Abby's diary 1

I have been trying to keep up with all of our fun on the computer... but as you will see soon, we have been kept so busy that it is hard to keep up with all the action. I am at least 2 days behind! I though I would share my account of our day to day activities. Sadly my camera was lost/stolen on Thurs, so I have no photos to add, but I am sure others will be able to fill in the gaps on photos I may have lost.

Enjoy!

Trip to Taiwan

Mar 22 – Apr 18

1. We arrived at the airport around midnight. Greeted by over 20 people. They had made us a huge sign, and a lot of smiling faces. I was so surprised that so many people came to greet us. It was definitely a wonderful way to be welcomed! They brought us to the hotel, and by that time I was so exhausted that I went right to bed.

2. We had the first day off to rest and get used to the time change. It was well needed as my internal clock was all off. We did take a small tour over to the big department stores. And got to try our first lunch of street noodles. They were delicious. That night there was a reception dinner for us at the hotel. Many of the presidents of the rotary clubs we were going to be visiting came. It was nice to have more time to get to talk to everyone. I really felt welcomed. The hospitality here is exceptional. After dinner, we got our first opportunity to give our presentation. They all really seemed to like it, which was good news as we weren’t sure it would pass the language barrier.

3. Our first full day was a whirlwind. We met our first house hosts in the morning to exchange our luggage. Then it was off to the Tao Yuan government buildings. They told us of their future plans of expansion and ways they hope to modernize. We got to see a few videos about how healthcare works and take a tour of the facilities.

Then we left to go to the tea museum in Ping ling. Once in the town, we tried some local food “country”. Everything was delicious, my favorite meal by far at this point. We followed the motorcade of cars on to a local teahouse, where we learned how to brew green tea, both hot and cold. Jason, our GSE host, was gracious enough to get us all a bag a cold brew green to enjoy back at home. I don’t normal like tea, but here it is delicious. Next we headed to the Tea museum where our guide was very excited to tell us all about the history of tea. He didn’t speak English, but his expressions were so grand that we could usually follow what he was trying to say without knowing the language. Also we have been lucky to have at least one or two people in the group that speak enough English to make a general translation.

For dinner we drove deeper into the mountains to a tiny restaurant at the bottom of a valley. We had time before dinner, so we walked to the stream to skip rocks and all took a nice walk to see the beauty of the mountains. I think it will be hard to top the natural beauty of the mountains. And we could see where all sorts of teas were planted.

We ate a fabulous and huge meal, the plate after plate after plate of amazing and also surprising food. I now have eaten whole little fish. Head, bones and all it took some coaxing but eventually the entire team tried it. And it turned out to be all right. I actually had a couple more! Then when we thought the food was done they brought out some more desserts and food! I soon learned this will be typical of my Taiwan dinners, so I will no longer have any seconds, because there is sure to be more food to come! I learned (thanks to Kim) that HO Talla! Means “bottoms up” in mandarin. And pretty much everyone has to shoot the rest of his or her drinks. Tonight it was rice wine, and after enough shots, and some with the owner of the restaurant, we were pushed to sing karaoke. It took some coaxing, and almost forcing, but we got up on stage as a team to sing the YMCA. Although our singing was awful, we definitely had audience support because by the middle of it, it seemed the whole restaurant was participating.

And you would think it would be the end of the night… but NO! Our hosts had another treat in store for us. Wish lanterns. We each got a paper lantern to right our wish on and had to decorate it with all the wishes we wanted. Then they help us to light each, and after they filled up like a hot air balloon, we sent them into the sky. They were so beautiful. Sadly my first attempt to let one go, turn into a fiasco as the lantern suddenly caught fire and burned like a big fireball. (They were just Pam’s wishes, so nothing too bad was lost!)

After all this fun and next experiences, it was time to head back to our host families. And while the rest of the team settled into more mellow families, I was taken to one of the Rotarians TV stores. They had made their own little welcome party for me! I was so exhausted at first, it had been a long day, but it was so exciting to talk to all the new people that it was definitely worth the lack of sleep. They were all excited tot talk to me, and I found out later, that many had never seen a real red head before, so they were extra interested. I was lucky to have a couple girls there that spoke great English, so they were able to translate for the evening. It was almost 1:30 AM at this point… and after a lot of back and forth, I was able to finally make it into bed. Phew!
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I will try my best to continue this diary style blog, for both my records of the trip, and for you all to share. Hopefully I can have some more time to write before I forget it all!