For Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week, I rode on bus #6, of 16 buses, with my classmates down to Kenting, which is in the southern most city of Taiwan. It was a very interesting trip, full of speaking Chinese, teaching English, and experiencing a face of my classmates that I never knew they had. Here is how it went.
Day 1: We went to a science museum, mostly about water and electricity. Really boring, but there was this thing where you could put on a poncho and go into a room to experience a fierce storm: pouring rain, really high winds, loud noise. That was cool. I talked with a girl from my class named Fuji, she is really cool and nice. This night, the school had a stage set up on an outdoor terrace where a few students performed songs, acts, and dances. Then we had a big ceremony where we branched off and thanked our home room teachers for the all of their hard work. That was an interesting activity because, never, in the US, have a seen kids so dedicated to their home room teacher. (I've never seen a class trip either, just shows how different our countries are.)
Day 2: We visited a national park and a light house very near the ocean. We were in Kenting by now, and it was wicked hot. In the afternoon we visited a marine biology museum and aquarium. I remember being really mad that day because my classmates were babying me like none other. They even told me that I couldn't buy ice cream when I wanted. Uh, whatever. That night, we checked into a really nice hotel and then went to the night market. It started raining pretty bad this night, and my TOMS got all wet. When I decided that I was tired of walking around in soaking wet shoes, I bought some HAVILINAS, some pretty popular flip flops from Brasil. Now, I have nice brown flip flops:) Alej and I hung out a lot that night too. Everyone kept asking if we were together, and we both kind of looked at each other like, "uh, no." He and I are just really good friends.
Day 3: This day we visited a university in kaoshung. It is the National Sun Yat-Set University, and my home room teacher happened to have graduated from there back in the day. It's a nice university, right on the ocean with lots of sports complexes, but I think I will stick with Hawaii. This night's hotel was even nicer than the other two that we stayed at, unbelievably. This hotel actually has it own outlet mall and theme park attached to it, so it was a fun place to spend our last day. They had a really nice Nike outlet that I wanted to shop at, but I told myself that I haven't earned anything that I don't absolutely need, so no new running shorts for me! I did have a fun time with my classmates though, we played some video games at the mall, and then played UNO back at the room.
Day 4: The last day of our trip is entirely dedicated to exploring the them park and driving back to Taipei. Alej and I met up and kind of just wandered around. I really wanted to see a movie, but there wasn't one that we could see in the time that we had. Oh well. I did get hit on by a creepy eastern european guy. At 10 in the morning. Gosh, so creepy. But it was a good day!
I've learned a lot on this trip. 1) Classes are a family. Everything is structured around what the entire class wants to do, not what a single person wants to do. 2) These kinds of trips, in this big of size, are a normal thing in Taiwan. (we have a league of 16 buses) There are even special travel agencies that work with just students and schools. It's pretty cool because the tour guides are really fun people. 3) Doing a trip like this back in the US would be impossible. This kind of thing is ridiculously complicated, but crazily simple because everyone is in one single class, for the whole year. Also, since Taiwan is a really small country, driving somewhere new and fun is really easy. With our ever changing blocks and teachers, doing something like this would be extremely difficult. And the US is huge, so convenience would be a huge issue. Perhaps fun it would be fun, but I think the work we would have to put into it wouldn't be worth what we would get out of it.
Day 1: We went to a science museum, mostly about water and electricity. Really boring, but there was this thing where you could put on a poncho and go into a room to experience a fierce storm: pouring rain, really high winds, loud noise. That was cool. I talked with a girl from my class named Fuji, she is really cool and nice. This night, the school had a stage set up on an outdoor terrace where a few students performed songs, acts, and dances. Then we had a big ceremony where we branched off and thanked our home room teachers for the all of their hard work. That was an interesting activity because, never, in the US, have a seen kids so dedicated to their home room teacher. (I've never seen a class trip either, just shows how different our countries are.)
Day 2: We visited a national park and a light house very near the ocean. We were in Kenting by now, and it was wicked hot. In the afternoon we visited a marine biology museum and aquarium. I remember being really mad that day because my classmates were babying me like none other. They even told me that I couldn't buy ice cream when I wanted. Uh, whatever. That night, we checked into a really nice hotel and then went to the night market. It started raining pretty bad this night, and my TOMS got all wet. When I decided that I was tired of walking around in soaking wet shoes, I bought some HAVILINAS, some pretty popular flip flops from Brasil. Now, I have nice brown flip flops:) Alej and I hung out a lot that night too. Everyone kept asking if we were together, and we both kind of looked at each other like, "uh, no." He and I are just really good friends.
Day 3: This day we visited a university in kaoshung. It is the National Sun Yat-Set University, and my home room teacher happened to have graduated from there back in the day. It's a nice university, right on the ocean with lots of sports complexes, but I think I will stick with Hawaii. This night's hotel was even nicer than the other two that we stayed at, unbelievably. This hotel actually has it own outlet mall and theme park attached to it, so it was a fun place to spend our last day. They had a really nice Nike outlet that I wanted to shop at, but I told myself that I haven't earned anything that I don't absolutely need, so no new running shorts for me! I did have a fun time with my classmates though, we played some video games at the mall, and then played UNO back at the room.
Day 4: The last day of our trip is entirely dedicated to exploring the them park and driving back to Taipei. Alej and I met up and kind of just wandered around. I really wanted to see a movie, but there wasn't one that we could see in the time that we had. Oh well. I did get hit on by a creepy eastern european guy. At 10 in the morning. Gosh, so creepy. But it was a good day!
I've learned a lot on this trip. 1) Classes are a family. Everything is structured around what the entire class wants to do, not what a single person wants to do. 2) These kinds of trips, in this big of size, are a normal thing in Taiwan. (we have a league of 16 buses) There are even special travel agencies that work with just students and schools. It's pretty cool because the tour guides are really fun people. 3) Doing a trip like this back in the US would be impossible. This kind of thing is ridiculously complicated, but crazily simple because everyone is in one single class, for the whole year. Also, since Taiwan is a really small country, driving somewhere new and fun is really easy. With our ever changing blocks and teachers, doing something like this would be extremely difficult. And the US is huge, so convenience would be a huge issue. Perhaps fun it would be fun, but I think the work we would have to put into it wouldn't be worth what we would get out of it.