NTU

Today we left our amazing friends at NCTU and drove to the city of Taipei to see NTU. Once we arrived, we immediately went to a conference room and were greeted by Dean Pei and Chairman Hwu. After the opening speeches, we saw labs that were spread out throughout the department of Electrical Engineering. We were given tours that dealt with communication, electromagnetic waves, electro-optical engineering, and nanoelectronics. After we had all of these mini tours, we had lunch. Previously we all had been very good about eating classic chinese food throughout the trip, however, when we were given the option of eating Pizza Hut and KFC, everyone immediately went for that food and by-passed the other food that they had prepared for us. After lunch, we were given the opportunity to see the Barry Lam Gallery. This was an art gallery where all of this beautiful artwork was completed by this alumni. We then moved onto the Technology Exhibition Center, where students gave us demonstrations about their latest innovations. We had to wait around for a few minutes (some students spent the time playing wii baseball) while we waited for the tour of the campus to begin, and then we met up with the tour guide and walked around the campus. On the way, we ran into this 72 year old Taiwanese man that had graduated from U of I. He was absolutely hilarious and it proved that there are certainly a lot of U of I alumni and students here in Taiwan. We continued on the tour where we saw very old buildings (many of which had been built by Japan during WWII), and many new engineering buildings as well. Out of all the buildings though, the best one was the girls dorm. While this may sound unusual, once I explain the setup of the dorm, you will understand. The dorm was surrounded by a 10 foot cement wall and above that is a barbed wire fence. But the thing that tops it off are the jagged pieces of glass that sit atop the wall! Yet it still gets better, there are cannons (left over from the Japanese occupation) that are aimed at the dorm from a surrounding building. This is definitely a building that I would want to live in! After thouroughly analyzing this building, we continued on to this pond where there were these incredible ducks. The ducks were eating chocolate out of our hands. However, in all seriousness, the campus was gorgeous. After the tour, we were able to go eat dinner wherever we wanted. Most of us chose to go to the nightmarket that was across the street from the campus. While this market was no where near as big as the Shinli one, it still had a ton of stores and food. The night ended with a group meeting where we re-capped everything that we had done previously. I love Taiwan.
The end.