Tea Party of Competition

Oh boy. My family turned off the Wi-Fi waaaaay earlier than they usually do so I didn’t get a chance to post with pictures, or heck, I don’t know if I can post this the same day. FYI, I’m writing this on a Word Document currently, hoping to copy and paste later tonight. We’ll see. I’ll write the blog as if the pictures are here but I’ll probably have to edit it tomorrow to add the pictures in. So if you want to wait another day, I’ll have the pictures up. I just want the posted date to match the actual date that the events took place. Otherwise Andrea will internally explode from the non-matching scenarios. I believe that’s from OCD. Is it?...MOVING ON!

Anywho, the day had a rough start but smoothed out as time passed. I left forty minutes early to allow me exploring time around the MRT station the exchange students would meet at for today’s Rotary event. I had previously never been to this particular station (Gongguan) and was curious to what was around it. Now know that Starbucks and McDonald’s are dead common in Taipei so I figured it would be a nice treat from working so hard this week to sit down and have an Oreo McFlurry. I’ve been craving Dairy Queen Blizzard a lot lately and a McFlurry is the closest thing there is to it in Taipei. Though it wasn’t nearly as heavenly as a Blizzard, it was still lovely to relax with some ice cream. I think I got ripped off thought because the cup was less than 2/3 full and seemed kinda empty. Twas still enjoyable. I will say that the McDonald’s are crazy! Think it’s popular in America? Wait till you come to Taiwan! I might have to do just a Supplement Sunday segment on its characteristics but I’ll have to steal some friends to tag along, otherwise I’ll be this crazy, stalker, creeper-looking-American taking pictures. :P

Remember how I said it was getting cooler in Taiwan? Scratch that. Today was back to sunny, sweaty time, which the majority of the day was spent outside in the heat. Fun stuff. The Rotary event was titled “Tea Party” being held at an university campus. This university had bikes littering up and down the streets EVERYWHERE! WOAH! It was amazing! At one point, a section of the road had a two level bike rack! That’s an efficient use of space! In a failed attempt to capture the ginormous number of bikes, this was all I got but just imagine this bordering an entire university campus with more bike racks inside the gate. There must have been thousands upon thousands of bicycles! Truly mind blogging!

The Tea Party actually ended up being a bunch of games with a small burger and tea box (like a juice box size) at the end. The exchange students were spilt up into six teams and each game, two teams would compete against each other. The winners got to draw on the losers’ bodies with some sort of face painting chalk. We also got the knowledge that the overall winners would get a special prize and the overall losers would be punished. Interesting, no?

The first game my team played was a clay version of ‘telephone.’ While the other members look away, the beginning person gets an object to mold into clay. After they were done, the next person got to look and mimic the sculpture, so on and so forth. This passes down the line until the last person had to guess what the object was. My team was VICTORIOUS as we correctly guessed “mug.” The second round we were also VICTORIOUS with the object of “banana.” I actually never painted on anyone but had fun taking pictures of people’s temporary tattoos, if you will.

The second task, competing against a different team, was to bunch together, grab people’s hands that weren’t next to you and to untangle yourselves into a circle without letting go of the hands. One round had speech capabilities while the second round had to be mute teamwork. Unfortunately our team lost and a Canadian student impishly bounced up to me. I had no problem with being drawn on, but I refused to have any profane language or pictures placed on my skin. My host mother, did an activity for the exchange students she counsels of having people paint on their faces. The thing was there were a lot of Chinese curse words sneakily and unknowingly painted on the faces and they proceeded to walk around the school with the foul language broadcasted to the local students. But thankfully the chica didn’t do that to me. Instead she drew a cool Canadian flag on my arm which I quite liked. Needing to, I ran over to my Canadian exchange student friend and showed her the artwork. She exclaimed happily and we took a power picture of Canadian flavor. On a side note, this blonde chica is one of the other two exchange students that rotate families. So later in the year, I’ll stay with her first family as she will stay with my current one.

Third activity was a scavenger hunt…more like a mad rampage. We would be told to get a certain number of objects in Chinese and rush them up to the announcer. For example, three watches. Not too hard right? Well when the instructions were to get four pairs of shoes or three shirts, people were stripping left and right. XD Shoes went flying and guys kept going shirtless. A really strange sight for sure. I think some dudes enjoyed going shirtless a little too much…that’s when you avert your eyes. XD My team ended up losing again by 3 points to 4. Darn. My other arm ended up being imprinted with an Australian flag from, you guessed it, an Australian. Power posing pictures were a given. :P

Side note number two! I saw my first Asian cosplayers in Taiwan! It was a totally random encounter but I snuck a picture in of the cool outfits. Not sure who they were because they left before I could ask or even take a picture face on of them. Enjoy the blue and red wigs. ;)

The fourth challenge encompassed a cardboard mat with numbers written on it. The girl in charge would count from one to ten repeatedly throwing down number cards. Whenever the number on the card matched the number said, you had to quickly leap onto the corresponding number on the mat. The twist was that they counted in Chinese. Not difficult at all because the exchange students know how to count in Chinese. The girl here (Mariko) totally dominated the dude (Bradon) as he remains pondering while she jumps to victory. Notice she has white socks. I also had white socks on. We had to take off our shoes…in the muddy grass. My new white socks are now brown. Fun stuff. :P Our team (Team #1) won and got the opportunity to make the losers our personal sketch board. Mariko (American from Colorado) drew on Lea (Canadian from Canada :P) with the Chinese characters of “American.” In Chinese it would be “Mei guo ren.”  It’s cute! (refer to picture below)

The last game was to become a Chinese character. To do this we are given a basic Chinese character and have to form our bodies as a team, on the ground, into its strokes. Some were nice and easy but others….were interesting. XD The two teams ended up at a tie and was broken with a simple game of rock, paper, scissors. Luck was not on our side, as we lost. No biggie of course.

The final results were my team neither losing nor winning overall. The overall winners got treats like moon cakes or biscuit treats. The losers…oh ho ho I’m glad we didn’t lose. The losers had to write their names in the air with their butts. So this ended up being people shaking their butts to trace the letters in their name. One guy….um…was very enthusiastic about it. Leaping up, stripping his shirt off, and…um… had exaggerated movements. Get my drift? Avert your imagination children!

Would you like to see some masterpieces of punishment? There were simple things like hearts or flowers drawn on people’s cheeks but others got a meaner artist getting creative. XD

Note the "Loser" on the poor French girl's forehead. Pobrecita!

This looks awesome. Just saying :P

Unamused or amused Tiger? We'll never know...

To the left, a white 'stache. To the right, a blue clown imprint. Both very feminine, no?

Here was a picture of a team (not mine) being photo bombed by the Canadian jumping in the back. And why, you ask, is the green shirt guy (or half lacking) in that pose? His painting punishment was a tramp stamp that is hard to see here (but I think that's a good thing :P)

Afterwards, I ventured forth with my Colorado and Australian peeps to grab some dinner. These were the same buds I went to Ximen with for waffles and beverages last Saturday. Our main din-din was at a small Japanese restaurant that served either ramen or bento boxes. Wanting to try authentic ramen (instead of the cheap ramen at the store) I got a nice steamy beef ramen. At least I think it was beef…I’m still learning Chinese characters alright? I just marked the picture that looked yummiest. XD And it was indeed yummy. I gulped that sucker down because I only had brunch and my McFlurry and developed quite an appetite with the day’s activities. My peeps also had a wonderful meal with a stunning appearance. Don’t they look absolutely ravishing?

Mariko's spicy ramen

My tasty ramen

Brittany's beautiful bento box (Awesome alliteration!)

Too cool down from the heat, we ducked into a placed called “Yogurt Art” that was literally right next to the Japanese restaurant we ate at. It had the common concept of manually filling your bowl with whatever flavor/combo you wanted, add various toppings and the cost would be determined by the weight. Good lord I needed that. A nice cool treat with an extremely pleasant chat with friends was an oasis in itself. I learned a bit about Colorado and Australia as well as educating a bit about Texas. One yogurt flavor was called “Cable Car Chocolate.” What?! That doesn’t make sense! So of course I had to try it. I still don’t know what ‘cable car’ means but the chocolate part brought forth happy bouncing time. Actually, Brittany (the Australian) was dancing from a sugar high as I was whimpering from bliss. Mariko just sat there mocking us. XD

With newfound energy, we devised an evil plan! Ok, it wasn’t an evil plan per say. It was just the three of us finding a deserted place with no people around, to break out into dance.  Mariko and I successfully got Brittany interested in K-Pop and showed her some moves. In return, she showed us some Tae Kwon Do techniques. We had a blast just letting go and having harmless fun, not to mention a great form of exercise. Pooped out, we flocked to a drink stand for hydration. Do you remember the “Orange Express”? It was in one of my very first Taffy posts with bubble tea spazzing. This time, no bubble tea, but instead something new. Since we’re all buds, we bought the three tastiest sounding drinks and shared among each other. So I got the #1, Brittany #3 and Mariko #5. All very refreshing and tasty! The ‘Passion Fruit’ had seeds in it, which provided a weird crunch to the drink. Not quite my thing. The ‘Milk Tea Coconut Jelly’ just tasted like regular milk tea with jelly bits. ‘5 kinds of fruit’ was an EXPLOSION of fruity goodness. I can’t really choose a favorite between the three of them. They all shall get an equal rating because we were in it mainly for the fruity hydration.

The night ended on the note of Brittany bringing up the saying that our exchange is “a life in a year.” It feels like Taiwan is my home and I’ve known peeps like Brittany and Mariko for so long. If we go by the saying “a life in a year” and we take the fact that we’ve been here for a month, the math will declare that we’ve known each other for ten years. It does indeed seem to be case. We just bond so well, teaching each other new things and extending a helping hand out when needed. As exchange students, we do have to look after each other because it’s not always smooth sailing.

SO! Here’s to hoping I will indeed be able to post the first Supplement Sunday tomorrow! Cross your fingers people! I’ll be out for the majority of the day and will have to speed write Taffy and SS. There will be at least something even if it’s incomplete. Look forward to it! ;D Have a good day my friends!