Roteract Hua-Lien Trip Day 1

Saturday October 6, 2012

Remember how I saw a deserted Gongguan last Sunday? Today I saw a deserted Yongan Market (where I live). Arising at 5:00AM, the earliest I’ve ever woken up in Taiwan, I prepared for a trip this weekend. It was with a club known as Roteract that is associated with Rotary for young adults (Interact is for high school students). The trip was to a place known as “Hua Lien,” which I’ve never been to nor knew what to expect. * cough * nointernet * cough * Actually, since gaining information over the trip was a little short noticed, I pretty much went with some people I didn’t really know to an unknown place doing unknown activities. I SENSE ADVENTURE AHEAD!!! :D

Though, since the Roteract members are related to Rotary, they are more than trustworthy and friendly people in their 20’s. I was the young one for a change! (I am two years older than all my classmates in Tatung and one of the older exchange students in my district) Friday night, I was told that I would meet the leader of the trip, Johnny, at 6:00 in front of the MTR station close by and do some paperwork back at the house. Before that, I would get a call from him around 5:30. Not wanting to be late or even make him wait one minute on me, I just arrived at the MTR station before 5:30. This allowed me to see the sleeping city with barely anyone awake. That and I found out that the MTR doesn’t open until 5:45. Note taken, do not plan on riding the subway before that time. XD

I had no problem waiting for Johnny but unfortunately I didn’t have any breakfast because my host parents didn’t set anything out. After several grumbles of my stomach, I dashed into 7-Eleven. My thought process when choosing the food was to get something easily carried, not messy, can be stored for a while and doesn’t need to be refrigerated just in case Johnny magically appeared right after I bought something. The food that fitted this description most was sweet bread with cream filling inside. Yeah, healthy right? XD I just wasn’t sure if it would be good to buy fruit or not. And I was right. Less than a minute of beginning to devour the bread, Johnny arrived by car with three Roteract girls. Therefore there was a need to store the bread in my purse until further munching.

So the chicas and I went up the tiring five floors of my building to get my host parent’s signature on the trip’s permission slip. I felt so terrible for one girl because she had to climb in tall high heels. But when we did arrive, my whole family was still sleeping. My terrible feeling increased as I had to knock on the door to wake my host father. Everything turned out fine as we received his signature and headed off back to Johnny in the car. During the car ride, I snuck in the rest of my bread down my stomach since my tummy was still a-rumblin’.

Transferring from car to bus was a bit of a challenge. There was a fair bit of cargo to carry from luggage to boxes to what looked like a cage of hula-hoops when wore on one’s torso. Everything was carried over safely and at the tour bus, we met up with the rest of the people going on the trip, all very nice and helpful with my Chinese. Much to my delight, I was given some food and drink from one girl that I rode in the car with. We didn’t have enough time to go to somewhere like McDonald’s for breakfast so she just went by a convenient store for some people that didn’t eat yet. I was very grateful for the act of kindness, especially my hungry stomach! The drink was “Premium Shueishalian Black Tea” which I absolutely adored. The food…oh ho ho ho the food. The food part of the breakfast was sweet bread…with filling inside…the EXACT same bread I got earlier the SAME morning! How funny! XD So I got 1.5 of the identical bread, the half part coming from me sharing it with the lady sitting next to me who didn’t have anything for breakfast nor received any food.

At the beginning of the bus ride it was quite lively with the trip’s freshness and people bustling to see each other. There were even individual introductions on the microphone in the bus. But afterwards the fact that we woke up super early caught up with all of us and the majority, if not all, of the bus conked out. I was one of the few who stayed awake, which allowed me to take some countryside shots of Eastern Taiwan.

So many, many, maaaaaany rice fields. All very pretty. What hit me the most was this:

Oh my gosh… * drool * Beautiful, beautiful mountains, how I love thee. The picture doesn’t to justice at all to what there actually was. It’s just very hard to take good pictures through glass, in a moving bus with trees and tunnels constantly getting in the way. Just know Andrea was extremely ecstatic when in the gorgeous mountains.

Pit stop! Que embarrassing moment! The bathrooms at Dong Ao Station had a cartoon picture of using a squat toilet. It was an extremely weird picture with strange features but I learned something from it…I’ve been using the squat toilet backwards this entire time in Taiwan. WHAT?! Do YOU know how to use one? I had to awkwardly learn myself at school! I can’t say I’m fond of this type of plumbing but I do like one thing about it. It prevents the dreaded gas station toilet seats of rotting death.

Out in the front of the station, we had some picture moments. First was a small group of the people on the trip.

Following was a coupled picture of Martina and I. This lady was the chica who sat next to me on the bus and was one of my roommates for the night. Also she was my safety buddy whenever I needed help with Chinese.  She’s a sweetie!

Let’s not forget the tour bus that was transporting us!

After everyone climbed back in, our journey continued. The pattern of people being buzzing bees turning into sleeping sheep repeated again. This time I joined them. Equipped with mountain music, I was lullabied pleasantly asleep within minutes.

The TV screens on the bus played an adorable Japanese show (with Chinese subtitles) of a monkey and a dog. The monkey being dressed in a girly outfit, was given various tasks ranging from buying a cake and delivering it to her friend to visiting a farm and bringing home a fruit. During this time, the monkey would walk the dog on a leash that had a pack on its back for carrying objects. It was really amazing to see the animals remember where they were told to go and solving unforeseen complications. From what I could tell, it didn’t seem to be fake. The monkey was actually remembering directions it was given and figuring out problems that occurred. And it was sooooo cute! Wo xi huan! (“I like!”)

Before I knew it, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant with the rotating table style. All the food was tasty from fish, meat, rice, veggies and more. Ok, look at the picture below. Do you see the dish at the bottom? Is it just me or does the food look like it could be a cinnamon bun sliced up? But it so was not! Instead it was meat was some kind of sauce drizzled on top. The middle one was my favorite, being a seaweed-egg-soup-jelly-pudding-consistency. Delicious! The dish located south east of this picture featured the return of the multiple tiny fish staring at me! These were a lot more fried and battered than the previous ones I ate a while back. I don’t quite remember my feelings over the taste but at least I ate it. ;) The dish to the east was a type of rice in the form of a chewy rectangle that was indeed yummy.

The aftermath! The three closest tables in the frame were the ones we claimed for all the people on this trip. The one closest and largest was the table I sat at. Here, several more dishes were brought out after the previous picture. Things like satisfying soup and juicy pineapple. You can also see some of the decorations at the restaurant that revolved around the theme of aboriginal culture. Some of the decorations included a bow and arrow, animal heads, blowfish hanging from the ceiling and strings of seashells hiding off frame. FYI, the place is called “Amis-tribe Restaurant” which explains the tribal theme. Good food nonetheless!

Lunch fin. Que sleeping on bus again! The next stop was at the accommodations we would be sleeping in later. We just went by to drop off our stuff, check in and change into Roteract T-Shirts. Apparently it was located in a small University campus so it was also little. The stop was short as we left quickly for another place. Remember, Andrea did not know what was happening at all so I just followed everyone else with a smiling face.

The rest of the night ended up being a community type service for a group of kids. When they came, the children first performed a song that was really sweet. The theme of the lyrics escapes me because all I could translate were things like “I want…” and “Hallelujah.” Uh…they want a Hallelujah? Alright! CAN I GET A HAAAAAAAAALLELUJAH IN THE HOUSE?!!! XD

Roteract did several activities with the children throughout the night. First was a fan painting of whatever you wanted. Some kids just slapped on colors while others were more artistic. One boy even joked around by writing “shui jiao” (sleep) with the accompaniment of “Zzzz” that looked pretty darn good! My fan started out looking fantastic with lovely purple mountains rolling across the white canvas. What I had in mind was a painting of mountains, sea and a colorful sky by using the color scheme of purple, orange, pink and yellow. So like a Taffy blog colored fan! Unfortunately, once I began painting the sea a pink color, it wasn’t the pink I had in mind. Instead it was a BRIGHT FLORESCENT color that clashed against the purple. I tried to save the fan by getting artsy-fartsy with the coloring of mountains and sky but it ended up looking like barf. I was not proud of it at all! XD It proves that I’m more of a pencil and eraser girl than a free-style painting girl. Not to mention I couldn’t control the particular type of paint and brush provided so it seemed everything was against me. But of course it doesn’t matter because the kids had their fun. Let’s play ‘find the foreigner’!

The activities then moved to outside with a couple more games. One involved hula hoops with playing cards taped to the ring. This had the basis of forming a chain with people by holding hands, then wiggle several hula hoops down the line. When done, the cards must be ripped off and sorted by suit and number. First one done wins of course. Not too sure who won but my group seemed to enjoy it. The picture here has two examples of these card-wearing hula hoops.

Another game involved blue mat square pieces spread out on the ground. One side of the square was smooth and flat while the other is textured and bumpy. The children were spilt into two teams, each respectively assigned one type of square side. When the whistle sounded, they would flip over as many blue squares to their assigned type of side. Once time was up, the team with the most upwards facing squares of their surface won. Since the directions were in Chinese and I couldn’t understand it, I thought the kids were overturning the squares to look for one with a dot or something on it. That idea was ruled out when they continually kept flipping the same squares over and over again.

The night with the children ended by cooking a barbecue for them. Armed with loads of food and several grills, Roteract set off to work. There were tofu, corn, sausage, bread, mushroom, sweet potato, meat and skewered green beans. For dessert, a nut and raisin cake was passed out. The Roteract members basically cooked the entire night and didn’t sit down with the children because we had so much to do. Nipping tid bits here and there, we really ate when the children left after saying thank you and goodbye. I was thoroughly stuffed at the end of the night between the food and slurping down several small containers of water (think of a juice box size container).

We had a fish feeding session with hundreds upon hundreds of fish hunting for food in the nearby pond. Their types varied from catfish to koi to other unknown ones. They would clump together if any sign of food was coming by sticking out their gulping mouths above water. Mmm…not a cute site for sure.

The barbecue was just so wonderful because I known of the popularity of barbecues in Taiwan but didn’t actually experience it yet. I can definitely say now that I have had a true Taiwanese barbecue of amazingness and would happily partake in one again. Between cooking food and talking with friends, it’s a marvelous time.

Traveling back to our sleeping accommodations, I was put in a room with two other girls. Upon entering, the TV was turned on quite soon and played with a static-y spazzing quality. It made it quite difficult to watch anything but we did get in some gymnastics and one drama. The drama made my heart ache a bit as a main part of the show was involving playing the cello. The look, the sound, the idea in general made me crave its feel in my hands. I do miss playing that gorgeous instrument and wish I could have access to one in Taiwan. My hope is to at least not lose too much of playing ability in the year away from My Precious. (‘My Precious’ is the name I gave to my cello in Texas many years ago)

When the drama on the TV ended, I looked over to my roommates on their beds. Both of the were sound asleep from drifting off into la-la-land when watching the TV. So I ninja-ed my way into the bathroom to get ready for bed and soon after, joined my roommates in slumber. But later, they woke up to change clothes and for one to take a shower. I barely remember any lights or sounds because I was too deep in the flowing field of dreams.

And so ended the first day of Roteract’s Hua Lien trip! Sorry for the skimpy writing quality but I’m writing this on Monday with the need to write three posts in one night. Not too much room for intricate detail. :P Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed and good day to you!