ICLP Final Days

ICLP summer session is coming to a close and this week I have seriously been losing all motivation to do any studying. I suspect this is due to the fact that I have been away from home for over 15 months and I'm at the point now where all I can think of is going home.

So far this whole session, I have only missed 1 class in each course (3 total), mainly because I hadn't prepared well enough for the day's lesson. I'd really like to keep that record until I finish on the 10th.

I'm kind of glad now that this session is only 8 weeks rather than 12.

The Student Lounge

Lately, when walking into the lounge to grab books from my locker, there have been scads of students sitting around tables, books open, chatting away about everything under the sun. I'm not really sure if any studying is actually getting done, but everyone who frequents the lounge could call each other a friend by now. Many of these groups end up planning trips to places like Hualien or Kending over the weekends.

The lounge has a sink, water machine, microwave, mailboxes, daily newspapers, and lockers, which makes it a central hub for everyone.

I spend more of my time in the library, typing these blog entries. Call me a geek. :)

ICLP Lecture #5 - Love Poems

Today, an NTU PhD student who teaches Freshman English at NTU came to show us samples of poems written by her students. I found it interesting just how the sheer "visuality" of Chinese characters lends itself to poetry. Unlike the English language, Chinese poets can utilize the vertical axis just as freely as the horizontal in visually structuring their poems.

The poems reflected a young Taiwanese perspective by the references to pearl milk tea, typhoons, and the internet. Their overall tone was innocent, romantic, and filled with insecurities. What a great way to understand the hearts and minds of the people who surround me on campus, but with whom I never speak a word.

ICLP Library

The ICLP Library is on the 4rth floor. Most students who come to this library use it as a study room rather than an actual library. I don't use any of the floor-to-ceiling books that line the walls, mostly because I really don't have the ability to read them and also because they intimidate me. I have been coming to this library a lot more often lately because 1) I really like the clean, open, and brightly-lit atmosphere and 2) it's convenient for my laptop.


many students like the rare atmosphere of silence found in this library

I had started out in the computer labs, but after a while，the air-conditioning, the whir of 20 computers, and the fortress-like walls of the carols began to get to me. In the library, I still feel like I can stretch out and breathe. Also, I can bring my laptop and plug it into the outlets. I couldn't find outlets in the computer labs and of course I prefer using my own computer to using someone else's.

EDIT: (8/05)
明高 informed me there are outlets embedded in the floor behind each seat in the main computer lab.

A university I attended in Beijing which had just launched its Chinese language program (and of which I was among their first batch of students) put us in a classroom where the wall paint was peeling, the flooring was from the 1950s era, our desks were one row long and made of wood and our chairs were wooden too. The teacher used a traditional slate blackboard and chalk (oh, the nostaligia!) and we came in our winter coats and gloves because the heaters hadn't yet been turned on and winter had already arrived. I don't think universities (especially like that of Tsinghua) have this atmosphere, but I admit, I did love that classroom. Its sparseness made my education feel all the more essential.

ICLP Writing Classes

Two weeks ago, ICLP posted a sign-up sheet for writing classes on the announcement board. I signed up for it because I'm always game for any activities the program offers its students.

The first class was last Tuesday but I was still too dazed from my whirlwind visa run to the Philippines (the visa problem I mentioned earlier) to remember the class. I was pretty disappointed when I realized I had forgotten about it.  The following week, I certainly did not forget about the class. I got to the classroom at 2 pm today and bumped right into the instructor who was about to shut the door.

"No way! (不行!)" she said sternly before I could even utter a word.

She eyed me for a half a second, "Didn't Miss So-and-so tell you that you can't attend?"

I returned a lost stare.

"If you didn't show up for the first class, you are not allowed to attend this class, sorry." With that, she curtly shut the door.

I can't really think of any other way she could have rejected me out of the class, but really, the rudeness was a little uneccessary. The class had 3 students in total and that empty seat I saw was calling my name! If a student is going to make such an effort to remember the class's location and attend it even after the sign is taken down, couldn't the staff be just a little more friendly in light of such diligence? How much more trouble is it really to have one more body in that empty fourth chair? Especially given that I paid $3000 USD to come here?

The class is a beginner's writing class (i.e. learn the 214 radicals and their meanings) and not an essay writing class as I had originally thought. Not to say that learning the radicals more solidly wouldn't have been helpful! I'm always amazed at how many times I fall back on the radicals when learning or recognizing new characters. A refresher course would have been really good.

Fortunately my classmate IS in the class and will be sharing with me his notes.

ICLP Class Schedule

The majority of the summer term students have classes in the morning. From the schedules that are posted up on the wall, I noticed that only a few students had class as late as 1pm. My classes are back to back from 8am-11am. This means that all my work has to be prepared the night before. Unfortunately for me, anything I review the night before tends to disappear into oblivion by the time I wake up the next morning. I end up barely squeaking by in my one-on-one class as a result of my hazy memory. Fortunately, a solution has arisen on its own. I wake up at 4 am. Yes, I wake up at 4 am. This ensures two things: 1) that I retain the information I study (and maybe even reinforce it during classes) and 2) that I don't end up being a lazy procrastinator, since I only have about 2.5 hours to complete my assignments during the pre-dawn hours.

Classes at ICLP are actually 50 minutes, but it seems that this is done so that students don't end up being late for their next class. My instructors regularly go overtime by 5 minutes. My one-on-one tutor is really putting a lot of effort on me by keeping me until the next bell rings. She doesn't have to do that, but she does. She also checks my Chinese language learning blog and makes comments, which I really appreciate. My classmate has told me that since her Chinese level is too high for her class, the professor uses 30 minutes of her lunch hour to review a higher level text with her.

On Fridays, the instructors have open office hours for ICLP students until about 1 pm. I haven't taken advantage of those yet. Sometimes, I really feel like I'm not taking advantage of the resources I have. I must keep reminding myself that after ICLP is over, I won't have all of this to take for granted anymore.

ICLP Fieldtrip to Wenshan Tea Farm and Wulai

Yesterday I participated in ICLP's first big fieldtrip to two places, the Wenshan Tea Farm and the merry hotspring town of Wulai. Both of these fantastic spots are south of Taipei and accessible from the Xindian MRT station.

The world's #2 Wulong tea

Our group of 25 students and 5 staff members (our lovely and dedicated secretaries and a young professor) spent the morning being guided about by our Chinese speaking tourguide around the farm. I probably understood about 15% of what he said.

trying our hand at being tea pickers

For lunch, everyone ate BBQ outside, while another girl and I went to the restaurant to share a very delicious vegetarian meal.

i was delighted by the deep-fried tea leaves

After lunch, we learned how tea leaves are processed. At this point, the heat was so pervasive that everything seemed like a haze and I felt the symptoms of heatstroke coming on. Everyone seemed to be on the verge of fainting. Our guide, rivers of sweat streaming down his face, did a great job amidst it all.

step #4 in the tea process

In the end, we finished our whole tour by learning the art of serving tea and sipping several cups of Wulong tea. Maybe someday I will be able to read our guide's notes.


Wulai is a hotspring town not far from the tea farm. It specializes in Atayal culture and of course, the hotspring experience. Many people were also cooling themselves off in the river. I had heard that the 明月 hotel was a great place for hotspring bathing, but I simply did not have enough time to go soak. The price was 450NT all you can bathe...hehe.


Aside from the intolerable heat, I had a great time meeting more of my ICLP classmates and getting closer to those I already knew. For future reference, I think this trip is really more appropriate for wintertime. Who goes to the hotsprings during the summer?

Halfway Point at ICLP Summer Program

Four weeks completed at ICLP and I'm getting my 屁股 whooped yet again. I blame this on the visa issues I had over the last weekend which resulted in me losing my entire weekend plus Monday to straighten it all out. (I ended up taking a one day trip to the Philippines).

I took the trip to Manila because I was sick of going to Hong Kong all the time. However, if you need to make a visa run, please choose Hong Kong unless you have good reason to go to the Philippines. They gave me all kinds of trouble at the Manila airport which I won't go into because it will scare you.

So I've spent this past week trying to catch up with my work and miserably failing at it. ICLP is intense and you've got to keep pace. My one-on-one tutor will not slow down for me; I simply have to do my work...and have been losing a lot of sleep in the process. Kind of like a sink-or-swim scenario.

Four weeks left! I've really got to push myself harder!

ICLP Summer Student Body

I think a rough breakdown of the majority of students who are attending this program this summer are:

1. people recently graduated from university
2. college kids from upper-middle class to upper-class families
3. graduate students (on scholarships and fellowships)
4. employees whose companies have covered tuition

The first week of class, everyone is too busy adjusting to notice the others at school. I'd say it's the second week of classes where people are more relaxed about getting to know their classmates. By the third week, general cliques are formed.

ICLP Movie Time

Today ICLP has turned one of the large classrooms into a movie theater and is showing "A Battle of Wits" this afternoon. I hope they will host one of these every week; it's a great extra-curric activity.

7th Day of Class at ICLP Completed - Stealth Vocabulary

By tomorrow I should be rather familiar with about 382 new vocabulary words. Tomorrow only being the 8th day of class, it sounds rather daunting doesn't it?

It's actually somehow not as bad as it sounds because we are always repeatedly encountering the new vocab in our texts and subsequent texts, in our classes, and our conversations (and I'm starting to notice them in my environment as well). The words are just kind of sneaking into my brain. And this is coming from someone who had trouble learning 30 new words every two weeks in a non-Chinese environment.

Now this is an indicator of a great language program.

Calligraphy Class at ICLP

Last week, ICLP announced they would be offering free calligraphy classes during the summer and had a sign-up sheet up for anyone who was inerested. So many people were interested that they had to open up a second session. The classes are about four or five sessions for 2 hours at a time. This is a great opportunity to do something extra-curricular. I completely didn't expect this from the program. Kudos to them.

















EDIT:
The introduction went very well. During the first hour, our instructor told very humorous and entertaining stories about learning calligraphy. The one point I got (or at least understood) of all his points was that calligraphy was about beauty, translating the beauty of one's soul onto paper. During the second hour he wrote all of our Chinese names in calligraphy (shufa).

In our next class, we are to come prepared to actually write a little. If we don't bring our own brush, we can buy a very good one from him for 400 NT ($12 USD). I remember when I took a calligraphy class in Beijing, we bought our own brushes for about 80 RMB ($10 USD), which for China seemed pretty expensive!

Second Day of Class

The second day of class has seriously kicked my 屁股. I seriously didn't anticipate Chinese being taught at this level of...professionalism, for lack of a better word. Actually, I did anticipate it, but I think I was in denial until now.

Memorization and drudge work is to be done by ourselves. With only 50 minutes for each class, these classes concentrate on actual thinking through Chinese as a language. I'm very impressed.

Second day of class and I need to internalize a total of 180 new words by tomorrow. GAH! I am already behind!

Very First Day of Class at ICLP

I was placed in classes far above what I believed I was capable of.

Interestingly enough, the first class has one instructor with one textbook (Newspaper Readings) and the second class has another instructor with another textbook (Chinese Culture Topics). So it is as though I am taking two entirely different classes.

The third "class" is 1-on-1 tutoring which works in conjunction with one of the group classes (in my case Chinese Culture Topics).

There are a total of 4 students in the Newspaper Readings class and 3 in the Chinese Culture Topics class. Good small numbers.

All of my classmates in both classes are asian, specifically American and of some Chinese background (i.e. Taiwanese, Malaysian/Singaporean, Hong Kong). The instructor pointed out that our needs and our strengths are quite different from the needs and strengths of the non-Asian students. I'm the only student who is mixed. I think I'm doing pretty well holding my own given that neither of my parents ever spoke/speak to me in Chinese or any form of Chinese.

Bus Routes to ICLP

The fastest walk for me to the ICLP building was from the bus stop by the Taida Gym. The walk was roughly 6-8 minutes as opposed to the 15+ minute walk from the Gongguan bus and MRT stations. There is ONE line which stops right opposite of the ICLP building but it didn't go through any section of Taipei I was familiar with and I've forgotten the bus number. Some people also got off and walked from the Technology Building station on the Brown line of the MRT, but I'm not too familiar with that route either.

The buses which stop at the Taida Gym are:
0
52
207, 236, 251, 252, 253, 280, 284 (goes on to Taipei 101), 290
311
505
642, 643, 668, 675, 676
907

This list is not all-inclusive.

Program Assessment: Peeve #1 cont. - Cost Comparison with ShiDa

National Taiwan Normal University's (ShiDa) Mandarin Training Center (MTC) is also considered one of the best Chinese language programs in Taiwan and offers various programs and private tutoring sessions during the summer.

I crafted out a plan which most closely matches ICLP's:

8 weeks.
10 hours of group class per week, 6 hours of private one-on-one tutoring per week.

Total Cost: $1091 USD.

Plus, they don't charge a $50 application fee as ICLP does. That's a $2,259 USD discrepancy between two schools who are within 20 minutes walking distance of each other!

Other programs at Zheng Da (National Chengchi University) and at private companies (i.e. TLI) are even more affordable.

ICLP better be a damn good program for them to be charging such a premium for their classes. Classes start on Monday so keep following this blog and I will let you know how it goes.