Discovering Taiwan: how to spend summer holidays

A student of the Faculty of world economics and international affairs Anastasia Kotelnikova spent summer 2012 in Taiwan as a participant of youth volunteer program of "AISEC" organization.  
This trip gave Anastasia an opportunity to try teaching english at primary school and discover amazing world of the island. 

Once you come to Taiwan you never want to leave.. 
 
This year I went to Taiwan as a participant of youth volunteer program of "AISEC" organization. I took part in one of the projects dedicated to teaching English and local Hakka culture at primary school. The project included working in a team with students from Taiwan and Singapore during six weeks.  
 
The first two weeks we were running a summer english camp for children. The first days of working were rather hard, but the children got used to us very quickly and enjoyed our lessons and games. The camp finished with a performance for parents and administration where the children demonstrated a play on Hakka culture.  
The next two weeks I needed to write some works, develop a website and a logo for the project and create some ways of promoting it.  
After the end of the project I had two weeks for traveling around the island. The time passed very fast, as we had a very intensive program: we visited different places, met different people, discussed the development of our project. During my journey I visited a lot of towns and historical places, national parks and sand beaches. I also witnessed a typhoon, took part in a "Festival of spirits", enjoyed the hospitability of locals and tried a lot of local food.  
This trip to another part of the world dipped me into asian culture, which is though still a puzzle for me. I also got a lot of experience in learning language, working in a team, developing my own project, living with a local family and understand my priorities in life. So it became a really important contribution to self-knowledge.