Taiwan

Eight BYU nursing students, one nursing professor, and one dean of BYU's nursing department. Together with Chi Mei Medical Center's healthcare staff has made an eventful first week in Tainan, Taiwan.

The plane ride there was the longest 15 or so hours of my life! Not to mention we had a 5 hour lay over in the Korean airport. Skyping with some friends back home could not have been any better during those long 5 hours! When we finally arrived, it seemed like a mess trying to find the right bus to take to Tainan. Language barrier... but no worries. We ended up taking the right bus, and met an english speaker on our bus ride too. He was from Taiwan but had friends who spoke English and thus.. knew English. As we got off our bus, we took the high speed rail to the Chi Mei Medical Center where we were greeted warmly by very very friendly nurses. Arms open, bright faces, broken English, they embraced us with a warm welcome and helped us load our stuff into a van to take us to our housing accommodation. They gave us the tour and all. It was good to find out there was an exercise room upstairs with an elipticals ... good to know I can still work on my fitness while I'm here.

After getting settled in, we were quickly led to the Medical Center. We toured the hopsital. The hospital was much much bigger than I had imagined. After the tour two of the nurses took us down to find some food. Kris, our professor, found her favorite thing.. a flat chinese pancake cooked with eggs, green onions, basil, and sprouts of some kind... We all bought one and called that our dinner. By then we were all ready for a shower and bed; being tired combined with feeling nasty with greasy hair and dirty clothes made our foreign dorm rooms seem like a nice home away from home.