Hey everybody,
So when I first came to Taiwan I thought I would great with this
report and picture thing. There's so much I wanted to tell everybody
that a report a month seemed like nothing. Well, I've been here almost
3 months and as you can probably tell, I was sooooo wrong. Sitting
down in front of the computer and writing out my adventures seems like
the hardest thing yet about RYE. Harder then learning a crazy new
language having to go to school with it. Harder then sitting in a
classroom on the first day of school with 30 kids staring at you and
you not understanding a word they're saying. Harder then making a
speech in front front of a 1000 people. However, I know I need to do
it, so from now on I'm going to try harder, I promise.
This report is going to be all about the Tea Farm Tour we went on,
October 27-29. The actual tour started at 6am Friday morning, but for
Lora, Dennis, and me, it started at 1am Thursday night, when Lora's
homeba dropped us off at the train station. Our train to Taipei didn't
leave till 1:40 so we killed the time by stocking up on snacks and
taking pictures of random people sleeping on benches. Finally our
train came and we went on our way. It's about a 4 hour train ride from
Hualien to Taipei and Lora and I spent the entire time talking while
Dennis slept. Once we got to Taipei we met up with the other exchange
and got onto the buses that would take us around the country. There's
about 60 exchange students in my district but my area in Hualien has
6, 3 of whom are in a different district. Rotary districts and clubs
make no sense here but I'll explain more about that later. After a 4
hour bus ride we arrived in Zhong Xing Village, where we went to
Taiwan Historica and then had lunch. After lunch we went to Puli and
toured and hand-making paper factory. The smell reminded me exactly of
my job in the States at Tags & Labels. After that we went to some lake
to look around and it was really pretty. Of course that's where I had
my first incident of the weekend. My friend Colin was standing at the
edge and I thought, wouldn't it be fun to pretend to push him in? So I
ran over to him, put my hands on his back and pushed a little. Next
thing I know, I'm laying in the mud with him sitting on my stomach.
How was I supposed to know that the edge was nasty, slippery mud?
Whatever....now I'm disgusting and dirty and we get to Shang-an 12
hours after starting this day. We had dinner and messed around for a
couple hours. There's this bridge called Lover's Bridge in the area,
and it's a gazillion miles in the air suspended by ropes between 2
mountains, over a dried up river. It's the scariest thing ever to
cross at night. Finally we met up with our weekend host families and
went home. My family was exchange student Mayumi from Japan, baba,
mama, and meimei (little sister in Chinese). Meimei was 10 and just
like my little sister in the States. I'm not saying if that's good or
bad but it's true :D They run a mushroom farm, so we got to learn a
little about that and eat plenty of mushrooms. Finally around
midnight, after more then 24 hours without sleep, it was bedtime.
On Saturday we got up around 7:30 and had an awesome breakfast. Of
course, after eating so many snacks the day before, I could only eat a
little and got lectured once again about being too skinny.Crazy
Taiwanese moms....Then we met up at the bridge, which is a lot less
scary during the day so I could cross it. We made these little wish
papers that spin when you throw them, which we found out when we threw
them off the bridge....litter bugs. After that we went to an actual
tea farm and learned how tea is grown and classified and then we got
to taste a bunch of different types of tea that all tasted the same to
me. Plus we got to make pencils, but I lost mine within the hour.
After wards we had lunch which was leftovers from last night but still
good. Then we went to this elementary school to learn about the
community of Shang-an and then talk about how our exchange year is
going so far. One of the Japanese girls broke down because her host
parents wouldn't let her do anything with the Japanese boy in her
area. After we went to a grape farm that some of the exchange students
are staying for the weekend and got to pick fresh grapes....those were
so good. Finally we got home and I took a nap. Man, I was tired, I
didn't wake up until mama yelled for me to set the table for dinner.
Some things never change. After dinner, meimei taught me the first
half of the national anthem. And then it was bedtime.
Sunday morning we got to wake up later because our house was the
meeting place. Once everyone got there, we said our good-byes and made
our way to Shui-li where we went to this really old kiln pit. They
taught us a little bit about how it worked and then we got to draw in
our own slabs of clay. We had lunch and went to Ming-jin junior high
school, which rotary rebuilt after some huge earthquake. A one point
and bunch of us girls went to the bathroom and not only did we find
urinal in the girls room but there were all these suggestive signs in
English. After that we started on the 4 hour bus ride to Taipei and
said our good-byes to the close friends we had all made that weekend.
We got there around 6pm, so Lora, Dennis, and I sat in the train, ate
Italian food, and watched these kids dance while we waited for our
train, which arrived around 9pm. After spending another 4 hour trip
talking, we got to Hualien around 1am, where I collapsed into our car
and went to sleep, only waking up to go up the stairs and to my room.
Sadly enough....we had to go to school in the morning....
Sorry this is sooooo long but it was such a fun weekend and I've spent
probably a month writing it. Expect another one soon about some more
interesting stuff, I promise. \
Love always, Alicia |
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