Bullis Blog | Global Studies Trips

大家好！My name is Chris L. '25, and I am currently a junior traveling on the 2024 Taiwan Global Studies Trip. Today, we wrapped up our third day of travel on this trip, and I keep finding that the beautiful city of Taipei keeps one-upping itself. After our first two days here, all of us were able to play out the amazingly thought-out itinerary and realized just how jam-packed this trip really would be! While all of us are wiped out by the time we fall into bed, we keep waking up the next day with smiles, sensing the adventure that awaits us. On this third day, we were able to do a variety of activities that allowed us to explore many different aspects of Taiwanese culture and cuisine. We began the morning by having a slightly shorter breakfast than usual (for the need to stock up on Taiwanese snacks and transfer out some cash at a nearby 7-11) and then briskly departed to catch — as we learned on the first day — the incredibly efficient metro. Our destination was one of the most inf...

By Ryan T. ‘24 Today was another packed day, beginning with a bus ride to a tea plantation in the mountains surrounding Taipei. The “Wen Sun Farm” farm is gorgeous and filled with hundreds of variations of tea. We got the chance to learn how to pick our own tea. Afterwards, we learned how tea is turned from the leaf on the plant into a drink. This included a tea-making competition where we used our new skills to compete in making the best-tasting Baozhong tea (包种茶) that was harvested at the farm earlier. I enjoyed this experience and got to try some exciting foods at a store on the plantation, such as tea-flavored ice cream and Coca-Cola Gum. The owner of the store graciously offered to privately showcase making black tea for Nathan, Emily, and me, which was a truly one-of-a-kind experience. After taking a quick tour and returning to the city, we visited the National Palace Museum. Here, a guide explains the valuables and their history. One of the most famous pieces is a jade that lo...

你好 (Hello)! Welcome to our Taiwan Global Studies Blog, where students on the trip will be writing exciting daily stories about this unforgettable cultural and language immersion trip. I’m Nathan C. '24, a senior, and I’ll be writing the first entry of the blog series. After 20+ hours of travel, we finally made it to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. On our first full day in Taipei, we familiarized ourselves with our surroundings; we walked around the city and navigated our way through the intricate yet easy-to-understand metro system. Led by our fearless Bullis chaperones and local tour guide James Yen, our first destination was 象山 or Elephant Mountain. After stopping at a local stand to buy drinks and ice cream, we hiked up the mountain (it was much harder than we expected, haha). It was all worth it, though, as we were met with breathtaking cityscape views of Taipei. One building stood out amidst the dense skyline of the city: Taipei 101, our next stop. After a quick photoshoot on...