Cincinnati student
Andrea Francisco: Experiencing Taiwan Part Three
Andrea Francisco lives in Cincinnati and is a soon-to-be-senior at Indian Hill High School. She will also be interning with me this fall to share her thoughts through my blog. I will have more information about her later, but for now she is sharing her wonderful experience as an exchange student this summer traveling to Taiwan. This is the last in her three-part series about her trip.
Please click here to read part one.
Please click here to read part two.
by Andrea Francisco
As I look back on the past two weeks, I can’t help but laugh and smile, because of all the wonderful memories that were made. Everything about this trip somehow made me feel closer to the world, and for that I can’t thank my host family and all the people I met in Taiwan enough. Also, I feel more mature and like a global citizen who is ready to live the life ahead of me to the very fullest.
Because of this amazing exchange program organized by New Taipei City, I can say that I am much more cultured and have a more positive perspective of the world. I made so many new friends from Cincinnati here in Taiwan that I probably never would have even met back home had I not joined this program. Overall, I believe the most impressive things we did together in Taiwan include going to a huge night market, lighting giant lanterns into the sky, and learning how to spin Chinese Yo-Yos from elementary school kids. In addition, we witnessed countless performances from kids our age and younger, including a dragon show and glee club dance. These kids are breathtaking in their performance and enthusiasm onstage; you just have to go to Taiwan to understand! All in all, I have not only learned a great deal about the Taiwanese culture, but also about myself as a person. This experience is truly unforgettable and definitely the biggest highlight of my summer. I sincerely recommend this program to anyone who is looking for adventure and fun packed into an enlightening experience.
Andrea Francisco: Experiencing Taiwan – Part Two
Andrea Francisco lives in Cincinnati and is a soon-to-be-senior at Indian Hill High School. She will also be interning with me this fall to share her thoughts through my blog. I will have more information about her later, but for now she is sharing her wonderful experience as an exchange student this summer traveling to Taiwan.
This is the second of a three-part series. Please click here to read her part one.
By Andrea Francisco
I have to admit, before heading with Carly to the MRT train station that would take me to her boarding school, I was a little nervous. Her high school, named Shuang-Xi, was to host me along with Claire, another American girl from our exchange group, for three consecutive days. Temporarily, Claire and I would have no contact with other Americans, and it would be as if we were Taiwanese ourselves living our daily lives. Actually, Claire is ethnically Taiwanese as her parents are both from Taiwan, but culturally she is just like any other American teenager. Throughout the three days, Claire and I greatly bonded as the only fully-speaking English people and became good friends. We also made friends with countless Taiwanese students, who were always excited to see us and ask us how American life is. One of my favorite things we did together was at our farewell barbeque, where we slow-roasted everything from chicken to tofu in barbeque sauce. Overall, it was truly amazing to see how beautifully our cultures could mesh, and I am excited to find out more ways to exchange our cultures.
All in all, Shuang-Xi high school has taught me so much about the lives of teens just like me who happen to live halfway around the world. I am very impressed with how kind and friendly everybody is there. As one of the four students lucky enough to go to boarding school with their host buddy, I was unsure of how the next three days would look like. However, after spending only a few days at this school, I had made many new friends that touched me and made me think differently about the world. Furthermore, there are many differences between my high school in America and my host school in Taiwan. For example, at Shuang-Xi students stay in the same room with the same group of kids all day, while different teachers rotate to teach classes in their room. This highly contrasts with my school in America, because we are always in a frenzy to scramble to our next class in only five minutes, which we have to repeat for seven bells. In addition, I want to let my host buddies and host school know that I am so grateful for their friendliness and enthusiasm towards me. Hopefully in the future you all can come to my school and I will show you what life in an American school is like.
Andrea Francisco: Experiencing Taiwan – Part One
Andrea Francisco lives in Cincinnati and is a soon-to-be-senior at Indian Hill High School. She will also be interning with me this fall to share her thoughts through my blog. I will have more information about her later, but for now she is sharing her wonderful experience as an exchange student this summer traveling to Taiwan. This is the first of a three-part series.
By Andrea Francisco, part one
Please click here to read part two.
Please click here to read part three.
I have always wondered what the lives of kids just like me feel like halfway around the world. This summer, for the first time ever, I have been given the chance to experience not only the contrasting lives of the Taiwanese, but also the city life of people living in New Taipei City. As a suburban girl, I am more used to seeing rows of green lawns than rows of apartment buildings. Throughout 
this unforgettable experience, I have found that while my life is sometimes different than my host-family buddy, Carly, it is more often than not similar. Like me, she experiences the same kinds of social and academic pressures from her friends, family, and classmates. The difference is that while she is sipping bubble tea at lunch and taking the MRT train to school, I am gulping down cartons of fortified skim milk and riding a yellow school bus. To clarify, bubble tea is a popular drink in Taiwan, consisting of milk, tea, and tapioca balls (which are surprisingly delicious!).
Thanks to the Cincinnati, USA and New Taipei City, Taiwan student exchange program, I have been able to create precious memories with my host family that will last a lifetime. I stayed with a girl my age named Taso Yu-Sin, but I called her by her American name, Carly. My host family treated me like a princess; they spoiled me with great food and numerous gifts. However, they also showed me a different way of life, the Taiwanese life, which makes me question how I live mine back in the states. Without this experience, I would never have known what it is like to live in an apartment in New Taipei City, which highly contrasts with my cookie-cutter suburban life. In terms of differences in lifestyles and cultures, I learned that the Taiwanese bring their own personal toilet paper to the bathroom rather than using a community roll. I found this a little annoying at first, because I kept forgetting to bring my toilet paper to the bathroom when I had to go. However, over time, I realized that it was not that hard to remember once you got used to it and may be more sanitary. Another difference in our culture relating to sanitation is that the Taiwanese always wear slippers in the house — never shoes or barefoot. Similarly, I was a little irked at the idea of having to take my shoes off every time I entered the house, but over time came to embrace it. Again, I found that this practice makes sense because it leaves the floor and your feet cleaner. Furthermore, my host family treated me to countless 
activities, such as visiting a night market, Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, Modern Toilet, a swimming pool, hot springs, and many more. I want to thank my wonderful host family for being so kind and generous to me for the past two weeks. Also, I thank you for all of your efforts to get to know me and talk to me, despite the language barrier. May we meet again someday, whether in Taiwan or the USA!
Indian Hill High School Student Journeys To Taiwan
Andrea Francisco lives in Cincinnati and is a soon-to-be-senior at Indian Hill High School. She will also be interning with me this fall to share her thoughts through my blog. I will have more information about her later, but wanted to share this letter she had written about a journey she is taking this summer. What a fabulous, life changing event for her!
Hello,
My name is Andrea Francisco, and I am a soon-to-be senior at Indian Hill High School who is about to go on an exchange trip to Taiwan. I’m very excited to explore the world outside my small suburban bubble and see what the lives of people halfway around the world are like. In just a few days, thirty students from schools around Cincinnati and I will embark on a journey to the island of Taiwan, which is just off the coast of China. More specifically, we will be going to New Taipei City, Taiwan, which is a part of the Cincinnati USA Sister City Association. A few other Sister Cities to Cincinnati include Nancy in France and Kharkiv in Ukraine.
Over the course of two weeks, we hope to make lasting friendships and memories with the people of Taiwan and especially our host families. All thirty-one of us are assigned our own host family, who will show us around Taiwan and bring us to their local school for a few days, as the Taiwanese students are still in school. Also, we will have opportunities to visit a few of the many interesting things to see in Taiwan, including the TAChou Yacht Company, Everlight Electronics, Pingxi Old Street, Fort Zeelandia, Eternal Golden Castle, Chikan Towers, Taichung Fengjia Night Market, and many more, which are also hard to pronounce. Although I have taken Mandarin Chinese, the official language of Taiwan, for three consecutive years at school, I still struggle to read and speak this rich language correctly. Thankfully, the Taiwanese family I am staying with can speak and write much more English than I am able to with Chinese, so we will be able to communicate. Despite the language barrier, I hope to enjoy this trip wholeheartedly and embrace the many cultural differences that I may come across.
After months of preparation, all that separates our group of thirty-one students and twelve chaperones from New Taipei City are a pair of three hour-long flights and a lengthy thirteen hour-long flight to Taiwan. We will be going over the Pacific Ocean, which may be scary for the majority of the students going on the trip, as less than five of us have flown internationally and nearly ten of us have never flown west of the Mississippi. Overall, I am very excited to see New Taipei City and create lasting memories with my host family and the students going on this trip!
Andrea
Cincinnati Student Collects Shoes For Those In Need
What a gift this blog has given me to get to meet truly beautiful people, people who give with their whole hearts realizing they have the capacity to affect lives.
Meredith Bailey is one such person. A senior at Walnut Hills High School, our paths crossed for the first time several weeks ago when her proud mother reached out to me. Karla wanted me to know about this special young 
philanthropist who has quietly been collecting shoes to share with those who otherwise would not be able to afford one of the great necessities that we so easily take for granted.
It began about four years ago. The Walnut Hills High School senior was looking for a Girl Scouts community service project. She donated a lot of shoes to Nike who recycled them for padded floors of playgrounds built in underserved neighborhoods. Then she gave shoes to pantries and Cincinnati nonprofits, and before long word got out. The requests kept coming in.
“I couldn’t turn my back,” Meredith told me. “Sure, sometimes I wish I had chosen something easier and there is nothing worse smelling than a carload of smelly gym shoes on a hot summer day but it’s a good feeling to know I am helping people.”
Meredith estimates she has collected, sorted, cleaned and distributed some 6,500 shoes since she began. Hundreds of pairs were given to Project Connect, to ensure Cincinnati Public Schools students who are homeless have something to wear on their feet when they come to class. She delivered 75 pairs of boots to Rockwern Academy last December. Six Cincinnati area nonprofits including the YWCA Battered Women and Children’s Shelter are also on Meredith’s list.
And about 300 shoes were given to SOTENI, who will give them to people in the villages of Kenya where native Cincinnatian Randi Marsh has established a program to fight AIDS.
I stopped by the Bailey’s house the other day to meet Meredith in person. A beautiful, tall and slender teenager greeted me with multi-colors of paint all over her hands. “I am a counselor at Girl Scout camp,” she explained. I had figured her summer job would have something to do with giving back.
She took me to her back porch where she had only a fraction of her shoe collection. (She had just given hundreds of pairs to Project Connect.) It was then, seeing her expression as she looked into the piles that I could really see deep within her soul. There, standing in front of me, was a young woman who hadn’t even decided upon her college yet but who had the foresight many don’t accumulate in their lifetime.
It is one thing to see in an email the words from someone telling you how happy it makes her to know she is helping people. It is a totally different experience to hear those words from a voice that crackles in raw emotion as she internalizes the impact of her good deeds.
Meredith spoke of a child who was able to attend camp because now there were shoes to cover her delicate 1.5 sized feet. And of the girls she came to know at a Girl Scout forum who put a face to the poverty in Kenya Meredith had until then only heard about through the news. One of them who had little or no material possessions had aspirations of becoming a doctor one day.
“It really gives you a different perspective on how much we have and they don’t have,” Meredith told me. “Those girls don’t have much but they still have dreams. They are so strong despite their circumstance.”
For me, I think strength can be measured in so many different ways. Caring and putting those feelings into action builds many of those muscles.
“I think happiness is the most important thing in life. The fact that I can make people happy is all that matters,” Meredith said.
If you have shoes to donate to Meredith’s cause, you can email her at: WeBeBailey@aol.com.
