Dragon Boat Races

Today drug on forever. We met at nine and took cars to the Dragon Boat Festival in Kaoshiung. Before we went to the boat races we visited the Kaoshiung Museum of History. It was interesting, and a little creepy at the same time. The first room we stepped in to had a bunch of hand puppets that would terrify me if I was a kid.

More creepiness happened after the puppet room in the museum. Ryan and I were walking around and this lady started talking to us in Chinese about exhibit pieces. I had seen her earlier talking to Tin-Man so I naturally thought she was with our group somehow. I was so wrong. She was just some random lady that singled Ryan out and wanted to talk to him about the museum. She kept on tugging on his shirt and pants though to explain materials to us (in Chinese). As soon as she walked out of the room we ran the other way downstairs. Later we were walking around and saw her again but we eluded her with some tactical evacuation maneuvers.

After the museum tour was finished we walked to the river to watch the dragon boat races. There was a festival going on the riverside and people had booths set up with games and food. It was interesting to watch, but the heat was so distracting. Then JR makes the lame wish for it to rain so everyone can cool off. Sure enough it started raining on us less than a minute later. At first it was nice and felt good, then it started pouring down on us. At this point it just felt uncomfortable, but then the rain stopped and the sun came out. I think this is where I started to get the sun burn that I am feeling now.

To cool off we walked around and found some shade, then met back up with the group and drove to the beach. The beach was really dirty with litter which detracted from the black sand, but it was still fun to walk around. We are going to take a trip to some beach in a couple of weeks with the students from Shu-Te. I think we are going to stay in a beach house and relax (it's not like we don't do that now though).

By the beach there was a small market that we explored. There was a pot bellied pig on a leash that I think was a pet, so I pet it. It felt really bristly and dry.

We left the beach and went to McDonalds for dinner. I feel a little ashamed, but only on the inside. The burger was good.

Pictures from Taipei

Alright, I'm back

I've been gone for a while. Yesterday we got back from a six day trip to Taipe. I had a really great time, but no internet. I am going to have to put up a huge post about it, but right now is not the time.

Today we didn't have ceramics class because the students that are teaching us were still in Taipe cleaning up from the YODEX convention. We did have glass class however. We worked on making more stuff out of clay today for the glass casting. Next week we are going to make the plaster molds and whatnot. After class Matt, Ryan and I went to town with Tin-Man. He had to get a tire patched, and then we ate at KFC. It's funny that I have had KFC twice already while on this trip but I haven't eaten KFC in the United States since high school. The KFC over here has some crazy dessert that is amazing and addicting. It is made out of eggs(?), and tastes a little like coffee to me.

After dinner I went to the library with the guys and attempted to get some sketching done since we haven't done any real work for studio in a while and the deadline is coming up soon. I feel like my ideas and sketches are horrible right now. I should feel inspired after seeing all of the cool designs at the convention in Taipe, but I just feel lazy instead.

The library closes at ten every night, which is really early compared to Auburn's library which closes at 2. I've never needed to stay at Auburn's library for a long time, but now that I need to stay in one, it closes on me!

Ryan and Matt brought their ping pong paddles with them so we went down to the room for about an hour after sketching and played. Well, they played. I am so unbelievably horrible at ping pong compared to them. I spend more time retrieving the ball than hitting it.

Bowling

We had studio today again from 1 to 5. That shot the whole day. Afterwards we decided to go into town and have KFC and go bowling. Great combination.




I think bowling alleys are the same worldwide: sketchy. This one looked so old and nasty. There was a second story that was no longer in use. I went upstairs to take some pictures of everyone and there was nasty mold all over the ceiling and the floor looked like it would cave in on me.







Bowling was fun, I am horrible at it though. After a while I sat around with Matt and Ryan and took pictures of us making faces. Matt has a separate folder on his computer for all the "face pics" he takes. Kathy, do you recognize the face they are making?

Ryan made it special for you...

The Lottery

Apparently there is a lottery associated to the receipts we get for everything we purchase. Nobody told us this initially, but we suspected the receipts were valuable when Kevin left his with his trash at the food court in the mall. The cleaning lady came by to take our food, and got really excited when she figured out Kevin didn't want his receipt.

We asked Tin-Man about the receipts, and were informed that the back of the receipts have a lottery number on them. The government has a lottery every one or two months (I'm not sure which right now) to help with taxes. Even foreigners can participate.

So now I have a bunch of receipts piled up on my desk from all the water and other little things I've bought. Maybe I will win the lottery over here.

Lazy Day

Today I didn't do much. I slept in, then got up and did research. Then I went and hung out with the guys. We tried to get a Taiwan student to take us into town, but they all had their own work to do. So Matt and Ryan and I walked around campus for a while, then went back to the dorms to watch a motorcycle race.

I have never sat through a motorcycle race (I usually see rallies, or parts of them at least); this one was pretty entertaining. One guy was winning, but his motor blew so he had to quit the race. That kind of loss sucks, he was dominating the whole time, and then he had to bow out. I feel like he was robbed of his win, and if I won because someone else had technical issues, I wouldn't feel like my victory was earned.

Ping Pong

Today I slept in pretty late. It felt nice except for the air conditioning loss that started at 7 am. I rolled out of bed, showered, cried a little on the inside over the downed internet, then met the guys for lunch.

After lunch I played some ping pong with Matt and Ryan. They are lot better than I am. They can put some crazy spin on the ball. I am still learning to keep it on the table.

After we got our fill of that, we decided to go hang out in the air-conditioned library. They have a DVD library downstairs, and movie rooms. We checked out Phenomenon and headed into our own movie room. The benches were unbelievable uncomfortable. Sitting hurt after a while, so I laid down. When that started hurting, I'd have to change back. Maybe they made them uncomfortable on purpose so people wouldn't go down there just to sleep in an air-conditioned room.

Right after the movie we decided to play a little basketball. I had to go change, and when I got up to the courts all the guys were already playing a full on game. I jumped in and almost immediately elbowed one of the guys (Kevin) in the throat. Whoops. He probably needed that though to keep him in check; he has a superiority complex. I seriously didn't mean to though.

The game was pretty intense, and really exhausting. Afterwards we played some horse, and a game of 21. I haven't played those games in so long, but I can still sink some shots. I was putting away the 3 pointers. On a side note, I don't think very many girls play sports around here. Cliff's roommate Ben came out and played basketball. He was amazed that I was out there.

Friday

For the last two days our internet has been down. This is bad for two reasons, one being that I can't communicate with people, and two being I have a LOT of research to do for studio. I think I will share my last two days though before I buckle down on the research.

Yesterday (Friday), we went on a field trip back to Tainin ( I think that's how it's spelled). We went first to a man's furniture gallery. All of his furniture was beautiful. It was hand crafted with solid wood, and it is my understanding that the wood it so hard that it could not be joined with nails, which added that much more to the value of the furniture. Some of the joints were really complex looking.

The next room we went into had smaller furniture pieces, and a lot of bowls/containers. Some professor owned this space and had taken all of the scrap wood thrown out and made things with it. These pieces were beautiful as well.

All within this complex was the furniture gallery, the other gallery with the scrap wood, and also a museum of old furniture that the owner had collected. I like some of the more modern Chinese furniture that he made, but the antiques he collected were too ornate for my taste. They were pretty in their own way though, and had an impressive presence.

This portion of the field trip was enjoyable, but could have been improved. The owner didn't speak English, so we were partially bored when he stood around and talked, which may have came across to him as us not interested in his life's work (not true at all). Tin-Man translated sometimes for us, every time he stopped to translate for us he would miss the next thing the guide was saying, so he stopped doing that after a while.

After lunch, we got back on the bus and headed towards the final destination. We went to a design firm and watched a presentation on the things the firm designed. This didn't hold my attention very well, merely because I have been to several firms already, and this one seemed exactly like the previous ones I visited, just with different products. They had a messy creative space, with fun toys, and annoyed workers trying to ignore all of us walking around in their space.

We got back on the bus, which by the way had karaoke. Apparently everyone over here loves to sing on bus rides. The videos looked straight up out of the 80s, and who knows what the songs were about. It was fun though.

The some of the Taiwan students were going to see the Davinci Code later, so we decided to tag along. It was in the city, so we all had to take cabs (kind of expensive just to see a movie). We got to Kaosheung really early, so we went to the night market they have every night. It was enjoyable. Ryan and I tried some "barbecued" chicken. We had some legs, heart, and bladder. We didn't know that the bladder was in fact bladder, we were hoping for liver. The heart was actually pretty good, I didn't try the bladder. Ryan had to spit his out because he said it tasted like gristle.

After we ate we walked through the market and wasted time until the movie. They had a nice theater in Kaosheung. The seats were assigned when you bought your tickets, which was somewhat cool. I guess it is good for the theater; they can easily identify if someone is in a seat they didn't pay for. As for the movie, I really liked it. I think they nailed the characters, and it was really close to the book. A+

We got back from the movie really late, I think it was around 2 am. I felt really back waking up my roommates, but they seemed ok with it.

Pointless

We had studio today at 1, so even though I planned on getting up really early to do work, I slept in. Tin-Man wanted us to do research with our group members in class. Every auburn student had to walk back to the dorms to get laptops. Then when we got back with the computers, nobody could connect to the internet, so pointless!

Eventually we got internet, but it took a while, and most groups just went to the library instead. On a quick side note, I think people just go to the library for the air conditioning during the day, I always see so many people passed out in the chairs.

Anyways, three of us sat around the computer looking for new technologies for our project. I dislike this kind of group work because there is only so much you can find at one time with three people on one computer. It is much more efficient (in my opinion) for everyone to go do their own research and then compile everything.

Another thing that made the research hard was the language barrier. It is always getting in the way of things. So I had to research, explain, make sure I was understood, then we had to decide if the article was what we needed. Meanwhile the internet connection is slow just to add that last little zinger.

After class we went to a cafe on campus called 37 1/2 degrees. It is a little American style oasis in the middle of all the Chinese food. I'm not really sure about the name of the place, but the food is ok. It tastes really bland compared to the food we have been eating.

Pool followed dinner, which was very very cheap. I believe we played for around two hours. There were ten of us, and we each paid about $1.20 (US), 12 dollars total! And we took up three tables! There is so much to do here... I guess there is just as much in Auburn, it just seems like more here because we are trying to make the most of our time.

Typhoon, runnnnn!!

Last night there was a storm, but I hardly noticed it. I am worn out every night and pass out almost immediately. I go to bed with the lights still on; I have no idea when my roommates turn them out. They are pretty quiet at night, which I like. I think they are a bit older than us, more mature, less crazy, whatever.

Apparently there is a typhoon on it's way though. I don't know how concerned I should be, nobody is running around like they are going to die so I guess we will be ok. I like the typhoon weather; there are some nice breezes on campus now that cool everything down a little. I give this typhoon a tentative A+.

So today we had more craft classes. Metal jewelry class was first, then Chinese painting. Metal class was weird because they told us to cut a shape out of copper with saws, showed us how, then left us alone. I need more direction than that... Why am I making this thing? If it is going to hang around my neck I want to know in advance, so I don't make something hideous. But no, they never told us what it's for.

After that we had lunch and played more ping pong until Chinese painting class. I am getting better at ping pong ever so slowly. It was fun today though because Cliff and JR's roommate came and played with us. He is a male cheerleader, and very fun to be around. I think he has about the same sense of humor as all of us so he melds right in.

Chinese painting class was hard for me. They taught us how to write our names and other random words. There is a certain stroke order that must be followed, and each stroke has to be perfect the first time because touch-ups are frowned upon. The students were teaching us how to write our names, but I feel like there was a lot of theory that was left out dues to language barriers. Maybe they will try and teach us later, I would like to know.

Squatting toilets

I was so confused when I walked into one of the public bathrooms and there was a squatting toilet in the stall. It looked so awkward and unsanitary. Needless to say I decided to hold out for a normal toilet somewhere else.

Luckily there are normal toilets in our dorm room, and in nicer facilities such as malls. Oh yea, and there are handicap bathrooms that have normal toilets. My goal is to never have to use one of them, because they freak me out beyond belief.


The guys are less fortunate than us about the toilets. We are in the honors dorms, and they are in the regular dorms. (See people, it pays to study hard, you get rewarded with a good toilet!) They were just as confused as I about the whole squatting thing, so they went to the store and bought lawn chairs. They cut a hole in the middle of the chair, and just take it with them when duty calls; ingenious. Our professor fell on the floor laughing when he found out what they bought the chairs for.

The Beds

These dorm beds are so hard. It is a piece of wood, with a mat on top of it. They also came with a blanket, which I put on top of the mat for extra padding, but it's not enough to make me forget that I'm not on a mattress.

The only two comfortable sleeping positions is on my back or stomach; if I lay on my side I feel like I am bruising my hip.

Crafty

Today we started our craft classes. I had ceramics first, followed by glass class.

Ceramics was hard, I haven't working with clay in a looooong time, and even then it's not like I was great at it. We started off making an ash tray, followed by a tea pot. Our teachers were three industrial design students who were deemed exceptionally good in ceramics. Communication was a little difficult, but most of the time the message got through.

Glass class was more work with clay. We had to create a flower (composition) out of a clay square. Later the piece we carved is going to be set into a plaster mould, then we will take use the plaster mould and pour in melted glass to make our piece (called glass casting).

Tomorrow we have Chinese painting and [metal] jewelry class. I am really excited about Chinese painting class in particular, I think we are going to learn with their traditional brushes and learn some cool technique.

After classes and dinner, I went and worked out with some of the guys on the trip. Some of the things I see blow my mind. For example, in the work-out room there were guys and girls wearing jeans and outfits that I would never ever work out in. It doesn't seem like they were serious at all about it. One girl was sitting on the exercise bike just watching TV, no peddling, just watching. GO HOME! You don't need to be paying to work out if you are just going to watch TV.

So much to do!

Today was pretty busy for me. I got up at 6:20 to go meet Matt and Ryan for tennis at 7. Got out there, and they were late by 30 minutes. I thought that they weren't going to come at all, but they pulled through.

We walked down to the courts past an old, gutted military plane that the university is going to turn into a restaurant apparently. Every door we got to was locked with some ghetto bent metal, but finally we found an unlocked court. We played on clay courts for the first time. They were a little uneven, which made the game more interesting I guess.

After about an hour this guy came up to us ( I thought we were in trouble), and asked us to move down because he had to teach a class. He was really nice though; later he came up to us and asked us to join the tennis team in practices later so we could get better. I think we will try and make it when we can.

After tennis we went back and I hung out around the dorms for a while until our "welcome party". We had to take a bunch of pictures and listen to the professors give speeches. Food followed.

The food around here is pretty good by the way. There is some stuff that I don't think I will try (because it smells so nasty), but it is totally different from American Chinese food. Some of it doesn't seem that healthy, but I don't think it really matters since we sweat so much during the day while we are walking.

Anyways, after the meeting we had to go back to the dorms to get our internet set up. I am very happy that I have internet again, I think if I had an addiction the internet would be it. I feel very disconnected when I can't get on whenever I want.

After we got that set up, I had dinner with Jay and Laura and an entourage of 20 people from their floor. They were a giggling mess of girls with limited english. It was pretty funny to see us all walking to the cafeteria together. Everyone stares at us, especially Jay and Laura because of their blonde hair. It is a little weird, but hey, we're the minority so I guess that's what we get.

After dinner our Auburn class went to a concert. There is not an english translation (zhen?) that anyone could give us for the instruments that were played, but they were so pretty. They reminded me of the hammer dulcimer that my dad has, except longer.

Shu-Te

I am in Taiwan!

Well, I have been here for 4 days, but the internet access is limited right now, and my roommate has been kind enough to let me use her computer.

The flights were crazy; the longest one took 15 hours and we were all packed in tight. There are only a couple of things to do on a plane. Sleep, watch the movies, or eat. And the eating part is more out of boredom than the actual need for food.

By the way, on my links area, there is a link to the pictures from the trip that our professor has taken; check them out.

Roll Out

Today I leave for Taiwan. I think our professor said the total travel time is somewhere around 30 hours with lay-overs and such. What am I supposed to do for 30 hours?!?! Hopefully I can sleep through it all.

You might be thinking to yourself, is Jen nervous? Well, a little yes. Not about the flight though. I am just anxious to get over there and get settled. I want to meet some new people, try some different food, and design something cool.

We are staying in Southern Taiwan, at Shu-Te University, in Kaohsiung. It's pretty close to the ocean, so hopefully we will get to make a couple of beach trips.

Oh, and on a side note: I got a summons for jury duty today! How that happens on the day I am leaving for another country, who knows. It's for June 14th, so I guess I won't be going to that one (plus I'm a little young aren't I?).

Bag Tags

When we went to Ireland last year, the teacher made some pretty cool bag tags for everyone so our luggage was easier to identify when we were having to get it on an off trains, buses, and airplanes.

Now I realize that we are going to be doing considerably less travelling in Taiwan
, but us Ireland kids realized the coolness of being able to tell that a bag belonged to the group without looking for names.

So Here it is, our bag tags for Taiwan 2006, created by yours truely and Ryan Yearwood. (We're just happy that they don't suck)