Dinner with Seniors

I had a welcome dinner with my seniors in ICID last night. Its a tradition for the 2nd year students to welcome freshmen for a dinner. This year, we are 6 freshmen in ICID; 3 foreigners and 3 local Taiwanese students. We went to Korean Restaurant near NCKU.

From the left side: Angela(Taiwanese); Yong, Taedon(Korean); me and Thomas(USA), all of us are freshmen.
At the right side: Sunny(Taiwanese 2nd year); Joe(Taiwanese 3rd year); Wednesday(Taiwanese 2nd year) and Ezra(Indonesian 2nd year).

We had a wonderful moment. I get to know my class mate and seniors. Among the foreigner students. I am the only one who can not speak in Mandarin. Taedon has been staying here quite long time, he finished his master here with Mandarin as instructions. Thomas a Taiwanese born American, his mother is Taiwanese. He was born here and raised in the US, he finished his master in Taiwan using Mandarin as language instructor. So, it means that I am the only foreigner who came here with "zero" knowledge of Mandarin. Anyway, I have enrolled in "Free Chinese Class" provided by the University and I will start my class next week.

The advantage for me is Thomas kept on translating the conversation to English, so I can follow what they are saying about. We talk about our background and why we are here in ICID. It's nice to get to know all of them. All the PhD students in ICID are around 13 students and only 4 foreign students.

ICID is the next adventure and I have to finish this race on time so I can move to the next level.