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 :)