A school in the mountains
Mar. 16th, 2026 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
disappointed_lesbianToday I spent six or seven hours researching Taiwanese universities. It was an onerous task because Taiwanese universities tend, it seems, to not post the degrees they offer and because a lot of the web pages were just blank.
I found a few universities on mountains, but I eventually gave up because most have tuition that would nearly exhaust the scholarship, leaving me with next to nothing to pay for the miscellaneous student fees, because I'd still have no way to cover air fare with this particular scholarship, and because I'm just tired and demotivated at this point. It's nearly nine-thirty pm and I've been researching online since around two-thirty or 3 pm. I never feel sure about these plans; never in my life have I supported myself financially, and I fear that I'll never be able to, particularly given my chronic health issues. I also probably won't ever be able to afford property in Taiwan even if I do manage to hold down a job, and renting for life = possibly working for life seems a grim future. At my age, I might not qualify for any kind of retirement benefit for a long time even with a career.
But I keep forgetting that I'm supposed to be just getting an education/checking out the island first, before committing myself. But I'd be committing myself anyhow in a way because I'll be homeless again if I come back here. As well as depressed, probably. It seems better to commit myself to Taiwan, sight unseen.
I found a talent recruitment program that would cover costs for select educational programs in exchange for employment at a Taiwanese company, but most of the programs open to me are in large cities. (It feels like cities with over a million people in them should not exist.) A lot of the hosting universities want only people from southeast asia; why, I don't know.
Of those that do not have this restriction, I'm down to one that's in a low population density area and one that's on a mountain just outside a large city. I might contact some of the others and ask whether they'll take a lowly American. If I go this route, I'll have no choice but to commit myself after finishing whatever schooling I choose. But coming up with airfare would still be a problem, at least initially; the programs reimburse for airfare, so I'd have money for at ticket back here at least. I typed 'back home,' then deleted it. This shit isn't my home. I have no home.
And my last option is the american scholarship I've been planning to apply for all this time, the one that requires studying Chinese culture and history, the latter being a topic in which I'm not terribly interested,the degree being one that doesn't seem terribly lucrative. It will however cover airfare and the program is specifically designed to get students fluent in Mandarin, so it's an integration tool.
Right now, I am stuck on the dumbest shit: identification. I need to take the test of chinese as a foreign language; I cannot even register an account without a passport, I cannot get a passport without my birth certificate, I can't get my birth certificate without a valid government id, and I cannot get the id without money unless I go spend the day waiting in that hellhole the dmv.
I just took a speedy mock tocfl test online and scored the equivalent of cefr a1 in listening comprehension. I need a2 to get into any degree program taught in Chinese. My score bothers me regardless of whether I'd need it or not. I know that my listening comprehension is better than what the score suggests but I think the test focuses on everyday conversations, and the podcasts I'm studying aren't very good for that level of speech, plus my textbooks mixed rather niche vocabulary in with basic vocab instead of teaching all basics at the beginning, as most textbooks do, so they put me at something of a disadvantage.
I've begun studying chinese stories/fables again; I hope that'll improve my facility with basic vocab. I don't really want to go back to basic level textbook stuff. It's boring as hell.
I think my insane insomnia is caused by excess d3 intake. It started around the same time I started opening up my d3 capsules and taking the contents directly. I'm probably absorbing way more than I used to absorb and thereby overdosing. I tried taking the d3 every other day, and it seemed that I slept a little (rather than not at all). I'm going to try taking it just once per week or so now.
Today I added treadmill to my regular weights+cycling workout routine to burn more calories. I just get on the treadmill after I can't stand being on the bike anymore and speedwalk for forty-five minutes to an hour. Lunch is pushed from eleven am to noon. I was somewhat hungrier than usual, but I had a few tablespoons of applesauce and I was fine.
I found a few universities on mountains, but I eventually gave up because most have tuition that would nearly exhaust the scholarship, leaving me with next to nothing to pay for the miscellaneous student fees, because I'd still have no way to cover air fare with this particular scholarship, and because I'm just tired and demotivated at this point. It's nearly nine-thirty pm and I've been researching online since around two-thirty or 3 pm. I never feel sure about these plans; never in my life have I supported myself financially, and I fear that I'll never be able to, particularly given my chronic health issues. I also probably won't ever be able to afford property in Taiwan even if I do manage to hold down a job, and renting for life = possibly working for life seems a grim future. At my age, I might not qualify for any kind of retirement benefit for a long time even with a career.
But I keep forgetting that I'm supposed to be just getting an education/checking out the island first, before committing myself. But I'd be committing myself anyhow in a way because I'll be homeless again if I come back here. As well as depressed, probably. It seems better to commit myself to Taiwan, sight unseen.
I found a talent recruitment program that would cover costs for select educational programs in exchange for employment at a Taiwanese company, but most of the programs open to me are in large cities. (It feels like cities with over a million people in them should not exist.) A lot of the hosting universities want only people from southeast asia; why, I don't know.
Of those that do not have this restriction, I'm down to one that's in a low population density area and one that's on a mountain just outside a large city. I might contact some of the others and ask whether they'll take a lowly American. If I go this route, I'll have no choice but to commit myself after finishing whatever schooling I choose. But coming up with airfare would still be a problem, at least initially; the programs reimburse for airfare, so I'd have money for at ticket back here at least. I typed 'back home,' then deleted it. This shit isn't my home. I have no home.
And my last option is the american scholarship I've been planning to apply for all this time, the one that requires studying Chinese culture and history, the latter being a topic in which I'm not terribly interested,the degree being one that doesn't seem terribly lucrative. It will however cover airfare and the program is specifically designed to get students fluent in Mandarin, so it's an integration tool.
Right now, I am stuck on the dumbest shit: identification. I need to take the test of chinese as a foreign language; I cannot even register an account without a passport, I cannot get a passport without my birth certificate, I can't get my birth certificate without a valid government id, and I cannot get the id without money unless I go spend the day waiting in that hellhole the dmv.
I just took a speedy mock tocfl test online and scored the equivalent of cefr a1 in listening comprehension. I need a2 to get into any degree program taught in Chinese. My score bothers me regardless of whether I'd need it or not. I know that my listening comprehension is better than what the score suggests but I think the test focuses on everyday conversations, and the podcasts I'm studying aren't very good for that level of speech, plus my textbooks mixed rather niche vocabulary in with basic vocab instead of teaching all basics at the beginning, as most textbooks do, so they put me at something of a disadvantage.
I've begun studying chinese stories/fables again; I hope that'll improve my facility with basic vocab. I don't really want to go back to basic level textbook stuff. It's boring as hell.
I think my insane insomnia is caused by excess d3 intake. It started around the same time I started opening up my d3 capsules and taking the contents directly. I'm probably absorbing way more than I used to absorb and thereby overdosing. I tried taking the d3 every other day, and it seemed that I slept a little (rather than not at all). I'm going to try taking it just once per week or so now.
Today I added treadmill to my regular weights+cycling workout routine to burn more calories. I just get on the treadmill after I can't stand being on the bike anymore and speedwalk for forty-five minutes to an hour. Lunch is pushed from eleven am to noon. I was somewhat hungrier than usual, but I had a few tablespoons of applesauce and I was fine.
