Two days left

Megs:

Wow! Less than 48 hours - for the time zone I'm in, at least - before 2010 is over, and the New Year arrives!!! I suppose I should really get posting about my adventure in Taiwan - namely, the OCAC (can't remember what that stands for) Expatriate Youth Study Tour, or as I prefer, Around Taiwan in 21 Days for Overseas Taiwanese Kids.

The trip was AMAZING. My eyes have really opened, in the sense that I got to know heaps of students around, above and below my age in a non-studious setting (well, it's called a Study Tour, but when you don't have exams it doesn't count), from all over the globe; from places I'd never even heard of until three weeks ago, when I met them.

I formed close friendships with people from Australia, South Africa, Singapore, Mauritius, and of course New Zealand. Of course, back in Auckland, where exists a very multicultural society, I know wonderful people from all of these places (except Mauritius, which was new to me) and over the last three weeks they helped me to regain confidence and emerge more from a shyness or shell that I had lately been conscious of forming. Everyone was open, friendly, quirky and fun. A few of the crew:

The Team I was assigned to was #12.

Our leader was (and IS) an awesome, wacky and sometimes (self-determinedly) awkward guy by the name of Edmond. Except he hates this name, so we called him Jeff, because apparently he looks like some Taiwanese singer also called Jeff. Jeff bought a stuffed monkey on this tour, for which I volunteered to be responsible. Ergo, Team 12 became the Monkey Team, with Monkey Numbers 1 - 15. We were very good at our Sound-Off! I was #7.

The 180 or so students on this year's tour went round Taiwan in five massive tour buses. We were on Bus E, aka the Easy Bus! Complete with TV and a Karaoke set, at which some of the boys were very good at. (Girls: mostly too shy to sing. Hum!)

This is Taiwan. It's shaped, by general agreement, as a kumara/sweet potato. Although I remember when I was 8 I was dissatisfied with this analogy with what seemed to be an obscure vegetable, so I insisted it looked like a chicken drumstick.

...Anyway! We travelled around the island in an anti-clockwise route around the coast. Every day was filled with lessons and activities that brought us closer to the culture and history of Taiwan: museums, factories, sightseeing. We baked kumara in the earth;

made paper;

went SHOPPING;

and many other things - attended two military schools for a day;





we also went bike riding past a beach and around a park; visited countless historical sites; had an international basketball tournamet (NZ won :D); visited Buddhist and other religious temples; climbed up a mountain that was inhabited by many monkeys; stayed at an animal resort; stayed at lovely hotels, stayed at not-so-lovely hotels, watched Taiwanese aboriginal dances and rituals, and a whole litany of other things - AND, if Facebook hasn't been spamming your News Feed enough already took about a million photos. Not possible to upload all of them, so here are some. :P

I'm amused and grateful towards everyone who said "Have fun!" to me before I left. Having fun doesn't even begin to cover it. Those 21 days were unforgettable, and as the (now very overrused) saying goes - Taiwan definitely touched my heart :)