About Me — Nicole Cooper. The hobby queen
By: Nicole Cooper
Tags: About Me Page, Introduction, About Me

Since PIA rejected me, that left me with my next option: South Korea. To be honest I wasn’t that interested in the country. At the time of the offer, I was still in school and they wanted the position to be filled as soon as possible. Now, option three: Taiwan. I had an interest in learning Mandarin, and Taiwan was more unknown to me, plus I had a Taiwanese professor in my East Asian history class, so my curiosity towards where he was from was higher than China. I spent my first post-college year working on my teaching certificate and testing the ESL waters by teaching on Cambly.

What Has My Experience In Taiwan Been Like?

It has it’s ups and downs, but overall, my time in Taiwan has been more positive than negative. Learning Mandarin is a challenge, but I’m trying. I think the most interesting challenge here is being in a country where people are overly intrigued by foreigners who don’t look like them. I’ve noticed that this is not exclusive to Taiwan. It has happened to me in every Asian country I’ve visited (minus Qatar). You can read more about my first impressions of Taiwan and my travels around Asia here:

What Do I Like?

Everything. My problem is good and bad at the same time: I like a lot of things and I want to pursue them all at the same time. As the seasons change, I typically pick and choose which one(s) I want to spend more time doing. Outside of writing, capoeira, trampolining, general exercising, reading, language learning, scuba diving, and watching Netflix take up my free time.

Allow me to expand on some of these.

Capoeira

I’ve been doing capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, for about 4 years. This art has allowed me to travel and meet fellow capoeiristas from all over the world. In the future, I would like to spend some time in Brazil, specifically Salvador, to train in the birthplace of this beautiful art. The pandemic delayed those plans, but while I wait, I’ll keep training and working on improving my proficiency in Portuguese with my Brazilian friends.

Trampoline and Tumbling

Before track and field, I did tumbling as a child for 6 years. After finishing college, I wanted to remain active, but I became bored with running and doing track workouts. I decided to work on hand balancing and walkover variations since those were the only skills I was willing to do on the ground. Later, I found that a trampoline park that’s close to my job. Now that I finally have access to a safer training environment, I decided to try to relearn all of my tumbling skills on the trampoline. This later led me to compete in my first trampoline competition.

Language Learning

I’m currently try-lingual (see what I did there). I wouldn’t consider myself fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and definitely not Mandarin Chinese, but I’m working on it. In the past, I published two articles in Spanish and one in Portuguese. This was actually a failed challenge where I was supposed to write in these languages monthly (Oops). Even though I didn’t complete my challenge, I plan to do more in the future.

Scuba Diving

Approximately two years ago, I learned how to scuba dive. It was hands down my best investments of 2019. I currently have my Advanced Open Water and Nitrox certification. I don’t believe in astrology, but for what it’s worth, I am a water sign (Cancer). Maybe that’s why I like diving so much.

My first dive course.

What Do I Write About?

Outside of writing about my hobbies and interests and the lessons I’ve learned from them, I occasionally share my unsolicited two cents on trending topics on social media, pop culture, and sports news, articles about living abroad and traveling, my attempts at writing poetry, health and fitness and things I’ve learned after doing research on topics where I wanted to learn more.

Some of my popular and/or recent articles:

Where To Find Me

You can find more of my two cents (and nonsense) on Twitter and Instagram @_nicolecoop. Feel free to reach out and say hi!