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Weekly Recap - Week 32

Date: August 9, 2026

Last modified: August 9, 2026 (09:55 UTC)

Welcome back to the weekly recap series! It’s been quite a while since I’ve done one of these; I think the true last time was in January of this year. I wanted to bring them back as these reflections make me more cognizant of what I’ve done in a week, along with what I’ve actually consumed digitally. Plus, it being Blaugust means that I am back into the habit Or more accurately, fresh into the habit. of blogging!

I combine this with a weekly review in my bullet journal. As of right now, it’s just a quick summation of things I’ve done this week along with a rating from 1-5 of each area of wellness. I use the Eight Areas of Wellness model, but I’m thinking about using the Ten Areas of Wellness model instead, since I think the creative and digital categories are pretty important. I don’t plan on having a full copy of my wellness analysis, since I want to allow myself to be fully honest in the notes, but my scores this week were:

This puts me at only 18/40, or only 45% “well”. Yikes! Perhaps I am also a little bit harsh on myself, but it’ll definitely be worth it to pay some more care to my well-being.

I want to add some more prompts to my weekly review, but I’m not entirely sure yet what to add! It’ll probably just be something like what were the highlights, the lowlights, etc. It might also be nice to also look forward and decide what is necessary to get done the next week, especially once school starts and I am overloaded with assignments, but also making sure to include personal projects in there so I don’t fall behind on them. If you guys have anything you do for your weekly review, let me know!

I’m currently writing this on a high-speed rail train down to 高雄 (Kaohsiung), where I plan on spending two days. I’m leaving Taiwan on the 13th, so I’m doing some last minute travelling. On the 11th I’ll then be heading into 台南 (Tainan). I do have to say, after making my plan I wish I spent more time in 台南! I’ll definitely be in Taiwan again, though, so I’m not too worried. I also wish I spent some time in 台中 (Taichung) and 阿里山 (Alishan). But more on this when I do my time in Taiwan review :)! I think today I’m going to go down to 瑞豐夜市 (Ruifeng Night Market), since I’ll arrive around 7PM.

But that’s for the future! Let me discuss a bit of what I’ve done this week and then some links that I’ve enjoyed.

More piercings

Piercings in Taiwan are insanely cheap. A month ago I ended up getting a double helix on my right ear and getting my eyebrow piercing again I originally had one back in April or so, but only for a few weeks since I kept messing with it and it fell out in my sleep, and the piercing was closed by the time I woke up., for only around $80 USD. Since I’m going back to the United States soon, I decided to get my industrial on my left ear and my seconds on both ears. The industrial was probably the most pain I’ve gotten when getting a piercing; hell, I’d probably say it was more painful than my tattoo! I’ve also had a really hard time not sleeping on my sides, so I have been breaking rule one of getting a piercing by sleeping on my side. I’ve been trying to sleep in strange formations in order to stay on my side but avoid my ear actually pressing down against the pillow.

If anyone is wondering, I’ve been going to 秀秀的店 (Hsiu Hsiu Shop) in 台北 (Taipei). You only have to pay for the jewelry and not the piercing itself, plus I’ve found the piercings to be high quality. The piercers speak enough English to know the names of piercings in English, so no worries about language barrier if you decide to go but don’t speak Mandarin.

Hiking 象山 (Xiangshan)

One of the things everyone recommends to do when you visit 台北 is to hike 象山 and I gotta say… it’s worth the hype. While I do hate that it’s a lot of steps, that kinda is just how every mountain climb in Taiwan is. It’s a lot more relaxed than the ones at 陽明山國家公園 (Yangmingshan National Park), also in 台北 Which I famously gave up very quickly in… I really ought to use the stairmaster., and 太魯閣國家公園 (Taroko National Park) in 花蓮 (Hualien). It has a beautiful view of Taipei 101 in the distance.

I’ll add pictures once I get to 高雄; unsurprisingly the high-speed rail wi-fi is not the strongest!

Final day of classes

This week also meant the end of my Chinese program! I did poorly on my final test which just seems like the general theme of the program LMAO. I consistently got scores between 75-88%, so I’m very lucky with how lenient the grading scale in Taiwan is, with a B+ being 77-79%, an A- being 80-84%, and an A being 85-89%, so… I’ll be fine. I also heard that my teacher graded MUCH more harshly than all the other teachers in the program. We got little lions (which are the school mascot of National Taiwan Normal University) with out Chinese names embroidered on them. I wish I had a picture on me that I could add to this post; they are so cute!

Coming to the end of this post, here’s a couple of links that I’ve enjoyed:

That’s about all for this post: I hope to see you guys again next week :D