Sun + Moon Lake

oh what a day! i had been completely stressed out + frustrated + and just in general out of whack, but this day was very therapeutic for me. it was the thursday right in the middle of the NCKU workshop. again, retarded planning as it was right in the middle of the work we were trying to get done for our presentations. but whatever. it was nice... and probably better for us this way after all as i think a good number of people were pretty stressed out already too.

so we have more professor presentations in the morning until about noon. at noon thirty we hop on a bus with to-go lunches (of sweet bread... not my favorite sustainance wise, but whatevs) and head to sun + moon lake. it was basically a nature park complete with boat rides, gondola cable car rides, and an aborigine theme park (which we did not get to go into as it was too late and too expensive).

our first line of action was to purchase tickets for the boat + cable car + bus ride loop... that in itself was a bit of a headache... getting the wrong tickets and all, but again it worked out in the end. so we took the ferry to the other side of the lake where we walked around for a bit while we waited for our tickets to be exchanged for the cable car. amanda and i walked up a quaint little walkway for a better view for pictures, and along the way some taiwanese women got really excited and asked for pictures with is. it's pretty adorable being treated like a celebrity just because you're different.

we were on the cable car about 3o minutes later, and it was awesome. we pretty much went up and down about 4 different mountain/hills. from the cable car we could see the stairs that wove up and down them too... crazy! we got to the other side and saw the entrance to the theme park we couldn't go into... it was too late anyways. we only had a few minutes there too since the cable cars stopped running at 4 and it was already 330... so weird. so we got back on and rode back to get on the bus.

along the way back to where we started we made a pit stop at some temple with a little market set up outside it. we found these necklaces made from this crazy stone with flower formations naturally occurring within... they were pretty exquisite (+ cheap :), so arissa, amanda and i each got one :). the little market also had grilled pork sausages and boiled duck egg for food... apparently taiwan is very famous for the duck egg, so i got the egg. it was ok. it was an egg. the temple was wonderful though! beautiful. apparently it was a temple/shrine to the god of 'testing'?? arissa asked a question through a series of stones and manuscripts? it was interesting. very pretty.

we also saw the CUTEST little girl blowing bubbles on the steps of the temple. everytime she noticed we were looking at her and taking pictures she would run a little further away and start blowing bubbles again. her parents kept telling her not to be shy... i think. but i think they thought it was cute how we thought she was cute. so funny. she was precious though.

after meandering about a bit we headed back to our start location... where the buses were. i was a little hungry but not so much, so i just got some papaya to eat... sadly it wasn't that good though. i missed shu-te fruit :(

the girls and i had all been pretty pumped when we arrived at sun + moon lake after seeing a sign for spa. the prices here are AMAZING! like $30 for an hour / hour.5!! and after all the stress and frustration i was really pumped about this. but by the end of the day when we got back there really wasn't much time, and at this time i was feeling much more relaxed anyways.

it was a pretty amazing day in nature :)

NCKU

we come to find out tuesday morning after our stay at the 'asylum' that maybe our lodging wasn't so bad after all. the campus where we would be doing the workshop only had a certain amount of rooms that would not house us all, but they were very much like dingy dorm rooms... with communal bathrooms. the asylum, although it was sparse, was still more like a hotel than a dormitory. and the dorm lodging didn't seem to have a much better internet situation than we did. so we didn't complain so much anymore ;)

first thing we did after we were bussed over to the campus was take a tour of the craft building. there was a room/studio devoted to each craft: metal, glass, pottery and wood. as well as rooms telling the history of craft making. it was pretty cool, but i confess the majority of us were more interested in talking with the international students who came from all over! we had students from taiwan, china, japan, korea, indonesia, malaysia, india, italy, denmark, and even as far as chicago. it was pretty cool to meet all sorts of people. we also got caught up looking at all the cute trinkets for sale in the craft shops too of course. i got a few presents for people :)

after the tour we broke for lunch and then gathered in the main auditorium afterward for the individual student presentations. we still didn't know if we would all be presenting or if it would just be a few, so we were all prepared. a few of the group was really dead set on presenting their work, but i wasn't super passionate about presenting today so when we found out that only 2 could present i was more than willing to relinquish my spot to someone who was more excited. relaxing and checking my email was much higher on my priority list for the time. i got dressed up anyways though just for fun... got to wear my new dress :) it ended up being sarah jayne and arissa (who wore her new qi pao dress she purchased at the riverside market) as presenters... and matt presented too even though he wasn't in the competition. yeah. we didn't know it was a competition until the time of. very disorganized workshop/conference... we learned to just accept it and go with it as the week went on though.

the following days we had professor presentations + group workshop time... but not nearly enough time! again it was very disorganized. we actually had about 8-10 hours total for research + concepts + final design + presentation. and on thursday we even took an all day break to go to sun + moon lake... but i'll go into detail about that in a later post. pretty crazy, but it was kind of a rush too. and it all worked out in the end :)

as for the groups we were divided into, now that's a story. we were split up in groups of 3 or 4. i was with a girl and boy from NCKU.. but the boy was an exchange student from mainland china. ohhhh that boy. i really thought i would kill him. i don't think i've ever been so upset and frustrated by one person so easily. he was bizarre. crazy. invasive. and absolutely obnoxious. i basically just ignored him and wouldn't allow any input from him on the design. all of his suggestions were COMPLETELY off topic anyways. so it was just me and joyu (the girl in my group). and we ended up coming up with a pretty cool product i must say. our final presentation must have gone over pretty well too considering we got the SILVER AWARD!! oh yeah. pretty slammin... especially considering it was just the two of us when other groups had 2 or 3 other students helping them... and MOST students were very intelligent... i just got stuck with the creep i guess.

we were presented our awards in this quaint little tea house restaurant.. we had to take our shoes off and everything and were given little slipper shoes to wear inside. it was really nice. we were served a pretty extravagant buffet style meal as well. it was definitely nice to be eating something i could CHOOSE to eat. granted it is difficult to order lunch for 50 something people in a contained campus, but we just kept getting a lot of heavy/bready foods... this was nice.

by the time it was all said and done with we were pretty sad to go and leave our new friends, but it was also very comforting to be heading back to shu-te. i missed my bed jaja! even this 3 inch matress on bamboo is more comfortable than the super hard matress we had at the asylum.

it was a fun + interesting week long excursion, but now i'm ready to start class again here at shu-te... it's chinese painting and pottery class tomorrow and i'm excited!!

YODEX (student exhibition)

monday is the day we head to the NCKU internation student design workshop, but we don't do that until the evening. during the day we are going to see the student exhibition... YODEX. we don't really have a lot of information, so tin-man tells us the we need to wake up in time to be checked out of the hotel by 8 because the bus will be leaving to come pick us up around 8:15. nope. it didn't arrive until a little before 10? can't really remember at this point... all i remember is that we woke up wayyyy too early and i could have gotten AT LEAST another hour of sleep. lame. oh well.

so the bus finally arrives and we're split onto 2 different buses... didn't know that was going to happen. but don't worry... this is just the first of many disorganized occurences we were unaware of... but more of that later ;)

in a nut shell: yodex = awesome! i definitely started to feel a little insignificant as a designer after seeing some of the student works. it was amazing. but maybe if we had such an awesome venue to display our work in, then maybe it would look better too :) basically these students have an amazing resource for fabrication: china. some things you could tell were rapid prototyped... but still even the foam models were pretty amazing.

beyond the work itself we saw, we met a lot of super adorable asians. it's so cute how they get excited to see us, and even more excited when we can speak some chinese to them! we took a lot of pictures with strangers ;) and of course we got a lot of free stuff too :) i spent about 300NT as well though on a t-shirt from one school and a bag full of goodies from another school including their book of work. pretty cool. i was glad to support them.

after a few hours of looking at school after school of student designs, we were hungry and a little overwhelmed by it all... so we went across the street to the taipei 101 mall for some food.. and a little shopping ;) sarah jayne and christine needed shoes and an outfit for presentations. i didn't think i needed anything, but after seeing the fancy dress sarah got i felt a little under prepared now. most of the clothes here don't fit my figure, but one of the shop clerks was AMAZING at dressing me. he must have put me in 5 or more outfits... accessories and all. i couldn't exactly afford everything, though i really wished i could. but in the end i gave in... i did buy a dress that can also be a jacket... it's very pretty... and since it was a little more versatile i figured it was worth it.

being girls, we were a little late meeting up with the rest of the group, but they didn't seem to really notice. we split up again on our buses and headed to nantou for the NCKU conference. we stopped at the most amazing bus stop along the way too! it was like a full out dining hall... with all sorts of fancy fixings. we had eaten so much for lunch though that i wasn't hungry. i really wish we had these in the states though.

we final reach our destination, and again we get a surprise split from the group. apparently the other bus went to one lodging and we went to another. i was a little upset that no one had mentioned this before... plus the location where we were was anything but pleasant looking. all we could see around us were trees, and the building itself was dark and lifeless. we stood outside for a while waiting for someone to let us in, the gates start closing us in, and i'm getting a little agitated and creeped out by this weird place. we finally go in and it looks like an asylum... what i ended up dubbing the place. the three girls are assigned different rooms, but at this point i'm so angry and upset with the situation that i just make the decision to have all of us together. there were only 2 beds per room so we bring in a 3rd mattress for arissa. the lady in charge didn't look to happy, but i was beyond caring. jaja! looking back it's pretty funny to think about, but at the time i was anything but a happy camper. but don't worry, we all survived the night, and it really wasn't that bad after all :)

Taipei (museums)

so we wake up for a fun day of museum-ing and it's pouring. thankfully i come prepared with my water shoes, but a number of auburnites did not. nonetheless, we started heading towards our first museum of the day: the chiang-kai shek memorial which strongly resembles the lincoln memorial. chiang kai shek was a very famous five star general and president of taiwan. not sure about all his military accomplishments as i could not read the chinese character descriptions, but tin-man told us he was very famous for all the treasures he brought over from china when china transitioned into a communist country. china still has some stuff, but taiwan now has all the best and most expensive things :). and all these things can be viewed at the museum we went to later in the day. but while we were at the chiang-kai shek memorial we did witness the changing of the guard which was very impressive... i have a video to go along :).

we walked outside (into the rain again) and there was an nba demonstration/set-up outside... not sure why, but they had a lot of video game platforms and life-size replicas of some of the nba players' hands and feet. dwight howard apparently wears a size 18 shoe!! crazy...

but after a few hours at our first museum we were pretty famished, so we stopped along our subway route to get dumplings for lunch... quite delish. and there were a few cute shops we stopped and looked in as well.

our next musuem of the day was the palace museum. now i've been hearing a lot about this museum from various family members and friends, and yes it is just as amazing as it has been described. sorry no pictures were allowed inside :( some of my favorites would have to be the curio box, the ridiculously intricately carved walnut shell + olive stones, and the 17 layered concentric ivory ball. it was amazing just how much chiang-kai shek managed to smuggle over too. three stories of rooms filled with priceless valuables... he must have taken boat upon boat loads. so many things are so fragile though, i wonder if anything was broken along the way.

once again we've gone several hours without food so we need foods again. of course it's still pouring outside, and we're heading to the riverside market... outdoors. all of the drying our shoes just did was for nothing jaja. another thing is that we had been having a lot of trouble finding an atm that would accept our cards... they're really picky here. but we finally found one that would accept all our cards when we got to the riverside, so now we could all have monies :). so we start walking along the river with all the shops, and matt is dead set on finding a whole animal on a stick to eat... something he had been told he had to do by one of the food network shows. well we find squid on a stick, and matt is thrilled. it was certainly a spectacle. i decided to go with quail eggs on a stick instead (taste just like chicken eggs but so much cuter in size)... as swell as some fried squid balls and some of sarah's fried shrimp wraps. only 10 and 20 NT each! so dinner was less than $1! amazing.

the way back to the hotel was probably the most eventful though. everyone was exhausted... even tin-man fell asleep on the subway. so i woke him up at our stop, but when he asked me if i was sure i double checked and the next thing i know he and sarah jayne are outside the subway and the rest of us are getting the doors closed on us. jajaja! so we get off at the next station and wait to see if he's coming to us... nope. so we find our way back to where he was purely by color association. oh my goodness it was funny.

when we finally got back to the hotel all of our feet are soaked and soggy. poor arissa had worn moccasins so not only were her shoes and feet soaked, but her feet had been discolored yellow too. now she was officially asian ;)

Taipei (101)

the day after our group presentations we woke up early and headed down to the four trees to await our taxi to the bus station. now this wasn't just any other bus. this was the luxury bus, complete with massage capable reclining chair and a tv per person with headphones and controller for our movie viewing and video game playing pleasure. in a word, it was awesome. my one complaint was that the massage controls stopped working after a while... i must have reached my max :( i definitely played some adorable kirby game and an old school dbz fighting game. i thought of some fellas who would be enviouos... you know who you are ;) this luxury bus also happened to be my first squatting experience. definitely a bit more challenging while bumping around on a moving bus, but i still managed to conquer this challenge with flying colors... that did not get on my pants ;)

after about 5 hours of five star travelling (sans the few minor complaints), we reached our desination in taipei, the capital of taiwan. first we dropped our luggage off in the hotel and got some lunch. amanda and arissa finally crumbled and got some mcdonalds... don't think i'll ever get THAT desperate... unless we find the alleged "rice burger" jaja. the boys and i got something slightly more upscale: a four course meal of lamb (for me) and all the trimmings for only about 150NT (about $5)!! it was amazing!!

next we headed to taipei 101 (the 2nd tallest building in the world as a matter of fact... 2nd only to another building in dubai). the bottom 5 or so levels are devoted to higher end stores... kind of like a taiwanese saks 5th avenue. but before we even got the chance to walk in the doors we got distracted by some tent booths set up outside with what looked like some free giveaways! i of course was interested. it appeared to us that all we had to do was sign some sheet and we got a free hat and shirt. no problem right? well we got our stuff, but then we're all being directed to this stage with a bunch of asians on ellipticals. we had apparently signed up. so tin-man becomes temporary bag-lady as we all mount our machines and start stepping. thankfully the girl next to me spoke english and told me that we had to reach 1000 steps and 1000NT would be donated to a charity raising funds to buy braille books for blind orphans. so we're all sweating away our lunch when a camera man and a guy with a mic come up to me and tell me that if a can answer some simple questions they will increase the NT i contribute to 5000!! they asked me what the even was for and who was sponsoring it... once again i'm glad the girl next to me spoke english and told me these things so i didn't look like an idiot. so i raised 5000NT for children!

we finally go inside and get our tickets to go to the top of taipei 101, but there's a HUGE line so we decide to go look around for a bit while it dies down. we find a super cute toy store and spend a few bucks on pointless trinkets, but their coin operated toy dispensers were so cool! and now i have a few more presents for people :) the other stores made me feel poor, so no shopping in them. after about an hour and a half of window shopping we went upstaris to get in line. it was not shorter. it was longer. AND christine lost her ticket! the worker at the end of the line said it would be about an hour from that point! i was prepared to just leave and lose the money, but htankfully they exaggerate times here just like in the states. we were in line for only 15 minutes. what a liar. but i totally heard some asians on the observation deck with american accents, and it turned out the boy was from chattanooga!! hixson actually... crazy! we got to see the big bee-hive looking ball the keeps the building from swaying too much in the wind. pretty freaky. apparently it's controlled by computers... sure hope they don't crash!! after about an hour/hour and a half we headed down. p.s this elevater went about 6okm/min... my ears popped at least 5 times. ridiculous crazy!

so at this point we meet up with christine (she'd been sketching), and we trek back to the hotel. oh but the night wasn't over yet. we had gotten something for dinner in the mall, and arissa decided to get sushi to go. now her stomach hadn't been doing so well lately (we have a few theories on that ;), and sushi may not have been the best idea. around her last few bites she thought she was going to puke. no more than a few seconds later she rushes to the bathroom, and amanda and i are sitting on our beds confused about whether we are hearing the faucet running. no. it's arissa. jajaja!! ohhhhhh funny. what a day...

Week 1 :: Shu-Te University

so we have now successfully completed our first week here at STU. oh my goodness what a week. i'll just do the logical thing and start from the beginning.

of course on monday we had our opening ceremony like i mentioned before. we and a number of other students gathered in a small auditorium and watched a powerpoint about the program we will be participating in and about the college in general. we also got to watch some of the videos the students here made for us. so cute! maybe we will make them one before we leave... and again as a i mentioned before we also had our first class monday: pottery. i made a little bowl/vase with flower appliques on it... hopefully it turns out ok :/ later that night we hung out with friends at the 711 (not so much a gas station here... kind of the thing to do) and tried some sort of sweet potato fries. sooooo good!

tuesday was our first day of studio. ironically enough the focus is on 'disaster relief.' good thing i didn't choose that group for jerrod's studio :). we're divided into groups of 6 or 7... one american student per group. i'm sure you can imagine the communication issues. but we're all really lucky to be with such an accepting and patient group of students, so we're all moving along just fine. each group is given a specific direction to research in and design around; my groups' focus is clothing, so we divided up the research to have done for presentations on friday... all in english!! eeek!! i felt really bad for them when tin-man said that (just a quick spoiler, but they all presented famously!!)
it also happened to be matt's birthday! shin pulled me aside in studio and showed me that she had gotten him a mini cake! so sweet! we were trying to figure out a good way to surprise him... we got the teachers in on it and everything. we ended up getting some of his group members to tell him that they needed to go to the library to get him out of the room, and when he came back we had turned out the lights, lit the birthday candle, and everyone sang happy birthday to him (in english and in chinese of course).
later in the evening we took our first tai chi class!! so fun... the first part was learning the relaxing motions, and the second part was practical applications of the motions we had just learned. i can definitely disarm an attacker now!! ...provided they come at me in the ways i've learned to defend against ;) after that we all headed over to the 7 to celebrate matt's birthday with some sparklers and fireworks!!

wednesday was a free day!! we had to pay our dorm fees in the morning, but that was our only obligation. we did participate in a craft class as well though... it was some sort of organization/job fair so there were a lot of booths set up and activities as well. we wove these flower pendants out of plastic ribbon. pretty cute. i decided to use mine as a hair clip instead. not a very busy day. nice and calm. i got to use the time to do some research on the effects floods have on clothing for our studio.

thursday was pretty busy. we have classes from 9 until 5. we have glass shop in the morning and metal shop in the evening. our professor for glass is world renowned for his work. so beautiful!! so much detail it's crazy! we got to make something more basic though: shallow bowls (great for soap :) he tought us how to cut the glass to match up to the dimensions of the clay bowl used for the mold. we arranged small glass flower pieces on top of the glass plate to be fused together in the kiln. super fun!
metal shop was a slightly different story... we had to cut out a design from a small metal plate using a hack saw. it took forever!! i think i won the prize for breaking the most blades too... must have been close to 15 or 20. clearly i don't have the patience for chiseling away tiny bits of metal at a time. (ps cole i made you something and if you don't jump for joy when i give it to you, i may have to strangle you... no pressure ;)
oh but the day still wasn't over. in between class i met up with my group to go over what he had collected as research for our presentation for friday. i had made the layout the previous night, but we still had a long way to go. it probably wouldn't have taken so long if i didn't have to tweak the layout, but i had to do a lot of reorganizing... not to mention most of the english :/ not complaining, i was just really tired. my group was really great and helpful though! going to bed was wonderful.

so now we're finally up to today! friday! breakfast was amazing as usual... 'chee sa dan ping' (cheese egg cake... basically egg and cheese wrapped in a thin seasoned crepe) and 'do jiang' (soy milk! morning fav! ...so much better here!!), and of course i got a steamed bun to go as well. definitely one of my favorit novelties here. don't think i'd ever had steamed bread before, but it is soooo good! the variety i got today looked a bit like a cinnamon roll, but it was a light chocolate instead. the flavor is very subtle, but delicious! i'll have to take pictures!
we had mandarin class at 10... we learned how to shop more efficiently. we learned numbers, how to write our names in chinese, and a few other things too... but clearly the first is most important ;). during mandarin class we also got our glass bowl/plates out of the kiln!! i think they may have cooled a little too quickly because there were some small cracks around the flowers, but oh well.
by the time studio finally arrived we were all feeling pretty anxious. i wasn't really sure how much my group had prepared since we didn't really have time to go over and rehearse the presentation, but they blew me away! they kept saying how nervous they were, but i think they said more than any other group did! and they sounded so good too! i was so proud of them... i wish my chinese sounded as good as their english... as a class we do all need to work on projecting our voices. no one was very loud... things to work on.
afterwards kenny finally got his mohawk... or should i say asian fauxhawk. a girl from the cosmotology school used him for 'practice,' but it was the best boy haircut i've ever seen. they would never give that much time or detail to a haircut in the states. she was so fast and yet so precise... and best of all it was fo freeeee!! me next!!

and now we just got back from a belly dancing class that started at 10. we were invited by a very flamboyant gay boy :) ...most flamboyant i've seen here yet. he's adorable. it was fun... interesting. i'll definitely get good sleep tonight...