Camp, test and school

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 

Water, water, water

Though a little nervous about the swimming pool trip, because of the Taiwanese’s shyness of showing their body, we had a really great time in the pool. I definitely was the only one to wear a bikini, but nobody seemed to care so it did not cause me any problems.

    When entering the swimming pool my two youngest host sisters (18 and 23) told me to go to the lane 4, 5 or 6 if I wanted to swim for exercise. As I have been really lazy since I came here, I decided to swim some hundred meters. After having swum about 50 m I realized that I was subject for admiring glances from my host sisters – and that because they cannot swim. They just kind of walked back and forth with a yellow foam rubber board in a very slow tempo. After swimming a little more I decided to join them, and we went to the playground area where I showed them how to do a handstand under water. They were very impressed and tried to learn it – without success, but though very fun!

    Finally my host sister Ya-Kuang (23) asked me, if I could possibly teach her how to swim like a frog (and with that she meant breaststroke) – and of course I could (or at least I could do my best)! We began with the legs, then the arms and so on, and suddenly not just the two of my host sisters but a lot of Taiwanese swimming guests where watching me do the legs in an educational tempo! Ha ha :) I don’t know if the other Taiwanese persons learned anything, but when my host sister and I went home, they were actually able to swim 12 m without touching the bottom! Well done!

And concerning water I have had some funny seafood experiences! Yesterday evening one of the many dishes my ma-ma served were small octopuses – not cut into pieces or anything, just octopuses. As I didn’t know how to eat them I had to ask my one of my host sisters and she showed me how to pull out the inner parts and eat the rest in small rings. It was actually delicious!

    And right now I am watching my ma-ma and my youngest host sister much some dried fish in strips (I only thought they did that in Norway and Island?). When I first saw it, I thought it was noodles but I can ensure you that it is not! Yuck – not my favourite! :)

Tomorrow I am going on the inbound camp for three days so I am not going to be active on my blog – I am going to have a lot of fun instead! :)

Julia 

Getting used to, well... some of it!

How can a trip to the zoo possibly be so exhausting? Ahhhh: because of the heat of course. I am sweating all day long as if I had just had a very hard gym class in school. Unfortunately that is not the case, and I wonder how much I am going to sweat, when I start having gym classes at school...

    But apart from the sweat I’m having a really good time here in Taipei. Yesterday my youngest host sister and a lot of her friends took me to Taipei zoo. Before we entered, we made a stop at McDonald’s, and it was a relief to see Taiwanese people eat without chopsticks although my skills are improving. After consuming a Sunday Ice-cream (which is really funny to hear pronounced in Chinese) a cake suddenly appeared from one of the girl’s bag because another girl had had birthday during the summer holyday. It was really great fun in the cosy way as we sang “Happy Birthday to You” and shared the impressive cake – at McDonald’s! :D 

    Afterwards we finally went to the zoo, and after some hours in the exhausting sun we made it to the panda’s house. As the panda is my favourite animal I had really been looking forward to this, and it was such a lovely experience to see two big, lazy pandas laying sleeping behind the glass. Unfortunately they did not look at me, so the pictures I took (without flash not to disturb them), are not impressive, but just to see them from behind was a great experience for me!

So apart from the warm and humid weather I find everything really great here in Taipei, and yesterday I realized that I was actually drinking from my rice bowl without hesitating – I guess that means, that I’m getting used to everything here :) Concerning eating I have the honour of eating dinner together with ba-ba (father in Chinese) every evening, and that is definitely an experience! He has an impressive “snap-slope-suck” technique, which I have to practice a lot to be able to copy!

    Right now I just stick to improving my chopstick- and Chinese skills, and the amazing thing is, that I am actually able to read children’s books in ㄅㄆㄇㄈ (a Taiwanese alphabet used to learn Chinese called Bopomofo – the sounds of the first four letters written before this parenthesis). Hopefully Bopomofo will help me getting better, although it is not very likely that my schoolbooks will be in Bopomofo. By the way school starts at Monday but before that I have to go to the inbound camp, and to a Chinese test, and right now I am about to go to an indoor swimming pool with two of my host sisters. That is going to be interesting, as they are very impressed that I have a bikini and not a swimsuit (they are not very fond of showing their body)!

I hope everything is good in Denmark – because everything is great in Taipei!

Julia :)

A fantastic day in Taipei!

My positive surprise of getting my own bed was maybe a bit too much, as it is hard as a rock (healthy I guess?) – though a bed. Anyway the jetlag and my cold did not make my sleep better, but as I had been awake for a while in the night I managed to sleep until 11 o’clock local time – and that is good :)

    I woke up to a bit of a Taiwanese brunch: a bowl of rich for each person, and a lot of small dishes such as fish, seaweed, chicken, tofu noodles and a lot of things I couldn’t recognise. Later, when we went to a small supermarket, my host mom asked me, what I would like to eat for breakfast, and I used the opportunity to show her some rolled oats, so hopefully my next brunch will not consist of fish – delicious, but not in the morning :)

At the supermarket we bought a lot of candy, and I kind of figured out, that Sunday was my families candy-day. But as soon as we got home I found out, that everything we had bought had to be sacrificed to the ancestors. As I hadn’t bought anything I decided to give the ancestors some of my lakrids! I wonder if they like it… (well, if they like the cola and M&M that my family gave to them, then why not lakrids…) :D

At half past five my oldest host sister, her boyfriend and a friend took me to Shihlin Night Market. It consists of a lot of narrow passages covered with cheap shops. One passage migt be with food, another one with clothing, and a third one with dogs. We went and oat some Taiwanese specialities: Oyster omelette, prawn omelette, some fried fish and stinky tofu (I’ve been warned about the last dish because of its smell, but it wasn’t so bad, and I actually liked the taste) :)

    After walking through a lot of passages and visiting some shops we found a box, where we could take photos of ourselves and have them made as stickers! And here my prejudices about Asian people doing the “peace-sign” every time a picture is taken was confirmed! Now I have six stickers with me, two girls and even a boy posing very… funny :)

    The last “provocative” experience was a drink called frog eggs! It consisted of some liquid and a lot of jelly pieces called frog eggs. Of course it wasn’t frog eggs, but the fact that I wouldn’t consider this a drink but a dish (every time I took a swallow it consisted of more “frog eggs” than liquid) made me dislike it… :)

Anyway I really love Taipei!

Julia