Last weekend with first host family

Technically I’ll still be in this family next weekend but Sophia won’t be there so this feels like the last weekend. We started the weekend at our Cousin’s house. One of my cousins is an amazing baker. She goes to a high school for baking, meaning she bakes all day and then comes home and bakes more. We got to try cookies, tarts, and rolls this time. The eldest daughter is pretty funny from what I can understand. The youngest, a boy, is a pretty normal kid who likes to play and mess around. Long story short, they’re retry cool cousins:) The next day we went to 中台禅寺. I didn’t understand the tour guide but it was still a really cool place to visit. I learned quite a bit about Buddhism in Taiwan. For example, I had no idea women could be monks! The next place we visited was Hehuanshan or 合歡山, Taiwan’s highest road. It was freezing but completely worth it. We arrived just before the sun set. I’m so used to mountains now I forget to appreciate them sometimes. I remember the first time I climbed Elephant mountain, my first week here, I was in awe. Indiana is in no way precipitous and I think that will be something I will miss when I return home. Our final stop was an “American” style steak restaurant. It may have been served on top of noodles but still. It was so good! I would have been happy to eat the bread alone! Don’t get me wrong, I like Taiwanese bread but because it’s steamed it’s spongy. The bread at this place though, oh god. 
Thanks for reading,
Autumn丁晚秋

We started the trip at 中台禅寺 or Chung Tai Chan Monastery.

The monastery was an amazing display of wealth and faith. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside so this has to be something one experiences in person.

Behind the lion guard you can make out some of one of the giants.  There was a  statue like this at each corner of the room and each had four heads.

Bringing Christmas to Taiwan

Christmas is tricky because for a lot of people it is a religious holiday. In Taiwan, most people are Buddhist so of course they don’t celebrate a Christian holiday. Christmas here is pretty lights, deals in stores, music, and a religion that they don’t practice. The thing is Christmas is not just about Jesus for a lot of people. Christmas is about appreciating the ones we love. It’s also about learning how to give, and it’s about tradition and culture.  Don’t get me wrong, the Christmas story is really beautiful and it lays the foundation for Christmas but being familiar with the Bible, I think that Jesus would be happy with families celebrating his birth by showing their love for each other and people being a bit more warm to one another. Even if they don’t believe in him. So knowing that Christmas is hard set in our traditions in the US I did my best to bring some with me. First, I arranged a secret Santa with my class. I had them all draw names two weeks before Christmas. Each of them was to find time to deliver one small present each week. When Christmas came we exchanged bigger presents. It went over beautifully! They had so much fun!  They actually had so much fun in the first two weeks that other classes also started secret Santas! My classmates also gave me a Christmas banner that they had all signed! The exchange students made Christmas cookies for our classmates and teachers to try. I made classic Christmas sugar cookies with cookie cutters my mom sent me. I received quite a few packages during Christmas time. They were all very nice. If you have a friend or family member going on exchange, even to a county that celebrates Christmas, I would definitely recommend sending a package. It let me know that they were thinking of me and each package brought a little bit of home to me. I also made stockings for my host family. Sophia didn’t come home until the weekend after Christmas so I gave them their stockings then. I worked hard on the stockings and they paid off. My family liked them a lot. It made me very happy to have given them a taste of how Christmas feels in the US.

Christmas where it isn’t celebrated

First of all I would like to apologize for not having blogged in so long. My computer stopped working and I just started using my phone instead. So no you’re not catching up on posts you missed I am. Blogger is just sneaky and I can set the date posted for any day I want. Anyway, me and the other exchange students any my school asked for both Christmas and Christmas Eve off. Rotary was going to take us somewhere on Christmas but we didn’t want to go to school on Christmas Eve either. For the others, Christmas Eve is a bigger deal then Christmas because that’s when they have the big dinner and open presents and Christmas Day they go to church. Our teacher was surprisingly lenient and let us have both days off. When Christmas Eve rolled around Elena, Heloisa, and I had pulled some strings and managed to arrange a sleepover at Elena’s. That turned out to be a very good idea. We started out by making food. Elena, making two traditional Lithuanian dishes, me making cupcakes for my upcoming secret Santa with my class, and Heloisa helping in anyway she could.  After making the food we watched a few movies. We did face masks and chatted. Whenever one of us would have a moment and be like “oh my god it’s Christmas Eve” the others would say something along the lines of, “at lest we’re together.” And however cheesy that may sound it was true because that was really hard. So after midnight I gave them my gifts. I gave them both a pair of chopsticks is shown that class that we made from Lake Michigan and an orange Chocolate bar. Heloisa gave me stickers for my water bottle and an orange bottle of white out because I’m always asking to use hers. I fell sleep on what was now, technically, Christmas morning all right. We are all fine even though it was her first Christmas away from our families.  Well I woke up I took a bus to Banqiao and met up with all the other exchange students. Much to our surprise, Rotary took us on a hike!  No one wanted to be on a hike on a hike on Christmas so everyone was complaining a bit. Although it was a quite beautiful trail and about halfway through there was a man playing the saxophone (on a hiking trail!?!)   It was Christmas and, damn it, this was not Christmasy! After hiking they took us to a mall. By then I had realized that the point of this trip was not to make up for missing Christmas it was to keep our minds off of it. It kind of worked. For some reason I found this day more mentally taxing then most of the others. So much so that I think I actually fell asleep at the coffee house we went to. After the mall we went to a party. It was a very nice party. There was lots of tasty food, a dance floor, couches, but it was pretty mellow because of the mood everyone was in, Near the end of the party we did a secret Santa gift exchange. I had a Brazilian girl who I had never talked to because she doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Portuguese. She liked my gift though! Much to my surprise, Elena had me. She got me a sticker for my water bottle, nice face masks, and cute socks. To wrap up, as far as Christmas away from home can go, this was a pretty good one.

Camping with my classmates

Friday morning I arrived at school a little before seven with my bag. I got on the bus with the rest of my classmates. On the way to the campground, one of the counselors taught us cheers. When we arrived we were lined up by class. If our counselor or student leader said stream we screamed if they said jump we jumped. We then followed army commands. Pretty much the equivalent to " attention" and "at ease" and a few others. In Taiwan, every man must spend two years in the army and many women do as well although, as far as I know, it's not a requirement like it is for men. Eventually, we switched to dancing. One of our classmates would go in front of everyone else and dance, everyone did exactly the same dance moves and each class got points for the best dancing. After all this, we had some pretty fun activities. There was this thing that pretty much was a giant teeter-totter that we put fifteen people on and tried to balance it out perfectly. We went zip lining and played paintball. Man, did I get blasted in paintball! There was paint all over my mask, I got hit in the leg, my hand, my shoulder, at one point my own teammate hit me in the back! But it sure was fun. We painted our faces with paint we made from charcoal. Unfortunately, it was really hot and our uniform was black pants and black long sleeves. This proved helpful in paintball but uncomfortable the rest of the day. We cooked our own dinner and there were dances performed by groups from each class. The dances were actually quite impressive and were very fun to watch. We danced some more, like before, everyone followed one person but this time there was glow sticks and a fire! By the end of the day, I was so exhausted it barely mattered that we were sleeping on hard floors. In the morning we went on a scavenger hunt in teams. We barbaqued for lunch, which was delicious. Turns out I'm really good at Taiwanese bbq I was especially helpful because I was the only one in our group who could lite a match. We made headbands out of rope that we used for a ceremony about becoming independent. At one point they called me up in front of everyone and had me follow a few commands. They gave me a little flag too. They said I was the first foreigner to complete the camp and I had done it really well! We had more dancing, I even led two songs! It was a lot of fun, quite the experience. Everyone sang karaoke the whole ride home. When I got home, after I showered because I smelled like sweat and smoke, it felt like I had been in a dream. Those two days were so different then what I'm used to it was hard to get my mind around it. But I sure am glad I went.

School lunch

In school, we do almost everything in our classroom, including eat. The women who make lunch leave the crates of food in the hall when we are ready to eat our classmates go and get them. We all eat a self-serve buffet style lunch. We bring our own containers, chopsticks, and spoons. There is almost always rice (because if you're not eating rice with lunch or dinner it's because you're eating noodles) and there's usually a meat dish and a vegetable dish to put on the rice, sometimes there is fruit as a side. When we finish the rice, meat, and veggies we fill our bowls with soup. Sometimes lunch like this is really tasty. Our lunch ladies make a mean fried chicken! Sometimes it's not so great, I'm not huge on kelp soup or little fish that are full of eggs. Once we get our lunch we can sit where ever we want. I just sit at my desk but some people sit on the floor or on their desk. After lunch, we have rest time. That's half an hour we can spend as we like as long as we're not talking. Sometimes I watch a show, sometimes I read, sometimes I sleep, it doesn't matter! It's great! Why don't we have nap time in high school in the US? Anyway, just something different that I thought would be interesting ;)
 

Banqiao Christmas Concert

Saturday there was a huge concert in Banqiao, a lot of major Asian singers were there. I figured since I've never seen a concert before, didn't have any other plans, and it was free I would go. The plan was to meet up with my host sister, Sophia when we get to Banqiao. But there were so many people that finding each other wasn't the problem, moving was. I actually ended up in a really good spot in the middle with a good view of the stage. Even though I couldn't understand the songs I still had a really good time. My favorites were BCW and 鄧紫棋. Miraculously we ended up at the same bus stop at the same time so we could ride home together. To be honest, when I first got there I was wishing I hadn't come. I'm glad I literally couldn't move to leave because when I decided to just relax and enjoy the performance I had a really good time.