Lucy in Taiwan! / 露思在台湾

I finally did it! I went to Taipei 101! I remember as a kid hearing about it from my dad and getting postcards from him of the tower...and I was enamored! And I finally made it! I met the Damper Baby and gave him a big hug! And the actual damper...I never realized that's what that big golden ball was! I remember seeing it in pictures from my dad but I always thought it was some cool sculpture, not for any real function! The damper works to mitigate sway from the tower in high winds or earthquakes, and Taipei 101's damper is both the largest and only visible damper. It's fascinating. I practically cried looking at it! Yesterday, which was Friday, we did our lab in the morning. I was nervous as I've never really done anything like that before, but it was way much easier than I anticipated. Tomorrow we will check to see the results. It sounds like we're mostly just confirming already seen results from previous tests. The most crucial part is seeing if Chinese Mugwort w...

 你好！ At the time of writing this I will be jumping from plane to plane, from Minneapolis to Denver to San Fransisco and eventually to Taipei. I'm feeling so many things I feel nothing at all! I'm nervous and excited and everything all at once! Everyone in the group seems very sweet but I'm also nervous as I don't know anyone very well other than Amber. I'll have to text Sophia soon. She's a friend of my family's in Taipei and I'm going to meet with her and her brother Bruce during my stay. She's so sweet, in our emails she was asking if I had somewhere to stay, if I needed a ride from the airport, so on and so forth. I'm very excited to meet her! Dr. Huang and I were having a conversation about the linguistic and cultural history of Taiwan and it was fascinating. I knew that Mandarin was the official language, while Taiwanese was the local language, but there's so much more than that! First of all, Hokkien/Fukkien is different from Taiwanese....