Taiwan is a great country to learn Chinese

All in all, I enjoyed my time in Taiwan. The CET staff on the ground, Andrew and Chunling were extremely welcoming and took care of all their students' needs by providing snacks throughout the week and opening up their office for students to come in and chat.

The price is indeed steep and could have been lower if CET didn't provide for cultural immersion experiences, an opening and closing banquet, and a trip to Hualien. In the end, it is a cost for the small perks that we received.

As for the education, CET partners with ICLP-- one of the world's premier Chinese language learning institutions. Normal ICLP students take 4 hours of class but because of the nature of CET's program, CET students take 3 hours of intensive class. One is one-on-one and the other two are small classroom sized (up to 4 students). The classes are flipped-style, meaning that students must prepare their lessons before class and then during class, they are expected to recite them and use the grammar structures that they just learned to converse with their classmates and teachers.

Even though, the program takes place in Taiwan. You are by no means forced to learn traditional Chinese-- ICLP still offers its courses in simplified. But you might absorb some traditional because of the environment.

This added on top of an internship as well as an internship course (which was a bit unnecessary in my opinion) caused me to be overwhelmed at times, especially in the beginning but I gradually caught onto the rhythm of things and learned to manage my time. Let alone making friends with other Taiwanese locales, I did not have the time or energy to make friends with ICLP students. I mainly hung out with my Borderless housemates, who were welcoming and friendly. My experience with Borderless seemed like an exception--as some students were placed very far from NTU or their internships and did not talk with their roommates. Next semester, I believe housing will be different.

CET Taiwan is, however, a one-of-a-kind experience. You won't have a similar opportunity to hold an internship in Taiwan while learning Chinese at the same time.

That said, Taiwan is a beautiful country! Go visit!