I went for breakfast for the first time this week. In fact, it was pretty good. Ate quickly, came back upstairs to wake up the guys. Keli'i was supposed to eat breakfast with me, but he couldn't quite make it. I was a little late for class, but so was the teacher-- no demerits for me. I was disappointed to see that the teacher left the words on the test up on the board during the test. All that memorizing for not!
Instead of folk arts, we all had heritage class. My heritage class was sword fighting. Unfortunately, I had one of the classes which had to perform for the closing ceremonies, so everything we were learning was going to be done in front of everybody. Just great. After 1/2 an hour, I told the teacher in Taiwanese that I was left-handed. Some of the things we were learning didn't look correct when I did them. Looks like I'll be doing all these tricks right handed now.
We had an excursion that afternoon. My group, Group A, went to visit the Martyr Shrine and the fine arts museum. I took a couple of pictures at the shrine. The only thing that happened there was the changing of the guards. I refused to take a picture of that!
It started to rain during the trip over to the fine arts museum. Of course when we got there, it rained even harder. Our bus counselor, Andee (I hate her!), took us in sets of 3 under an umbrella. I met up with Del inside. The first while was spent downstairs in the cafeteria with Del, Henry and Allan. (Allan was a guy that I met playing cards in the 3rd floor lobby one night.) We were trying to knock off each respective person's coin from the table. Our game attracted a lot of attention.
There was a disturbing picture up on the third floor, in the sexuality exhibit. I was shocked to see how permissive the government was with the material inside the place. The picture had a real picture of a hermaphrodite being disemboweled. Another piece of "art" was a dartboard case housing a naked Barbie with a background collage of pornographic pictures.
We got back to camp early, since most of
the sights were in close proximity. I ate another hefty meal with Wil and
Henry. Had to eat rice over the macaroni stuff they served. The talent
show was tonight. There was some really good acts.
There was a duet, one of whom resembles
another cousin of mine; the other was a person I met when I first went
karaoke-ing. They did a song from Miss Saigon. Jack led the Mission:
Impossible inspired skit. What caught my attention was a one-man imitation
of the British troupe, Stomp. He was quite a showman. The student
committee skit was last. Like I said before, Elaine was my "arms." She
shaved, gelled, brushed teeth, and fed noodles to me. Many people thought
it was funny. My suspicions of Elaine's "friendliness" grows wary. Albeit
she's from Sarnia... [edited]
A picture of myself getting humiliated
at the talent show...
We actually made it back for bed check.
Signed up for the return to Taipei from Ocean this coming weekend. Ma is
going to pick me up tomorrow at 10am. I can get out of here so that I can
start shopping for Tommy stuff, computer wares, etc. The guys, Del and
Henry, went out to KTV with Mike, the U of M grad.
Class was the same old, same old. I got back to the room to wake people up, but most were already up. Keli'i was feeling ill so I helped him get a sick leave pass. Ma was already in the lobby so Keli'i got to meet my mother. Ma also got a chance to see what kind of squaller we live in. I also had a chance to pick up my laundry and my suit (no need for it anymore).
The first place we went to was great-uncle's apartment. Got a bit to eat and got my clothes washed. The laundry detergent there has starch built into the formula. That's why Henry's t-shirt collars got f_cked up when they hang-dry them...
After all that was completed, my mom took me to the electronics Mecca of Taipei in the afternoon. To my disappointment, there was no pirated CD-ROMs there. Apparently, the Taiwanese government has been cracking down with the counterfeit stuff, probably due to the stupid American companies. One salesperson told me that the English stuff there costs much more than back home. (What a surprise!) While window shopping, I couldn't believe the amount of hentai stuff the shopkeepers kept in stock. We went back to the apartment once we ate some desert, red bean ice.
That evening, aunt Sochiko had us over
for a dinner. We headed over to my other aunt, "Shock Lei", for another
dinner. I was so stuffed! Ma and I stayed over at their place because the
A/C was working there. (My great-uncle's A/C was on the fritz.) However
the one downside-- the bathing arrangement. I don't understand why in the
Far East why they don't have shower curtains. It took me about 5 minutes
to figure out how to minimize the water splashing. Another question: What's
with the pail?! We had to get some sleep that night because we had an early
day ahead of us.
We were headed to the interior of Taiwan, in the mountainous region. It took about an hour to get to a rest stop. My little "cousin" got car sick and puked a couple of times in the bus. It got so bad that she had the "dry-heaves". But the great thing about kids-- they bounce right back. She was fine after a while. However, the major goal of the trip was not attainable-- the road up to La-La-San was washed out by the rainstorm from the night before. The remainder of the day was driving around to find various temples, etc. I took pictures here and there.
Got back to the camp at around 7:30pm.
Still have many things to do tonight before sleeping.
Previous entry