Minsu Folk Park Trip: In Which Becca Goes Israeli... Er, Taiwanese... Dancing.

My original adventure today was to see Minsu Folk Park, which is supposed to be a little slice of traditional Taiwan. I was going to take the bus right after teaching this afternoon.

I ended up going a few hours later, after getting an early sushi dinner. As it was, I got on the bus during rush hour, and thought I'd miss my stop simply because the bus was too full for me to see the scrolling stops at the front of the bus. I could still hear them, so that was fine.

Midway through the journey, it started to get dark. It gets dark here around 6pm/6:30pm, even in the summer. I thought I wouldn't be able to see anything, but there wasn't much to see in the actual park, anyway. But then I saw the dancers.

Every night, or at least a few nights per week, women gather in parks throughout the city to line dance. Tonight I finally joined in, and it was awesome!!! I danced with the women for a while, and then headed back to catch the bus.

While dancing, an adorable little girl started to mimic me, but then realized I didn't know what I was doing, so she went to dance next to the leader.

It apparently isn't summer for me without a bit of line dancing, so hello summer!

Children... Children Everywhere

“Point to where you need me to be, and I’ll go there.”

Monday, July 14^th, 2014

Today was the first day of our summer camp trip to Nantou! We gathered at school at 8:30am, and I was able to read for the entire hour and twenty minute bus ride. Although I was never under the impression that we were going camping, I was surprised by how swanky this place is. We are at a resort, which means toiletries are provided and our “cabins” have television and air conditioning. Nuts. Seriously. We’re in the mountains and there are snakes and mosquitoes, so it’s kind of like camping…no. Not at all. I’m sharing a room with the other American teacher, and with six 7-12 year old boys. We have four big beds and one bathroom for the eight of us, which isn’t so bad except that the boys take FOREVER.

We had an adorable opening ceremony. It consisted of passing a flag between seven groups of students so that everyone was included, and then I read the camp rules and the principal made a speech. Oh, and at lunch I led everyone in “grace”; when this was originally suggested last week, it was going to include a reference to God, but I succeeded in persuading the camp leader to change God to Earth, since our theme is space (I neglected to mention my squeamishness regarding the use of God in a completely secular setting). “Thank you, Earth, for the food” sounds better in my mind, anyway.

After lunch we learned our team cheers, went “shopping” for snacks with our Eagle Money in the principal’s room, presented our cheers to the other teams (my team won, yay!), and hung out at the resort’s amusement park (seriously, I can’t figure this place out. It’s ridiculous, in such great ways. See my Facebook for pictures.). There’s a little roller-coaster, a tilt-a-whirl, bumper cars, and a Disney Princess-themed merry-go-round which I absolutely must ride because how freaking awesome is that.

Dinner was the type of food that we normally eat at school for lunch, which I love (meat, rice, vegetables—can’t go wrong). After dinner we went to the resort’s hot spring! I didn’t go in because I didn’t feel like changing out of my clothes and into a bathing suit (seriously, for no other reason than I just didn’t feel like changing), so I chatted with a few students and read a book while everyone splashed around.

For one of the first times ever, I had the experience of being in the “cool” room/cabin. We had free time between the hot springs and going to bed, and kids kept coming in and out, and a bunch stayed to hang out. I felt like a cool chaperon, reading my book with the buzz of happy children in the background.

There were multiple water gun fights throughout the day, with water guns the students “bought” from the principal’s room. I didn’t realize it would be such a huge thing, and I’m definitely going to get one tomorrow so I can play.

A nice part of being in such an easygoing environment is that whenever an activity ends early, we have free time. Basically I spent a lot of today reading, listening to North American television in Chinese, and hanging out with kids. To borrow a phrase from the then-future frat boys from my high school, “It was chill.”

“Everyone in this room is too young to be sexy.”

Tuesday, July 15^th, 2014

Grr. Everyone woke up earlier than I anticipated, but at least they were quiet. I guess they weren’t also up half the night trying not to scratch the fifty-five mosquito bites (not kidding or exaggerating at all) they got on their legs and left elbow yesterday.

*Edit: I’m beginning to think they are ant bites. I sat outside to read yesterday and a swarm of little black ants ran around me. The bites aren’t fading as fast as mosquito bites usually do if I don’t scratch them, either.

Field games were successful. Most of the students had a great time. A few students fell, or got hurt in other ways, or didn’t feel like playing for one reason or another. We had a watermelon-eating contest and hula hoop races. We also played “Swim, Fishies, Swim” and a game where the students had to jump over a line if the word fit the category (for example, if the category was “Things we can eat”, and the teacher said “Watermelon”, then the students would jump to the O, but if the teacher said “Table”, then the students would jump to the X. If they jumped to the wrong side, a teacher would write an X on their arm with face crayons).

One student started bleeding during that game (probably from a bug bite, because he didn’t seem to be in pain or notice anything wrong), and I cracked up while watching a teacher crouch behind him and attempt to mop up the blood with a tissue whenever he jumped back to her side. What troopers!

After lunch we had our first English session. I taught a bunch of eleven-year-olds (I am, as usual, guessing their ages) about the solar system. They were bored, but paid attention for the most part. I started off the lesson with the Coke and Mentos trick, but with one of those baby cans of Coke (I guess my supply list wasn’t read correctly). Anyway, it was still great. One Mento made it fizz, and then the students kept egging me on so I put the rest of the mini-pack into the mini-can.

We were supposed to go to a Sky Bridge, but it was raining so we took a tour of the resort’s grounds on a shuttle, and then chilled out for a while until dinner. I walked around and took pictures after dinner.

“Are you excited to walk on the sky?”

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Alternative Title: “Shawn, Jeremy, and Stanley: You all were great, but after a year of having you in my class, I am so excited to hit you in the face with a pillow.”

Today we played more field games (volleyball and more relay races). The teachers even ran one against the students! We went on the Sky Walk and Sky Bridge (see my Facebook for pictures). It was pretty cool—we got there by going straight up part of the mountain that the resort is on by riding a small cable car system. When we finally got to the Sky Bridge, the view was amazing. We were in the mountains, so that was most of the view, but if the other mountains weren’t there we could have seen forever.

We had a barbecue for dinner. In the span of three hours I was entrusted simultaneously with fire, beer, one of the grills (each table had two small grill areas), and children’s safety. It was one of those “is this real life?” moments. I sat there holding the beer for a few minutes in utter disbelief, even after watching one of the other teachers, who was there with her five-year-old daughter, drink her beer while wandering around the cooking area.

AFTER DINNER WE HAD A PILLOW FIGHT. I LIVE IN THE COOL ROOM AND WE HAD A PILLOW FIGHT WITH THE PRINCIPAL AND IT WAS AWESOME. This is everything pre-pubescent and adolescent Becca dreamed of during those years of being afraid to go to overnight camp for fear of getting desperately lost on the campgrounds and getting yelled at by counselors for not being in the right place at the right time (I was a nervous kid, okay? Also, I did get desperately lost every time I tried out overnight camp as a child. My sense of direction hasn’t improved much since.).

I learned how to say “zombie” in Chinese (jiangshi), because after the pillow fight ended and the principal and the other students left the room, my kids turned on a zombie movie. Oh, and from one of the relay races earlier, I’m pretty sure 7UP is qisui.

“I open at the close.”

Thursday, July 17^th, 2014

Nothing about this trip was Harry Potter-related, but I like the quote so it stays. Today was the last day! We had our final games, a big lunch, and our glorious closing ceremony where a few kids burst into tears from the heat (it was one of those days). The resort had a little haunted house, so we went there while we were waiting for an area we needed for the closing ceremony to open.

One of the games this morning was a treasure hunt in the small hot spring area (cold springs during the day). I hadn’t bothered to put on a bathing suit because I didn’t think I would get wet, but then I waded in up to my knees in one pool while the students were hunting in the other, and then we all started to play, so obviously I had to get completely soaked from head to toe, because how else would I know if I were having fun? But really, it was a ton of fun.

After the closing ceremony we FINALLY got on the bus and left around 3pm, and were back at school by 4:15pm. Now it is 4:45pm and I am HOME HOME HOME! It was a great trip, so much better and less stressful and tear-inducing than I anticipated, but I’m still so ridiculously happy to be back in the BatCave.