Written by Max Fischer (Carleton School), Pupil Correspondent for CET Taiwan, Fall 2025
After 7 weeks of learning Mandarin and a tiring week of midterms, a soothing weekend is completely warranted. Thus, CET treats us to a soothing weekend! This semester, we had the chance to go to Xitou, a pure web site situated within the mountains of central Taiwan and owned by the college the place we often attend courses (臺大). Since we had a busy weekend forward of us, we loaded up the buses and set out at 8:30am Friday morning, since we had the day without work from class.
Arriving in Xitou, we have been instantly struck by two main issues. First, the surroundings was unbelievable. Our web site was nestled within the mountains, and we have been completely surrounded by nature. The situation was a stunning change of tempo from the on a regular basis bustling lifetime of Taipei; in Xitou, it felt like we might hear actual silence once more. In the end, I’ve at all times believed being in nature is a good way to loosen up and recharge. Secondly, as we settled into our cabins we encountered a troop of monkeys exploring the character space. Individuals flocked to get a take a look at them, they usually have been even comfy with individuals getting fairly near them.
The remainder of the day was fairly quiet, as everybody continued to loosen up, settle in, and discover the character space. Later, everybody gathered for an enormous dinner of greens, clam soup, pork, hen, fish, and rather more. Though I felt as if I used to be going to go to sleep from all of the meals, everybody on CET gathered as soon as once more and competed in a collection of team-building competitions, which have been a whole lot of enjoyable!
Saturday was one other very stress-free day, since we had Monday off of sophistication, we have been in a position to spend a ton of time exploring Xitou. On Saturday morning I hiked round extra of the encompassing space. Later within the day, I went down the mountain some methods to see Monster Village, a small village designed in a Japanese architectural model and primarily based on Japanese mythology. Monster Village was a vibrant place to spend the afternoon. It was stuffed with outlets with distinctive souvenirs and nice locations to go for meals. I actually loved the wild boar.
For my part, the spotlight of the journey got here on Sunday. Whereas we packed our luggage and started to move again north, we nonetheless had another cease: Solar Moon Lake! Solar Moon Lake is a web site that I had heard loads about earlier than I got here to Taiwan. On-line, I heard all about how massive of a must-see it’s. Having now seen it in individual, I need to agree. We arrived at Solar Moon Lake at round 10am, and had a number of hours to discover the wide selection of surroundings. Me and a few associates took a ferry to the far finish of the lake and started mountain climbing to the pagoda on the high of the mountain.
After the hike, we have been dying to seize a chunk to eat, so we headed to Ita Thao Marketplace for some braised pork rice earlier than heading again to the drop off level.
Our weekend in Xitou was a brilliant stress-free change of tempo from the standard hustle and bustle of Taipei, and it was an incredible alternative to fulfill new individuals on this system. Xitou shouldn’t be someplace that I seemingly would have travelled to had I not had the chance to discover it on this journey, however I’m tremendous glad that I did! CET Employees did a implausible job organizing the whole journey, and it was an incredible use of a weekend in Taiwan.
