Sunday, December 20, 2009
I shall blog abt the taiwan trip so far! It's going to be very narrative cuz I need to remember what happened so that I can 'translate' my reflections to chinese when I get back. Oh I hope youth camp was good :)
First day:
Reached Taiwan airport and met daddy there:) Then went to the hotel to stay. The room is super nice and big with a nice toilet! And we went shopping! Bought one notebook which was really expensive! Didn't look at the price before buying. I was thinking 'notebook prices all abt there so nvm'. Well, learnt my lesson. The hard way:/ Yup, then had dinner and went back to the hotel. And played pool! There was a pool table there and we could play for free:) Yup, after that played cards a while and went to sleep. Oh the tv there has like 100 plus channels -.-
Second day:
Woke up and had breakfast at the hotel. It was really nice:) Then took bus to mingdao high school. Met our group members and all the teachers and students there. The school is really big and the ppl are nice. I have nice group members:) That morning we had our first 'lesson'. It was abt yushan. Some mountain in Taiwan basically. Then we had lunch. They don't use spoons to eat and they drink soup from cups o.o After lunch, we went out to see a train station. It's quite cool. And also went to make sun biscuits! haha. It's a direct translation from tai yang bing. It tastes not bad:) Then we went to meet the shi zhang. Erm... mayor? I dunno. He's quite hmm inspiring? Just gives the feeling that he's a good mayor haha. Yup, then the first night was home stay. The sight of all the school buses coming to fetch the students home is really something we will never get to see in Singapore. There were like 50 over school buses at the carpark waiting for the students. Singapore like have abt 6 at the most? And that's only half the students cuz it was the second round of school bus already. So we took the school bus to one of the students house. Her house is super big! Even bigger than caroline's-.- It was I think 6 storey high and there's a lift in the house. There's also a basement which was the karaoke room. We slept there. Like can fit 7 ppl. But we sang karaoke till like 2am before going to sleep haha. Yu Xuan's voice is super cute! She sounds like a small kid. Oh dinner was at a night market:)
Third day:
Woke up super sleepy and slightly late so had to rush for school bus. Didn't have time to eat breakfast. There was morning assembly and we were introduced to the entire school. Stood in front of like 7000 plus people. Fortunately not at the first row and I didn't need to speak-.- Then we went to visit the paper dome and a tea place. Followed by lunch then ri yue tan, sun moon lake XP We cycled at that place. But for a really short distance only:/ Then we went back to school for a talk abt the different 'racial groups' (for lack of better word) in taiwan. the speaker was really good. Her singing is pro haha. And yan was chosen to dress up in one of the costumes. After that our buddies told us to grab our stuff and hurry to catch the school bus. I was rather blur but just followed. We dragged our luggage like across the entire school to get to the main gate, hoping that the school bus haven't left. Super cool, Like weaving through all the ppl and running in the wind. Fortunately there was a red light at the school gate there and we managed to catch the bus:D Went to Yun Yi's house this time. Her house is big too! She has 3 sisters and each of them have their own room o.o Yup, went to feng jia night market and ate a lot of different kinds of food. Nice:) Haha I think the food in the ye shi is like the nicest. Cuz there's like a huge variety for us to choose and the food is really not bad. Then her sis came to fetch us back and we slept after bathing.
Fourth day:
Had a lesson abt poems and songs in the morning. Then went to a literature museum and had lunch on the bus. McDonald's! Haha I wanted to try taiwan macs. Ate some burger that Singapore doesn't have. Quite nice:) Then we went to this school to have a talk by yu guang zhong. He's supposedly very famous. And walked around the school to look at his stuff. Had dinner at huang que lou then went to 'love river' to take a boat ride. It was cool:) Like both literally and non-literally. After that went to the place we were staying to sleep. We had 13 ppl sleeping in the same room:/ Took like super long to bathe cuz only had 2 bathing cubicles. Then we taught the taiwan ppl how to play PIG! :) Haha super funny as always. And we also played I never. Then started talking to this shanghai girl or rather listening to her. She was really entertaining. All her stories were hilarious seriously. She just talked for like 1 hour and we just listened and keep laughing. I fell asleep at abt 3am. Apparently the Shanghai girl didn't sleep at all o.o I can't remember her name:/
Fifth day:
We basically were in the bus the whole day. Travelled from taizhong to taidong I think. Spent abt a total of 8 hours in the bus. We were singing karaoke the whole day throughXP Actually I wanted to sleep but end up singing. Slept for half an hour only. Oh and we saw the pacific ocean. Very pretty:) Went to take pictures also. We went to some museum place and watched a dance performance by one of the 'racial groups'. All children. Very nice:) Then they made us dance also haha. Oh one of the songs they danced to was 'every move I make'. I bet they don't know it's a Christian song. But isn't it so cool? Reached our staying place at night. It's a lot nicer than the previous night's. Had 6 ppl in a room and we have a view of the pacific ocean from the balcony! The waves are really really nice! Can sit there and see whole day. Makes me think of how amazing God is to have created this. I sat at the balcony watching the waves and listening to 'Indescribable' :) OH! There was an earthquake! Quite big like 6.8 on the Ritcher scale and the center was at the place we were staying in. Like we were in our room and suddenly the whole room started shaking quite a lot! We were like 'what's happening?!' cuz we didn't have any taiwan ppl in our room so all nv experience before. Then someone started banging on our door and we opened it to see everyone standing outside their room. Apparently the first thing u do when there's an earthquake is to open the door so that the door won't go out of shape and we all get stuck inside. The shaking stopped after a while. It was super funny. All our room ppl were super excited and laughing, like cuz we never experience earthquake before so I guess it was quite exciting. Then taiwan ppl super scared. Zhe Yi was like 'why are u all laughing? It was so scary!' Then we laughed even more haha. After bathing, went to the other of our group's room. Played UNO and pig. Some ppl don't know how to play UNO o.o Yup, then went to sleep abt 1am.
Sixth day:
Woke up and had breakfast with an ocean view. The breakfast was delicious! Nicest breakfast in taiwan so far. I'm looking forward to tmr's breakfast:) Morning was quite cold. My hands were like freezing and a bit numb. Had another lesson abt poems. I think the poems are quite cool, especially the one with lots of puns. Then we went to tai lu ge. It's this place with a lot of natural scenery esp mountains. The mountains were magnificent! Reminds me of God's awesomeness again:) I want to go there and climb it some day! Then we went for lunch. Nicest lunch so far also. The soup was nice! After that we were supposed to go cycling. So we cycled. Yan and I were cycling together and we just followed the ppl in front. The ppl at the back were quite slow and we couldn't really see them so we just cycled on and on. After a really long time, we saw the front ppl turning back. They said we went too far, like a lot further than we were supposed to go. All the other ppl already went back and returned their bikes! So we had to cycle back. And after cycling for so long, our legs were very tired. And we were really very late:/ Then we went to visit some place abt the racial groups again. After that had dinner by ourselves at this street. Like just walk ourselves and eat whatever you want. Didn't really eat a lot. I bought shoes! Then we returned to some coffee place to listen to this author talk. It was really cool! He talked abt the ocean and all the ocean creatures! He has awesome pictures and really entertaining stories. I think he's one of the best speakers so far:) Yup, then we went back to the place by the ocean and that's where I am now!
So that's the trip so far. Made a lot of friends:) There are 10 ppl from Singapore, 20 ppl from Taiwan, 2 from Beijing and 7 from Shanghai. And the day here seems very long. Or rather the night. Cuz it's dark really early like abt 6. Then I'm very used to sleeping soon after the sun sets. So it seems like I spend a lot more time awake cuz I spend a lot more time in the dark. Hopefully it makes sense -.- English is so much easier to 'write' than chinese. I'm supposed to review what I learnt everyday in Chinese and I think for super long and write one short paragraph -.- So I gave up and decided to go home and slowly think. So narrate everything here so I can remember what happened:) ok, shall stop here.
trumpets forever - 9:20 PM :)
