Leaving on a Jet Plane

I am pretty sad, we are leaving today to go back to America. Everyone stayed up pretty late last night to hang out one last time, and they all looked heart broken. The people I have met and made friends with are so nice here, it feels like we developed really strong friendships for only being here two months.When I get back I will finish up this blog, recap on the past week or so that I didn't share yet, and give a summary of my thoughts.

It's over... almost

This weekend was extremely busy for all of us over in Taiwan. Today we presented our final models in studio, so all weekend was spent making the model. My two group members, Wendy and Adam, did an amazing job with the model. I learned some new techniques for cutting, and got reacquainted with the sunrise.

Craft Classes

Here are some of the things I have made in glass class and chinese painting. Enjoy!

I made it!

I am in my new dorm now, and feeling a little more relaxed about the move. The only bad thing I have noticed was a trail of ants walking from my computer desk and onto my closet. I think I got rid of them though, I haven't seen any since I wiped the area down.

The week is almost over, and then I only have one more week left before I come home. It seems crazy that I have been over here so long. I am ready to head back home though. It has been really hot here lately, reaching 102 degrees today! I feel bad for the guys because they had to move from a whole different building in the heat. Also, since last year's Auburn group did such a horrible job cleaning up after themselves last year, this year we were under a lot of pressure to make our areas spotless when we left.

Ryan and Matt's Taiwanese roommates left a huge mess that Ryan and Matt had to clean up. Luckily one of the professors came in and found out that the overall mess was not theirs and told them not to worry about it. Then, when they got to our dorm building, they had to move twice. At first they drug all of their stuff up to rooms on the third floor, only to be told that they had to relocate to the second floor. The room that Matt and Ryan moved into was even messier than the room they left in their old building, so they had to clean it up before they could even move in all the way. There was hair everywhere, dead bugs, etc. The cake topper was that when Ryan took a shower something scurried under the door into the shower with him and then disappeared into the drain. For all the trouble this dorm has put us through with moving a week before we leave, you would think they would at least have their stuff together and make sure we weren't moving from our comfortable rooms into disgusting messes.

What a Day

Last night we told one of our Cambodian roommates about us having to move rooms, and she got mad. She is staying the whole summer, and the other two girls are leaving their stuff even though they won't be there. So nobody is going to move in our room after we leave. She (Simorn) told us it was stupid to move (I agree) one week before we leave for America. So Simorn took us to the dorm managers office, along with two Taiwan student managers for backup. Simorn led the entourage outside to the office and confronted the lady in charge, and got her to agree to let us stay. But there was a catch, the lady in charge was not the final authority on the matter, another man was. Sadly for us he had already left campus for the night, so we had to wait until this morning to talk to him.

Sally and Katharine went to bed feeling confident that we wouldn't have to move. I felt a little nervous about the whole thing, so I packed my big suitcase to the brim, and did some general sorting this morning before class.

Sure enough, we got a call this morning from someone telling us the new room we had to move to. The thing that made everything difficult was that we had a metal class at 9 until 12, but we had to be out of our rooms and into the new one by 10. It ended up taking me 45 minutes to finish packing, and move all my stuff from one room to the next. They were right down the hall from eachother; my room number changed from 215 to 211. All Simorn could do was glare at the dorm staff for us.

Moving

For some strange reason, we have to move tomorrow. My roommates and I are going to be moving to somewhere in the same building, probably on the same floor. The guys have to move too, but they are moving from their building to ours because their building is closing. I have a lot of stuff everywhere, so this move is not going to be fun at all.

Also , the pig smells are coming in tonight. I have a theory that the school is feeding the pigs. When you get done with your food at the cafeteria, you have to put trash, food, and the plate/tray into separate trash cans. The food trash can is disgusting, and always full with nasty food that people didn't eat. I think it all gets passed over to the pig farm. Maybe they supply cheap pork to the university...

The rest of this week is going to be pretty hectic; tomorrow is the last day of craft classes and I have to work twice as hard because I missed the classes last week due to the internship.

Relaxing

Today was a great day to relax. We have been site seeing and working pretty hard lately, so today it was nice to just hang out.

The semester for the Taiwan students has already ended, and people are starting to move out of the dorms. Jay and Laura now have a room all to themselves. The downside to people moving out is that the convenience stores and cafeterias are closing down too. I think everyone is more upset about the Seven Eleven closing down though because we are always going there to get drinks and food. I bet we could keep them in the green if they stayed open just for us.

Cooking out and Site Seeing

I am getting a little behind on my posting, sorry guys. Here is the update on what I have been doing since I got back from NDD:

Friday morning we got up and went to KYMCO, a scooter/motorcycle/ATV company. We watched a short presentation on the company, and then they took us around the factory and told us about their process for making the vehicles. They are one of the largest manufacturers of scooters in the world, and can pump out Thousands of scooters a day. At one point we watched completed engines rolling off the line; every thirty seconds an engine is made (that seems so fast to me).

After the scooter tour finished we hopped back on the bus and headed back to school. Then, suddenly the bus stopped and everyone randomly decided to stay in the city since we were already there. So we all shuffled off of the bus and went to the mall. We ended up watching Cars, which was incredible.

After the movie we all met back up and went back to school to get ready for a cook out that was for all of the international students. My roommates (from Cambodia) had organized the whole thing, and did a pretty good job. When we walked up they were cutting fresh watermelon, and setting up grills. The grills were very small though and low to the ground, not what I was thinking of when they told us we were having a cook out.

The food was interesting, a lot of meat was cooked, and we drank green tea with it. Sally and Laura taught the other students the electric slide, and then the Sexuality Department came and brought us two baskets of free condoms, and candy shaped like viagra for the guys. This cook out was totally strange. We had no idea why they brought us the stuff; do they think that that is all the foreigners that come visit Taiwan do? I hope not...

There were some high points to the cook out. The green tea ended up tasting great, I played three on three soccer with the guys (and kicked butt), and the Auburn students taught everyone how to make S'mores.


Saturday:
On Saturday we went to a historical town called Meinong. The first thing we did was walk through a museum. It was alright as far as museums go. This town may be famous for their umbrellas, because after walking through the museum we took an umbrella craft class.

The umbrella class turned out different than I thought. We made paper umbrellas out of chop sticks and pre-made umbrella punch-outs. While we were making them the "teacher" played techno music that I haven't heard since high school. We all joked that this was the village's traditional music.

After we finished our beautiful paper umbrellas, we walked across the street to a market and had lunch and shopped. Tin-Man's wife (her name is pronounced Meow, like a cat) helped us order rice noodles for lunch. After we ate we got to go to the back kitchen and watch how the noodles are made. It was impressive how quickly they turned out noodles.

Having seen my fare share of noodles, I walked back out into the market. There was some interesting stuff there, but the second market that we went to after this one was even better. I was able to find a lot of neat souvenirs that seemed more authentic than other markets we have been to.

There was an old man at an instrument stand playing all sorts of music with whatever he felt like playing. He played everything from real instruments to newspaper and water bottles. Check out the video of him playing a saw-instrument.