第十三個星期：A Night Out and the Picnic

星期一：Today, after making it for so long, I finally got sick. I lived, obviously, and didn't even have the adventure of seeing a doctor here, which I'm happy to avoid. Also, I'm pretty impressed with myself for making it this far seeing as I've eaten everything from bugs to chicken feet; my host mom thinks it was because I swam in the cold ocean this weekend, so I may not ever get to swim in Taiwan again...

星期二：Every other week Kripa, our RD, and I have a meeting to talk about life, and at this meeting she gave me the sad news that my host dad's work was transferring him to mainland China, so, while my host siblings are staying in Taiwan as they're both in college, my host mom would be moving with him, and I'd be moving host families. While it'll be cool to meet new people and experience a different families life, I'll definitely be super sad to leave this family as they've been so incredible and we've bonded a lot. I won't move until mid-December, though, so I still have some time to spend with them before moving.

星期五：After our morning classes, Doris, the head of iEARN-Taiwan, who we don't often get to see other than at meetings, had invited Kripa and us out for the afternoon. Seven of us decided to go, so we headed over early, ate at a fish restaurant and got some bubble tea, and then met Doris at an art gallery that was showing an exhibition of posters that represented Taiwan and Chinese culture. It was really interesting, especially because a lot of the posters were actually hidden characters, so there were many layers of meaning to each poster.

From there we tried out Kaohsiung's new light rail train. Since it's still in the works, it only has one line, but it's also currently free. We first rode it to a park by the port and the 85 building where we took some pictures and saw the statues. We then went inside the Kaohsiung exhibition center where Doris bought us all ice cream.

We then rode the light rail a few more stops to an old warehouse that's been redone into a craft market, bookstore, movie theatre, and many restaurants (it's apparent a popular teenager hangout spot). After wandering around for a bit, Kripa and Doris left us for the evening, so six if us then decided to go to Dream mall, the biggest mall in eastern Asia.

Once there we went up to the roof where we rode the ferris wheel to get a good view of downtown. We then went, ate some Korean food, and then shopped around for a while. By the end of the night, we had all pretty much reached our limit on lack of sleep and, after a while of all being about ready to kill each other after we spent about an hour trying to decide where to eat, we sort of recovered and instead reverted to just deliriously singing Christmas carols around the mall. So we then all made the good decision to head home.

(NSLI-Y students, minus Joey, with Doris, Kripa, and the head of the art gallery)

(cool posters of Chinese characters)

(posters focusing more on Taiwanese culture)

(riding the new light rail)

(Doris bought us ice cream)

(just chillin on an octopus)

(visiting a cool bookstore)

(the ferris wheel at Dream Mall)

星期六：After studying for most of the morning as my Chinese finals are coming up, my host parents took me to see a new mall that was supposed to be pretty cool. Turns out it was just a normal mall, so we then went to a fish market instead (because Taiwan). After eating a lot there, we then went over to the grandmother's house where we watched cooking shows and ate the equivalent of about two more dinners after already having had one (also because Taiwan).

星期天：Today five of the host families organized a picnic at Kaohsiung's biggest lake. Pretty much, if anyone wanted to know what Taiwanese hist family life is like, thus picnic would probably be the best example.

For starters, this was just a picnic, not camping, but each family brought sooo much stuff, my family alone had three large bags plus a suitcase full of food and games. Also though, while we would have been able to survive days in an apocalypse with all the food we had, we were weirdly unprepared in other ways. It rained on and off the whole time, but we only had one small umbrella between all of the families, and another family forgot a blanket so instead sat of one of those windshield reflectors that keeps the car cool in the summer. Just to give a shoutout to Pablo's family, though, they brought a whole table and camping kitchen.

But anyways, we started out by just talking and snacking, but once Pablo's family arrived with the kitchen, we all learned how to successfully make bubble tea bubbles from scratch (they actually came out really good). In the midst of this it started raining so all the host dads were very nice and held a tarp over us to save the bubble tea from the rain.

From there we ate lunch, and then, while also the host dads took a nap, the host moms and us played games. They first taught us a few Taiwanese card games, then we taught them how to play Uno, and then lastly my host mom helped us play Mahjongg, which actually isn't as hard as I thought and is super fun.

After six hours of hanging out in the light rain and not getting remotely close to finishing all the food, we all decided to head home.

(our picnic spot)

(making bubble tea in the rain)

(eating lunch once it stopped raining for a bit)

(my host mom taught us how to play mahjongg)