The hoorays from the last day of school have long since faded from the hallways, and the

fresh wave of groans and tardy bells solemnly remind us that the lazy days of summer are at an

end. However, for many it seems as though they never really began. More and more, students

are seeing summer breaks as opportunities rather than vacations. Over the past few months,

many students’ objectives have guided them off the couch, and for some, even over seas.

Senior Stacey Chu, for instance, toured Taiwan, an island off the southeast coast of China, for part of her summer. She spent her time there, between June 4th and the 30th, visiting family members that she hadn’t seen in nearly a decade.

“I went when I was eleven and when I was two.” she says, “Most of my family lives there.” Chu stayed with her grandmother in the bustling city of Taipai, in the northern region of Taiwan, and enjoyed the shopping and sight seeing attractions it had to offer.

“It [Taipai] was a big cultural thing… kind of like New York but shrunk down,” she says.

Chu further describes the city’s most unique feature, the street vendors, as having to do with one of her favorite parts of the trip: the food. She depicts a city sprinkled with vendors cooking on blankets and mixed aromas. The cuisine of Taipai included many items not found on American menus, such as fried meat, tofu and squid; and bubble tea, a unique beverage made up of milk, tea and tapioca.

Besides picking up a few new recipes, Chu also overcame the language barrier that separated her and her family in Taiwan, where Mandarin Chinese is the dominant language.

“They speak mostly Chinese and a little bit of English,” she says, “and I speak mostly English and a little bit of Chinese.”

She goes on to explain how much easier it is to communicate in person with body language and facial expressions over words, as opposed to speaking over the phone.

Chu was also able to learn about the cultural differences between Taiwan and the United States, despite being unfamiliar with the language. She says that she was most taken aback about “how open they [the people of Taiwan] are.” However she remains undecided about whether or not that was a good thing.