Friday at noon I once again was placed together with a lot of people that I did not know. This time though English was widely understood and spoke, and the unknown people did not only come from Taiwan but from all over the world. All in all we were about 100 people gathered to participate in the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards workshop/Intro Camp. 50% of the young people came from Taiwan and participated in the camp to improve their leadership skills. The other 50% came as mentioned from all over the world and had just arrived to Taiwan. In front of us we all had three days of experiences we yet didn’t know, but when we returned home Sunday we had all made friends and done thing, that we will never forget.
After an hour of bus driving to a resort outside Taipei the activities were about to begin. To be earnest most of Friday consisted of saying hello to a lot of people and listening to some presentations held by Taiwanese Rotarians. In the evening though it got interesting as the Rotarians (and remember the 4 D’s: no drinking, dating, drugs and driving) actually threw a party for us with a DJ and everything. It was really fun and great to do something together without having to tell about your country.
Later I figured out that throwing a party was actually a great idea as it made the Rotarians sure that their students would sleep at night and not run around at the hotel making trouble! :) And even though it worked we did not get much sleep, as we had to get up 6:30 the next morning. This day offered one of the most frightening but fun experiences I have ever had.
In the afternoon we were separated into teams consisting of 10 persons (mixed together Taiwanese and foreigners). We started up doing exercises to improve hour confidence in one another, because soon one of use would be dangling 12 meters over the earth only held by this group which members you had just met 24 hours ago. We were going to do sky walking, and my first trip to the sky went to a tree trunk 10 meters up in the air. Luckily I had some nice and strong friends holding my line on the earth but anyway my legs were shaking and my heart was pounding as never before. But the adrenalin and the feeling of actually to be walking 10 meters over the earth made the experience extremely great, and when my team had lowered me safely down on the ground, I just wanted to go up again.
And up I went. This time on a thin, thin line 12 meters over the earth. As I was crawling up towards the line I suddenly realised that I had an ant walking cheerfully on my hand – and that is NOT what you want to focus on when you are 9 meters up in the air! Anyway my second trip was even greater than the first one, and it is so great being able to say that: I DID IT! :D
Sunday was hardly as frightening as Saturday, but this day was great as well as my group won the price of being the best group (we had received points for everything like the cooperation during the sky walking, some games we had done, a drama we had done etc.)! Great! :D That meant that I Sunday afternoon went home with two diplomas in my hands: one for participating in this camp, and one for winning the price of best group. In addition I also brought home a lot of pins and visit cards not to speak of all the information!
Therefore it is not strange that I was really exhausted as I Sunday evening went to bed. I went to bed very early as I had to be ready for the mandarin test that I did this morning. So unfortunately I can’t excuse my bad achievement in the test with a lack of sleep – no the test was just really difficult as it did not use Bopomofo but traditional Taiwanese characters which I cannot read. Luckily everybody found the test hard, so it is not because I’m extremely dumb (or…. that is what I keep telling myself :p ). Anyway the test did not really leave me with a feeling of success… But that did my first school day!
Because after on I took the bus to school, and here I have an extremely sweet counsellor (even though her English is limited). She helped me finding my new school uniform (I can’t wait to wear it!), choosing subjects, finding my classroom and so on. My first class was geography (and I understood like… NOTHING), but people were really friendly and kept on smiling to me! This was the only class I had, as I had to do a lot of practical stuff, but tomorrow I will have an entire day at school.
I hope you have a great time in Denmark!
Julia :)
P.s. I forgot to tell that I experienced my first earthquake ever today! It was actually pretty big but short – and really fun! But don’t worry because nothing happened to anyone :D
