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)
Mariko's spicy 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!
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