Companion

For some reason, a few of the exchangers got residency cards that expired in January. Luckily, I was not one of them. Heloisa and William were however. So when my host mom invited me to go with them to change their cards, we all assumed it was because we would spend the day together. As it turns out my host mom had to work afterwards and we have no idea why they asked me to come. It turned out okay though. Heloisa and I had seen on some of our classmates’ instagram that there was a giant, inflatable art piece (called “Companion”) at the Chiang Kai-Shek. Neither of us had anything better to do so we decided to check it out.  To be honest, I thought the giant was kind of scary and a bit strange. He was dressed like Mikey Mouse but with just shades of gray, but he has a human skull for a head. We took pictures with him anyway. The most interesting part for me was when we went into the memorial hall. Lots of seemingly random videos were. One of those videos was of a post-World War II Nazi rally in the US. It was quite surprising! It was in English, American flags were flying along side swastikas, and a Jewish man was dragged on to stage and beaten. After the video I had two questions. First, why had I never seen this before? Second, why was it playing here? Those questions are yet to have answers but I am glad to have seen that tape and learned a little piece of American history, regardless of the strange setting.

Thanks for reading

Autumn Crisovan, 丁晚秋