July 1 – 6 2012: Words cannot explain the kindness of the
Taiwanese people, and if you took the 16 kindest of them and put them together
you would have the SIT staff. These students were given the task of
entertaining and educating 30 loud, intense, high-strung North American
scientists. Not an easy feat, but to do it with constant smiles on their faces
is nothing short of miraculous. I want to take some time to describe everything
they planned for us for three reasons: I want to remember every moment,
everyone should understand how much work they put into this week, and lastly so
you can get an idea of how exhausted I was by the end of the week.
Monday: The week began with a tour of Tsing Hua University
in Hsinchu, Taiwan. This campus is beautiful, with numerous green spaces and
lakes, and even a butterfly garden.
(Tsing Hua University)
(Tsing Hua University)
(Tsing Hua University)
Lunch followed at Socrates Café, an adorable restaurant/used bookstore. The buffets this week were plentiful and this one was the first. I sat at lunch with Cammie (my NMMBA roommate), Alex, and Peter and instant friendship was made. The beginnings of “the band” formed.
(Socrates Cafe)
(Cammie and Alex at Socrates Cafe)
Then came the language course. Chinese is flippin’ hard! After hours of making random noises, we got to eat. And eat we did. The SIT staff took us to a huge Chinese restaurant where we had 12, yes 12, courses of traditional Chinese food. This meal included a tray of fresh fruits, veggies, and crab, a platter of raw fish with soy sauce, a course of pork with rice, seafood soup, a chicken soup with an entire chicken in it (head, feet, beak, everything!), and a plate of fried sweet potatoes that I’ll never forget. All of this was consumed while being entertained by the Tsing Hua University student music groups.
(Oh Hello, Mr. Chicken)
(Chinese Restaurant)
Tuesday: Following a morning full of grueling language
lessons, we took a course in traditional Chinese calligraphy. We learned the
correct form to makes the strokes, the correct direction to read (up to down
then right to left), and most importantly I learned the symbol for ocean to put
on my hand painted fan! After this class we loaded up on the karaoke buses and
sang our way to experience the traditional Hakka culture. The Hakka people were
one of the first groups to move to Taiwan from mainland China and this area
still kept with traditions. We split up into smaller teams to cook our own
dinner in an earth oven. Despite half of our group being engineers and
physicists, my team consisted of me and computer scientists. Needless to say,
our dome of mud hunks took a little while longer than all the other teams to
build. It’s safe to assume I was the
only one on the team with camping experience. After getting dinner started we
moved to making our own rope out of straw. I mostly just sat on a bench and
spun the spindle while the Hakka guy did all the work. Then we moved over to
spinning rice, which is not easy, but was followed by enjoying all the food
that was cooked in the earth oven.
Following dinner, we ground peanuts and green tea leaves to make a
dessert tea and made red paper lanterns to send into the sky full of our
wishes! It was such an amazing but exhausting experience.
(Team 5)
(Best rope maker EVER!)
(Modeling the rain shield)
Wednesday: The day began again with the language course.
After hours of unintelligible murmurs, we broke for lunch followed by a
fascinating talk given by Dr. Chen-shen Yen on Taiwan/America relations. He
then joined us on the bus ride to Taipei, for two days in this amazingly
wonderful city. We first stopped at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall built in
memory of the former president. Here we had a chance to dress in traditional
Chinese clothing, and of course I picked the one that a princess would have
worn. It was beautiful! I wanted to keep it. This was also the first night we
got to experience one of Taiwan’s famed night markets. It was madness in the
form of delicious foods, cold drinks, and arcade games. In other words, super
fun! Thus ended another utterly tiring day.
(CKS Memorial Hall)
(Hamming in up in the princess couture)
(Yep, I'm a tourist)
(Shilin Night Market fried chicken mmmmmm)
Thursday: Today began with one of my favorite experiences of the week: Pottery Class! We went to the Yingge District near Taipei, known for its beautiful artisan pottery. If I hadn’t had two months of crazy travel ahead of me, it would have been tough to resist. This was my first experience using a pottery wheel and mistakenly thought it would be easy. After being laughed at and coached along, I finally created a wonderful cup/bowl/mug. I like to call it abstract. If it wasn’t ugly enough, I decided to cut out fish and stick them on the side. It will be interesting to see the final result in August. After class we had a wonderful gourmet lunch at this Asian modern restaurant. This was a four course lunch with Asian salad, beef stew with rice and yams, and pork ribs in a sweet and sour sauce, and flower tea for dessert. After lunch we went to the absolutely stunningly beautiful Longshan temple. This temple is a Buddhist and Taoist prayer space, where we were taught how to conduct traditional worship. The sound of chatting and the smell of incense were intoxicating. From here, we went to get traditional Taiwanese foot massages. This was definitely one of those hurts so good experiences! But much needed after a crazy week of being carted all around Northern Taiwan.
(Longshan Temple)
(Plaza near foot massage place, looks like Times Square)
Friday: As the saying goes: all good things must come to an end. And to an end it came. Friday morning we visited the hot spring area of Beitou where we were introduced to Taiwanese aboriginal culture, which originated from the Pacific Islands. Near the hot springs we saw a sign that actually said, “This spring contains radium, which has magical powers.” Even worse, the Taipei water department posted this sign. I think they need to recheck some water quality data. That afternoon we had a farewell lunch and party at the National Science Council, where many hugs were given and pictures taken. And off Cammie and I ventured to the high-speed train south.
(Beitou Hot Spring)
(Beitou Hot Spring)
(Beitou Hot Spring)
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