第三十七個星期：Lots of Crafts and Boats

星期五：Today we had a volunteering activity after class where we went to a kindergarten to help them make some Mother’s Day crafts. We showed them how to make little paper flowers and taught them some words in English they could use to write little cards. The kids were cute but also super crazy and had a fun time completely wrecking us over our bad tones. After volunteering, the teacher gave us some cake as a thank you gift, and then a few of us headed over to Mackenzie’s house to have a movie night. We first had pizza and played Mah Zhongg for a while before we ordered a pizza and had a very American movie party.

星期六：We had our very last NSLI-Y cultural trip today, and it was just a day trip to Meinong, a Hakka township in Kaohsiung County. We mostly spent the day crafting and eating, which was totally fine with me, though I’m definitely the most excited about crafts generally out of everyone. We first went to a really pretty pottery shop where we got to make whatever we wanted out of clay for two hours. I was disappointed that we didn’t get to use the potter wheel, but I still managed to make an ugly teapot and a decent cup, plus it was still fun to craflt. From there we went out to a really delicious traditional Hakka lunch, and then went to a painted paper umbrella store where we got to paint an umbrella ourselves. After finishing with all of our crafts, we headed to Qishan, also known as “banana town” because their main attraction is banana farms and banana bread, where we all had ice cream and then walked around the day market.

Once I got home that evening, my family also took me out for some really good Thai food, and Taiwan definitely does a good job with other Asian cuisine because it’s better than anything I’ve had in America.

(cool pottery shop)

(my ugly teapot and decent cup, both have the character for tea on them)

(group pic at lunch)

(worker making the paper umbrellas)

(the umbrella I painted, the two characters are my Chinese name)

(group umbrella pic)

(Qishan day market)

(cute plants at the market)

(even cuter steamed buns)

星期天：We all got up early today and went to Lotus Lake to see if we could handle rowing a dragon boat, and, if we could, then sign up to row in the actual Dragon Boats Festival races later this month. It was insanely hot and humid and we only rowed around the lake twice, but we were all completely dead and sweaty. It was fun though because some of the host parents and siblings who were old enough joined, and on the real day some of our classmates from Chinese class will also join our boat. It was also fun to see the pagodas on the lake from the water since I’ve only ever walked to them.

After taking a long nap at home after the boat practice, my family took me out to Hongmaogang, an old Dutch settlement turned fishing village turned main port of Kaohsiung. We took a ferry there from the arts district which was cool because it went up alongside all the giant container ships and had a good skyline view of the city. We then spent a few hours walking around the port and the old houses before heading back. Once back in the city, we all went out to the famous shave ice restaurant for some mango shave ice now that mangoes are back in season. Sadly they were sold out of mangoes by the time we got there, but we still had some good shave ice.

(after dragon boat practice)

(we were super slow and uncoordinated, but we did it)

(a shipping boat heading into the port)

(Hongmaogang)

(replica of an old house)

(the port at night)