Update from our Exchange Students

Hey Everyone! So I realized I left out a super important thing in my last post and that was to say thank you. Thank you all so. Thank you for supporting me and for allowing me to have this amazing experience. Words can not convey how grateful I am. That being said life in Taiwan is quite uhhh different. Not good, nor bad, just different. I could go on for hours about all the differences but for right now i'll stick with one. The automatic doors. Now this is a very minor difference (considering just how big some are) but it still affects me. In the U.S. automatic doors are just that, automatic. Here its about a 4 second delay. Now this may seem insignificant but every single time I go to an automatic door I forget this. And every single time I run straight into the glass. Oops. On the other end of the spectrum there are quite a few major differences in welfare of the people. Ive always been very very interested in psychology, sociology and human rights. Now at first I put these interests to the side and worry about other things. But an incident occurred that caused my mind to focus. Now i'm a bit apprehensive to share this because it is a very serious issue. But on my way to the bus station I saw a very severe case of domestic violence. I couldn't do anything at the moment but waited until the man left to attempt to comfort the women in my very poor Chinese. I cried for one of the first times since I got here that day. I cried because I could see the fear in that woman's eyes. A fear which has been shown in too many eyes. I haven't seen anymore cases but upon further research it apparently is somewhat of an issue here in Taiwan but normally kept out of the public's eye. Now you may be wondering why I chose to share this story of my amazing surplus of happy ones but the reason is because one of the first things I thought about when I saw this was rotary.  I thought about service before self and about how I can help not only this woman but this issue as a whole. I can't help much here  because of the language barrier but I'm working with the other exchange students and some classmates to print off flyers with the address and hotlines for domestic abuse centers (with rotary's permission of course). Also I encourage anyone who happens to read this to get involved with the local center. You never know who needs help. 

 

Thank you so much suburban rotary, THE BEST ROTARY IN THE UNIVERSE!

 

From Madi Zimmerman in Japan: