Mandarin Chinese is the main language spoken in Taiwan; however I have also met people, here, who speak Taiwanese. Both Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese are tonal languages, which means that the tone you use when you say a word changes its meaning. For example, in Chinese, the word ma means “horse” or “mother” depending on the tone you use!
In Taiwan, we use the New Taiwan dollar (NTD). This national currency money features Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, both of whom were early political leaders of the Republic of China. It also shows Taiwanese landscapes and communities, such as a classroom and a group of kids playing soccer. One US dollar ($1) is equivalent to about 30 NTD.
A bottle of water costs about 20 NTD ($0.66) in Taiwan. You can’t drink the tap water, here, so I have to buy a lot of bottled water. Luckily, I can refill the plastic bottles using the filter at my school so that there is less plastic waste.
