[quote=“smithsgj”]I used to teach at MCU, though not in IC.
Worrying about earthquakes is silly. There are 22 million people living here and not many of them are going to be killed or injured in earthquakes. Other kinds of mishaps are thousands (?) of times more likely.
ATM card will probably be the cheapest way to get your money here. Check with your bank in Finland, but you may have to pay charges this end too if you have money wired.
There’s quite a bit of accommodation near the MCU gate in Guishan. Kind of like privately owned dorms: the way this normally works is that you rent your place by the semester. There would be different sized rooms, and you could stay with your girlfriend.
I think you pay for the official dorm up front, for a semester, too. You can’t really move out unless you forfeit the rent or find someone to move in. The rooms are single sex, sleep 6 (or is it 8?) and your roommates will be other westerners. They don’t like to put you in with Taiwanese people, or even foreign students from Asia.
There are restaurants on and off campus, and the immediate area has a somehow studenty feel. No bars, bookshops or anything to do in the area though. Taoyuan centre is 15 minutes on a regular bus, but that’s pretty boring too. There are regular (cheap) student buses into Taipei that connect with the MRT.
I left MCU 2 years ago, so my information about IC may be out of date. At that time, I would say that most western students in IC were broadly dissatisfied with their experience. Many administrative gripes and hassles, and very difficult to sort out when the uni admin people mostly don’t speak English, or are embarrassed to. Half or more IC classmates will probably be native Chinese speakers (many from Taiwan); lecturers are nearly all Taiwanese too, so the (often disfluent and inadequate) English teaching sometimes degenerates into Chinese. Lecturers are often unable to answer questions adequately. There will be 2 clear blocs in the classroom (1 foreign, 1 Chinese); it will be difficult for you and your girlfriend, especially without Chinese knowledge, to break through the cultural barrier and get to know locals.
You shoudl definitely get in touch with some current or former IC students before committing yourselves. Good luck![/quote]
Agree with this, I stayed my 1st year in gueishan and that place has nothing for foreigners, they mostly drink infront of 7-11. As said, only thing you can do is eat or go to taipei, you need to commute about 1h to taipei city. IC classes have got better, lots of foreign professors who seems to do quite well now, at least in tourism department. For the accommodation, basically you have two options, stay close to uni or buy a scooter and live in taoyuan city (i would not recommend commute from further without elite-driving skills 
). I at the moment commute 16km one way 4 times per week to my lectures, bc i cant stand to live in that place Money transfer vice, you can use credit card to withdraw money, saves the hassle of wiring money from Finland to here, which costs about 15e per transfer depending on a bank.
Ofcourse, all of what i wrote are my personal opinions and experiences, you may like something different than me. I moved from Bangkok to Gueishan and disliked it immediately, but if you like quieter life maybe the place suites you.
Good luck,
J
). I have written to all available email addresses on the International College admision web pages, but it seems they don’t read their emails… so i want to ask if is there any current foreign student of International college who might have this data and share it with me?
). Or you can have a friend here go pay… 