Matt's Birthday Day!

This "morning" I woke up around 11 and skyped with the Mum and Pop and then left at noon to meet Melanie for our lunch date. We ate at Amigo's! which is just a big fruit shop downstairs in the dorm. I had papaya and guava for the first time, and learned how to say both in Chinese. Mu Gua and Ba La. I also had Feng Li again.....do you remember Feng Li you avid reader, you?? It's pineapple. Then we had our first studio class where we were briefed on our project. We're doing disaster relief / third world country aid and my group is focusing on the Nourishment aspect of the aid. [ Notice Kenney in the picture, haha]


The language barrier was unbelievable. I was really lucky that Jessica's boyfriend (Kai) showed up to translate even though he's not taking our studio. This is me trying to communicate "running home" with Meuck. Haha.


Also, I found some pictures from pottery class yesterday that I just wanted to throw in here. TinMan posts pictures almost daily of what we do. You can check them here:
http://www.auburn.edu/ind/taiwan-program/taiwan-2010/images.php




As the title mentions, today was Matt's birthday. His group had told him on day one that, when it is someone's birthday, they get thrown in the lake. So he'd been keeping his electronics and watch on lockdown all day, ready to throw them to safety if the time came. It never did, but maybe they will sneak attack some other day. They DID however surprise him with cake during class. He left to do something and came back to THIS!


After class I walked around campus and took pictures. I also went on the roof of the design building all by myself! It was really cool! I haven't uploaded the pictures yet, but later I'll show the campus in a blog and you can see them. There was a Tai Chi (not sure of spelling) class at 5:10 and I went late because I was taking pictures, but then I couldn't find them because they'd changed locations after meeting at the four trees. Sad. It's every Tuesday though, so I can go next week.
We met at seven and went to the cafeteria with more new friends (Carol, Bling, Lucia, Meuck, and Bert) and then we went to 711 to "get money" but really there was a surprise there for Matt. We shopped around and I bought some more of the favorite candy from the candy party the night before (Puni - Lemon flavor) then Christine suggested we "go for a walk." We went to the back of the store where there was big parking lot and Adam had lit candles in the shape of an M and then set off a roman candle firework. It was very cute...and unintentionally romantic, haha. Then we played with about 30 sparklers and then walked to campus and sang karaoke in the metal shop! Matt went first as the birthday boy and rapped a pretty mean Ice Ice Baby...word for word. The American girls all did Spice Girls "Wannabe" which made the Taiwanese girls laugh really hard. Then we sang Backstreet Boys "Quit Playing Games With My Heart," but had to stop because we could NOT take the music video seriously. It was WAY too 90s with the slow hand movements and waterfalls and fans and we just kept cracking up.

After being entertained by Chinese rapping and High School Musical performances by the Taiwanese kids, we packed up and went to the dorm for the night.
And this is the first time I've actually typed THAT day's blog at the end of the day. BOOM.