Week in Taipei and Nantou

Sorry you haven’t heard from me in a while. I’ve been away in Taipei / Nantou for a week. Brace yourself for a RIDICULOUSLY long blog. *deep breath*

Friday :: First Presentations
There is not much to say about this day. We had our first Chinese class and I learned how to write my name in Chinese, but a week later I cannot remember how.


In studio, we presented our presentation and their English was pretty good!


After presentations Frank and Tin-Man told us to make a chart of our product system, and my group was the only one that finished, so we don't have to meet before next Tuesday, woohoo!



OH! I almost forgot! Kenney got a free haircut this day! The cosmetology school encourages students to practice, so they'll give free haircuts. This is his new doo.




Saturday :: Travel and Sore Thighs
We left last Saturday around 9 am to buy bus tickets. This was THE BUS of all buses. You sat by yourself in a huge MASSAGE chair that had a compartment with a blanket and headphones that connected to a tv for video games! But thanks to genes from my mother, I couldn’t play the video games because it made me sick. So I slept for four hours in a massage chair!


I then woke up to see breathtaking Taiwanese countryside. This is lame, but I hadn’t seen anything like it except for in LOST/Jurassic Park. There were HUGE green mountains with pockets of cloudy smoke fog, which I’ve only seen in movies and pictures.


We arrived in Taipei and boarded the subway that spat us out right in front of our hotel. We dropped off our things and headed through town to Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world. (It was only made second this year, but I’m not sure which new building bumped it down)


One of our classmates, Melanie, is OBSESSED with free things. We arrived at Taipei 101 and she saw booths everywhere and immediately thought “HEY! Free stuff!” They asked her to sign her name on this form and she walked away sad because she didn’t get anything. As we walked toward the building, these guys in Standard Chartered t-shirts came running up to us saying that we needed to go on stage! We were like “Uh…huh..?” It turns out that Melanie signed us all up for this fundraiser where you had to walk 1000 steps on an elliptical machine and, if you did, Standard Chartered would make one textbook for a blind child. Of course we couldn’t say no to that, so we all got our complementary baseball caps and went up on stage to get REAL hot and sweaty. I finished with my thighs on fire after 1,002 steps. Take THAT!



We then went bought our tickets to go to the top of the building. Upon payment we were told that we could only go to the 89th floor because the 90th floor was too dangerous that day because it was so windy. (……..yeah, I know.) There were a billion and one people waiting in line so we decided to shop in the way-too-expensive stores to let the lines die down. These stores were basically all Ralph Lauren and Saks Fifth Avenue equivalents. We also found an EPIC toy store. Garrett, I got you a present and so did Kenney. GET EXCITED!! (Momma, you’ll have to tell him that because I know good and well that he does not have the patience to read a blog.) Oh, and you are allowed to be ashamed : I had McDonald’s for lunch, haha.


Around 7 30 we went and got in line…and a billion and one people were still there. The line went quickly though, and we were entertained by peoples’ pictures you take while in line. We took some pretty good ones.



The top was gorgeous and I got some pretty cool pictures. They had shops where you could buy art made of metal or coral or jade… that is, you could buy them if you were Bill Gates.



Also, the whole “too windy = dangerous” thing is taken care of by this HUGE ball of welded material between floors 88 and 89. That’s pretty cool and also scary, I think.


This is a picture looking down 90 flights of stairs. I think it looks PRETTY cool.


After the top, we went to get dinner. I went to this place called Flavorfield Bakery. Then we took the bus back to the hotel and got some sleepy sleep!

Sunday :: Rain, Rain, Go Away
Sunday was rainy, very rainy. We went to Memorial Hall, which reminded me of the Lincoln Memorial ...with color and a different dude. We saw some history and the changing of the guards.


As we were leaving the Memorial hall, there were stands outside (we were wary of letting Melanie near them because our legs were all still aching from the day before!) where they had NBA things set up. You could compare your “wingspan” and foot and hand size to those of pro-basketball players. My feet and hands against Shaq’s was pretty hilarious.



Then we went to lunch at a place that specialized in fried and steamed dumplings. Kenney and I paid about $12 US for 2 curry dumplings, 2 korean dumplings, 2 specialty dumplings, 2 vegetarian dumplings and a bowl of hot and sour soup.



Next we went to the famous Palace Museum and I saw a LOT of art and old craft. The carvings there were RIDICULOUS. There was a walnut carved into a boat, right? That’s already small. Then there were little people carved into it and they were partying! You could see their tiny little cups. It was so small that the museum had magnifying glasses mounted for you to view everything.

We found a place called 85 Degrees Celsius and ooooh my God. Everything in that bakery looked heavenly. I only had time for a coffee, but luckily Tin-Man said it’s a chain bakery and that there is one near Shu-Te. So he’ll take me there sometime. Woohoo!

We boarded the subway and went to the RiverWalk – AKA – interesting foods and little stores. There was a café called Amanda’s Café! We went to it, but it was actually just vodka and donuts that were served. Haha.


Back in the states, our friend Alex Wall told Matt that, while here, he had to eat an entire animal on a stick. The RiverWalk delivered. Matt ate an entire seasoned squid on a wooden stick. Well, not an entire one…I had a bite, and it was yummy.




Here we are on the subway and, yet again, Kenney is making faces at little kids to make them laugh. This little kid was really cute, too.



After waiting for a very long time…it was still raining during ALL this by the way…we went to the subway and boarded for a very long ride back. Now, we’d been in rainy clothes and shoes all day. We’d walked ALL day. We were tired, ok? We all fell asleep on the subway, yes, even Tin-Man. I awoke to Ian asking “Is this our stop?” As the doors are closing, I see Sarah Jayne and Tin-Man jump off, while the rest of us remain seated with our jaws dropped. Luckily, we have some experienced subway riders on the trip and we were able to board the subway at the next stop and make it back safe and sound.


Monday :: Yodex International Design Show
We woke up and packed our things Monday morning and waited in the lobby for the NCKU buses to come pick us up to go to Yodex International Design Fair. I was HOT in the lobby, so I laid down on the cold tiles. Tin-Man told me I was gross, but I was sweatin!




He received a phone call from the bus kids saying that not all of the Auburn kids could fit on one bus and that Christine and I had been “chosen” to be on Bus A. :P

At Yodex, we saw a LOT of cool designs. And from far away, I think I saw Robin and Roy from Summer Op. (Jenny was with us at the competition!) I just found this picture that TinMan took : proof that it WAS Robin.


So Yodex was international, but it was mainly Asian. The design ability of these kids made me feel very incompetent. We learned a little tidbit of information that made me not feel SO bad. Their models and designs looked AMAZING, and I'm not making excuses, but they have from September to May to design ONE project, and most of the Asian schools send their designs off to craftsmen to get their models made. It made me a little mad that, at Auburn, we spend only five months on our projects, and that at least one-third of the time is spent perfecting a model instead of the design. I guess it's good that we're being exposed to the craft of model-making, but I want to be a designer, not a craftsman. Ok, enough of the negativity. These were a few of my favorites that I saw and a view of about 1/8th of the showroom.





After a few hours of Yodex, we boarded our buses and I passed out for a few hours on the way to the conference dorms. My roommates were three girls from NCKU (the host school) whose English names were Joy, Christina and Chelsea. Chelsea was also one of my group members for the two-day design competition. On a very rainy day, this was my view outside the craft center dorms. It looks pretty creepy, but it wasn't SO bad.


I showered in the COMMUNITY SHOWERS (the water got REALLY hot whenever someone flushed the toilet), that was a first, and then went to bed on my cardboard mattress. I slept for about twenty minutes and then heard a HORRIBLE screeching noise. Rusty pipes that decided to sing us a song at 1am.

I was already having trouble sleeping because there was a pretty good chance that I was going to have to present the next afternoon and I had no presentation and no way of accessing it. I'd planned on presenting my project from this past semester, and I KNOW I put it on my jump drive, but it went missing. I Skyped Momma in tears trying to find it on that computer, knowing that there was no chance that it'd be on there because I worked on it in Wallace. (And all files in Wallace were deleted in early May) So I was going to have to present with no presentation, and I was freaking out. Anywho, I made it to sleep for a little while.

Tuesday :: To Present, or not to Present? That is the question.
Woke up niiiice and un-rested on Tuesday morning. The breakfast provided was a fried chicken sandwich with lettuce. Two students from every school presented (there were about 30 students altogether). I did not have to present because I spoke to Tin-Man and told him my problem. He let the people who wanted to present draw "out of a hat" for the chance. Arissa and Sarah Jayne represented Auburn. There were students from schools in America (Auburn and Chicago), Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and more. Lunch was pizza...we started to think that they were afraid to give Americans real Asian food.
The staff walked us to the town market / night market to go shopping. I bought some really cute shoes for about $9 US. In the US they'd probably be about 40.

*Screeching pipes by my head all night*

Wednesday :: Tin-Man Represents Auburn
Wednesday morning we toured the craft center that was based on illustrations of the 5 senses through crafts. Then they kicked off the professor presentations / lectures. Tin-Man was first to present and that was the first and last entertaining presentation. I was trying my hardest not to fall asleep through the next three.
After lunch, we met with our groups for the first time and began work on our two-day design project. My group's subject was Folk Toys. Whether that meant design one or re-design one, we still don't know. We decided to redesign five folk toys to represent the 5 senses (playing off the craft center's theme). We designed a kaleidoscope for sight, a slight flute that doubles as a rice spoon for taste, a dragonfly toy for touch, a bamboo cicada toy for hearing and a paper yo-yo with day lilies in the paper for smell.




At 8, the buses departed and my Americans left me behind. The two nights before I had tried my hardest to get some good internet in the dorm room, but couldn't. I'd overheard some guys saying that the air conditioning in your room interferes with the wireless connection(WHAT?!) so I went out into the un-air-conditioned hallway and TADAH! INTERNET! I Facebooked for a little while and started my group presentation powerpoint.
*The pipes*

Thursday :: Sun Moon Lake Excursion
The day started with more professor lectures. There was a bearable one at the very end: a guy from KAIST in Korea named Sangmin Bae.

After professor presentations, we went to Sun Moon Lake, a tourist attraction near Nantou where the land makes the bodies of water look like a sun and a moon. We bought a ticket to explore, and boarded the boat.

The boat was cool, kind of scary because the railing was REALLY low and I was close to the edge with my really expensive camera. The water was very oddly green, and the scenery reminded me of Jurassic Park.



We walked around for a few minutes and sampled some bell fruit, cherry tomatoes and wine (because here, I'm "21") The cable car went VERY high and moved pretty quickly. Everything was REALLY green from up there. Simone spotted a geyser! We wanted to go see it up close, but we were too far away when we landed.




These are stairs up the mountain. Race ya!


When we got off, there were some cool thatch-hut temples next to this theme park. We got really excited thinking we could ride some rides, but we didn't have the right tickets. Also, the last bus was leaving in "20" minutes.

I say "20" because the bus was ABOUT an hour late. Thank God we weren't relying on it to get us back in time for the bus. While we were waiting for the bus, one of the NCKU students started talking to this Taiwanese couple. He got excited and called Melanie, Arissa and I over to them. It turns out that the couple is from Alabama! They initially lived in Taiwan, then moved to America and the husband got a job at UAB. I then told them that I was from Birmingham and they asked what county. I said Shelby and they were from there too! They live RIGHT down the road from me in Brook Highland AND their daughter's name is Amanda! RIDICULOUS COINCIDENCE! Their names were May and Shinzou Soong.
We took the bus to a temple. It was very beautiful. I saw a woman put a lit prayer stick into a furnace type thing. Also, tourists can buy these golden things and write a wish on them and hang them in the temple.








I bought some rice wine that will hopefully make it back to the states. (I know I can bring it in, but what if I'm not 21? Anyone know?) I had a dinner of pineapple, white watermelon and bell fruit (SO GOOD!!!) and then went back to the dorms and worked on the presentation while Chelsea CAD modeled like crazy (I couldn't help because this rental computer doesn't have Solid Edge) and we went to bed around 2.

Friday :: Group Presentations and Closing Ceremony
I woke up around 6 and Chelsea woke up around 7 30. We grabbed breakfast and met Wei Yao (my other group member that I haven't mentioned yet. He was a funny guy) to begin the end of working. It was quite the race to the finish in the sweaty, smelly basement workroom, but we made it with 20 minutes to spare.


We presented and I felt pretty silly because our idea was a little bit too corny by the end of the process.


During presentations I was uploading pictures to Facebook and suddenly a piece of this rental computer fell off. I realized that there was a place for a screw and remembered seeing a screw on our table in that hot sweaty basement workroom. After presentations, Kenney and I ran over there and got in and I found it! (Now I've packed and come home, and I've lost both the screw and the plastic piece. I can't WAIT to find out how much I have to pay the stupid company for it. Arissa's has fallen off as well, AND her computer completely crashed. Ian's stopped picking up internet and the Shu-Te IT guys had to come fix it. These rentals were a bad idea.)
We were told that we were having a buffet dinner at a real restaurant, but that we had to walk 20 minutes to get there. Whatever, just making me hungrier and I get to walk dinner off on the way back, right? It wasn't that hot so that was ok. Suddenly we came up on a hidden wood building with a pond out front. We approached and they told us to take off our shoes because we had to wear white slippers inside.




We sat down and I was THIRSTY so I went to the cooler where everyone was getting water and I took a HUGE gulp from my cup. It was NOT water. It was this flower tea and it just tasted like I'd chewed up a dandelion. Needless to say, that surprise did not quite quench my thirst. Like I mentioned in a previous post, we've found it's very hard to come by just plain water here.

The buffet was pretty good. My favorite part was the fried lancet! Yes, those snakey fish things. The shrimp freaked me out because they still had legs AND eyes AND hairy feeler things. Hair creeps me out, and these feelers were about 8 inches long...no joke. I got over it and ate them anyway, but was sorry I did because they tasted funny. They had the BEST xie gua (watermelon) I've had so far in Taiwan, or ever for that matter.

After dinner, the awards ceremony began! They gave 1st, 2nd, and 3rd and four honorable mentions to the individual students. Arissa got one of the honorable mentions. They awarded Gold, Silver, and Bronze for the two groups topics (so six awards altogether because there were two topics).




For the Aging subject, Melanie's group got Silver and Arissa's/Jenny's (from summer op) got gold. In the Folk Toy subject, Sarah Jayne's group got Bronze and Kenney's got Silver. I just clapped for my friends, no awards =/ I'm in the sea of yellow in this picture, just look closely.


Upon returning to the craft center, I was told that I could stay at the other dorms with the Americans...if I packed in five minutes. (I'm pretty sure that this is when I lost the computer piece, but nothing else is missing...that I've noticed at least.) So I stayed at these dorm and it was MUCH nicer. They had real mattresses and a real bathroom with a real toilet!! It was nice.

Saturday :: Departure
A bus took us to the high speed train station. I sat down on the train to write this entire blog, but it was so fast that I ran out of time. We traveled a distance of  3 hours and 15 minutes in 45 minutes. I had to pull the shade to type because the blurry countryside was trying its hardest to make me sick (Mother...)
So I have returned and I have eaten a Toblerone and typed this blog for you! Tonight will probably not be very eventful because everyone is already in bed (at 6 PM) because they apparently stayed out very late last night with the European and Taiwanese kids. But, of course, if anything REALLY eventful happens, you will know in my next blog.

You should relax your eyes now. Sorry this was so long. :)