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!!