan and I can't talk for all Rotary clubs in the entire world. I do believe that most if not every single exchange student that I have met in Taiwan would agree to me that rotarians are a bit old-fashioned and very stubborn. They're nice and welcoming to new exchange students and they try their best to make you get into the new country and culture quickly. The first few months of yours are probably going to be very painless and although you might get lost once or twice and have another few accidents with the new surroundings, the first part of an exchange is usually very easy in East Asian countries at least.
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You have probably heard a lot about the big bad "culture shock". I myself don't like that word. I find it too losely defined. Put all the "symptoms" together and you might as well see that being more than a few tens of miles away from home is enough to make you have culture shock.
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I might just have been used to many different types of people before I went off abroad but I didn't really feel there were so many weird things about Taiwanese people. I mean: They speak Chinese and eat innards worse-than-scottish-style. But they still sleep, (well, most of them,) and other things that humans always do. There were really not such a big difference anyway, just lots of very small differences.
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But Rotary are going to give you a culture shock sometime, that's for sure if you're going to the East Asian countries. Those going to Taiwan or Japan have probably gotten told many times that cultures are so different there from the western world, but still: Rotary is the real difference. They're nothing like the normal population. Actually, I can even tell of at least one (taiwanese) teacher at my two schools who had a bit of a "culture shock" with Rotary.
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Hopefully I will get to delve deeper into it in upcoming posts. I fear, though, that it will soon be so late, that most people already arrived in their home countries for this next year. (I know a lot of people did already, the three Taiwanese girls inbound for Denmark that I met down in Taichung did arrive already.)
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Now, apparently my angry rant hasn't completely scared away whoever reads this or otherwise you just cared to watch the pictures and nothing else. I hope this post didn't sound too much like just an angry outburst, because actually, that's probably what it is after all. Write me if you still got something of it.
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If you liked the pictures then you might also like:
Some trip to Ximending after school with my KaiNan classmates.
Huajiang Bridge during a very rainy evening. I like bridges :)
Baobing, a heavenly dessert served at many night markets in Taiwan and nearby too.
Here's another post similar with this: It has some hoghwashish reflections and pictures of Taipei by night.