My first week at university was a special experience. I live in Macau and the university studied in Taiwan – Taichung All new for me, new place, new classmates, etc.

I settled down all the things before school started, including renting the school dormitory, buying daily necessities, opening a bank account, body checked, paying tuition fees, and looking around the school. 

School started on 20 Sept 1999, that day I was very excited because I can know my classmates and teacher, the first day at university we just introduced ourselves, everyone knew me is not a native when I introduced myself because my mandarin pronunciation was poor. I only can speak Cantonese at that time. Although I can’t speak well mandarin, I also made some friends in the class and we hung out that night for chatting, I can remember the wind was very strong and the street had many small insects walking around, like cockroaches. I thought it will be raining, but at midnight when I fell asleep and my roommate very loud scream “Earthquake” and then I woke up, this is my first experience of an earthquake, I don’t know what to do, great shaking but we are lucky, we had a senior sister in the school to brought us to leave the dormitory.

We sat in the open space until the morning, I walk to the street wanting to find some food to eat, but outside was changed, like the road cracks and houses falling, and then I realize this is a great earthquake, I was very scared. This Earthquake was called the “921 Earthquake”. Our school some building also was damaged, so we started school on 20 September and closed school on 21 September, time for one month. My tears were going down every time when I talk about this experience.