abby's diary

9. 3-30-08 We started our day in Tau Yuan County with a wonderful (and huge) breakfast cooked by Francis. She brought over dish after dish of traditional Chinese breakfast food to Balloon’s house. We headed to the Chang Kai Shek memorial museum for a short amount of time. We learned that he was the leader of Taiwan for quite sometime and implemented a lot of the infrastructure his son took over leadership after his death.

Next we went to the Dasi Town Hall. Dasi is a sister city of Kernersville NC. We came as representatives for Kernersville for a small presentation and gift exchange. Each of the GSE team members was presented with a hand painted toy top. Dasi is known for this toy. It was defiantly a very special present. We then headed to lunch with the mayor and some other representatives from Dasi. In the afternoon, we toured a historical home that has been surprisingly well maintained throughout the years. It is a traditional Chinese residence. I recently re-read the book The Good Earth and I fell like the house we toured was similar to what I had read about. It was great to get to put a mental image to the novel I loved.

We then traveled to an orchid garden. The flowers were so beautiful. The group had a wonderful time learning about the different flowers, and taking many photographs.

We headed to dinner and then back home for some sleep.