The Beginning

Today kicked off our education here in Taiwan. We began at ten o'clock with the opening ceremony where the dean of the school and the head of the Industrial Design department spoke.


When they had given their speeches and showed us a video about Shu-Te University,we took a group picture of the Americans with the Taiwanese professors.


And then the Taiwanese students joined in. The girl making the silly face front-&-center is in my group. That's Nickie, we get along well.


When it was time to leave we told TinMan that he forgot something, that he needed to check the desk at which he had been sitting. (While at the mall Kenney initially bought a frog mask, but decided to go back and buy a ninja mask which you can see in that last picture. We decided that he should give the frog mask to TinMan) He found it and we weren't sure what he'd do, but sure enough:


The faculty told us that they had prepared a feast for us and that it was outside. And BOY was it a feast...with tiny plates and cups. This is Ian and me looking pretty wary of the red bean tapioca drink. Red bean is something in most desserts here - it's yummy!



Then my group presented me with a present! It's a calligraphy brush set equipped with four brushes, ink, an ink mashing bowl, stamp, stamp ink, and water bowl. It's cute. I'll take a picture of it sometime..maybe.

I look really excited in that picture. Anyway, I then went to my first pottery class! I was pretty bad at it! Haha. We're not doing the pottery spinning machine. The method taught here is to take a lump of clay and roll it into a long tube-shaped line and then coil that tube of clay into the shape of vase you want. You then smooth out each layer of the coiled tube to make a smooth outside and inside. Then you add details and form it into the shape you want. I made mine too thin and that made it VERY hard. It keep cracking which was discouraging. We only meet with this class 4 to 6 times the whole time I'm here, so hopefully I can get the hang of it by then.


That's mine closest to "you" in the picture. (The one that looks like an icecream sundae boob. Haha) Like I said, hopefully I get better.

We were surprisingly starving after pottery class got out at 5. So we walked to the cafeteria (entrance pictured here) and I basically ordered a southern meal, Taiwanese style.



By the way, the drinks here are not what I expected! They hardly drink just plain water and they basically never drink soda. It's all fruit juice. You order what you want and they mix it and put it in plastic cups and then they kind of shrink wrap it with plastic on top so it's sealed. You could throw it in your backpack if you were jumping onto a scooter. Otherwise, they have GIANT straws with one pointed end that you stab the top with. I've tried Mango (which was alright) and Watermelon (which was amazing). The watermelon tasted like they just squeezed a watermelon really hard into a cup and gave me a drink.



After dinner we went to 711 across the street from campus to try to withdrawal money from the ATM there because a lot of us were having trouble doing it on campus.
711 is THE place to be. It's crazy how many people were there. Kenney compared it to Starbucks in America. While there, the girls and I decided to all buy different types of candy and share it to try out all our options. That resulted in quite the sugar high. (Kenney decided to join, but left to go skateboard with the community board that he and Ian borrowed)



The boys planned a date with their Malaysian "suitemates" and one of the Taiwanese students, Kun, to go back to 711 and we decided to join them. Their suitemates and their friends bought us drinks and sweet potato fries. They were AMAZINGLY delicious.