印度理工學院馬德拉斯分校學生Atharva Rajadnya於8月8日致函駐清奈辦事處，分享他到臺灣參加臺北醫學大學(Taipei Medical University)交流活動之心得與對臺灣整體印象。檢附這位學生來函如下：

                     My Experience in Taiwan

There is an International Honors Program conducted by Taipei Medical University (TMU) every year. This initiative was started in 2017 by TMU. We got to know about this through our Chinese teacher, Ms. Kaiyun Peng. We did a Chinese language course in our college, IIT Madras, which was taught by Kaiyun Lao Shi. She used to send us emails regarding such opportunities.

As soon as I got to know about this opportunity, I immediately decided to sign up for this.The topic of the program was related to artificial intelligence and big data analysis in medical machinery, which was very interesting for me. Plus, I had always wanted to visit Taiwan. Taiwan is very famous for its technological prowess as well its unique culture. Considering all these factors, I sent an email to TMU regarding the application process, and they responded by telling me what all I had to do to apply. Accordingly, I booked my flight tickets, applied for my VISA, withdrew some currency, and made all the necessary preparations. The program was going to be conducted in the December of 2017.

The journey itself was amazing. Me and a friend of mine, Ashwin, were the two guys from my college who were going to the program. Our flight consisted of two parts. The first flight took us to Bangkok, and from there we took another plane to Taipei. As soon as we entered Taipei, we noticed the beautiful weather of Taiwan. It was a pleasant sunny weather, but it wasn't very hot. The university had arranged transportation for us, to take us to our hostel. We met the other students at the airport, and all of us were taken to our hostel.

While going to our hostel, we noticed the big shape of Taipei 101, which was once the tallest building in the whole world. Our hostel was named Formosa 101, and it was located close to Taipei 101. Our rooms were on the 11th floor, and we had a common room on the 5th floor. There were 8 people sleeping in my room. The common room  also had an adjoined kitchen, where we used to cook our own dinner. The hostel actually had people from all over the world living in it. So naturally we made a lot of new friends there. Over the course of our stay, we met people from Japan, USA, Australia, France and Canada. The common room also had a TV, although we couldn't understand it as all the shows were mostly in Mandarin. We used to get breakfast daily in Formosa. This helped us to power through our whole day. The memories which I have of Formosa are some of the best ones of mine.

Our program was for a total of 15 days. As a part of the program, we used to have lectures, site visits as well as cultural tours. The lectures used to happen in TMU campus. There were two campuses which we used to go to, the main campus and the Daan campus. Initially, we had an orientation in the main campus. They gave us an 'Easy Card' there, which was to be used for traveling around the country. We used to have our lectures in the Daan campus mostly. All of them were very interesting and enriching. I got a new perspective in the fields after hearing the professors talk there.

The bests part of our program were the cultural trips. We had trips organized for us every alternate day almost. For the first trip, they took us to the National Palace Museum. It was a wonderful experience there. We saw various artifacts of ancient history there. We learned a lot about the Chinese, Taiwanese as well the Japanese culture there. The museum was slightly crowded, however it was a wonderful experience. We also visited Taipei 101 mall in the evening. It is a very big mall and took us around 2 hours to see half of it.

We also went to the Maokong Gondola once. The ride was for a duration of 20 minutes. The scenery there was amazing and breathtaking. The gondola is located very close to the Taipei zoo. Hence the area had a large number of visitors. I went to the zoo on a weekend with 4 other students. Taipei Zoo has a large variety of animals, birds and reptiles. We saw reptiles like snakes, tortoises, lizards as well various kinds of insects there. We also saw a large number of birds inside. The variety in animals was amazing. We saw tigers, lions, giraffes, hippos, koalas, rhinos, wolves and various other kinds of beautiful animals. However, the best part were the giant pandas. There were 3 giant pandas in total. Everyone went crazy after seeing them. We also saw a penguin exhibit there. I had an amazing time at the zoo.

We also went to Hsinchu over the weekend to visit Kaiyun Lao Shi. We took a local train to go there. The journey was long but amazing. Hsinchu is known as the city of the wind. We experienced this there. It was raining slightly but it was very windy and cold. As we had only one jacket, we were shivering a lot, but it was lot of fun. Over there, we tried some local dishes like the oyster omelette and pork noodles. In Taiwan we went to the night market twice. We shopped there as well as tried some local food. We also went to a local bakery once. There we made some local sweets with peanut powder and sesame seeds. They were delicious to eat and we bought some for ourselves as well.

Before the day of our departure back to India, we went on small trek to elephant mountain. The weather was clear on that day and we got to see a complete view of Taipei in the dark from the top. Some people from Australia and Canada joined us for the trip, they ultimately became our friends and we are still in touch with each other. After the trek, we came back to our hostel and cooked an Indian style chicken curry for everyone that night.

The entire trip has created memories which are too beautiful to forget for me. I still remember each and every one of those moments in Taiwan. The metro rides, the street food, the walks to 7/11 for my daily cocoa, the lectures, the amazing and kind people, the friends which I made, the beautiful friends I made are some of the many things which I would cherish forever. I would like to thank Kaiyun Lao Shi and TMU for giving me this wonderful opportunity. I love Taiwan as a country and would love to visit it once again in the future.