Made it out of Pan Chiao.

Yesterday Mr. Wang gave Brian and I a ride to the American Institute in Taiwan, the United States pseudo-embassy, so I could handle some visa business. It's the closest I've been to downtown Taipei, and I was able to snap this shot of "Taipei 101" from inside the car. Named for it's 101 floors, it's currently the tallest building in the world. I don't know how tall it is, but you can clearly see that by about the 90th floor, it's cleared the top of the lamp post.

After registering my passport at the psuedo-embassy, Mr. Wang drove us to Shida university and dropped us off. A central bank was conveniently located right across the street. Up until yesterday I'd been using ATMs to withdraw cash from my Washington Mutual account. The exchange rate and fee is not the best by that method, so yesterday I finally made it to a central bank and exchanged my travelers checks and US dollars. This also allowed me to pay my tuition and enroll at Shida university a few hours later.
The characters read right to left as, "National Taiwan Teacher's University" which for some reason is officially translated as, "National Taiwan Normal University." However, all the locals know it simply as Shida.


This is the building on campus where the Chinese Culture and Language Center is located. I expect all of my classes will be held here. I did poorly on my placement test during the enrollment process, so I'll probably be starting at a beginning level. I don't mind. It's been almost 6 months since I was enrolled in a Mandarin class at CSLA, so I'm in need of review. It also makes sense to start a new curriculum at the beginning.