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...