國際志工來台第三週心得

This week could be considered as my first week teaching the students about Malaysian culture as the week before was more like a tryout and I only had two days of class then. It turned out pretty good; most of the classes were responsive to my questions and took part in the activity that I had prepared for the class i.e. the group that has the highest score from getting the right answers would get a chance to enter the lucky draw carried out by the school. I had some slight problems initially with the students not comprehending what I say due to their lack of understanding of the English language. However, using my hand movements together with the help of teachers translating what I say into Mandarin, the classes went on smoothly. Also, as usual, on Mondays and Thursdays, I would play badminton with the teachers at 5 o’clock – after school hours – for roughly two hours in the school hall. Sometimes we also play table tennis at the start while waiting for the other teachers to arrive. We will go for dinner afterwards in one of the teachers’ car. He would always take us to different places every time so that I would get to taste a variety of foods in Taiwan. This Saturday, I went to two main places, Aogu and Budai with around 10 other teachers. We went in three separate cars meeting at the front of the Aogu Wetland Forest Park. We were then given a brief introduction of the park through a video that was in Taiwanese. Luckily, one of the teachers translated the words into English for me. Otherwise, I would have just been watching the images flashing. After that, we were unlucky enough to have one of the long-winded workers who explained to us the fishes and evolution of methods used to catch them, the latest one being the most environmental friendly and conserving the ecosystem. He also talked about oysters and how oysters are taken care of to make sure they grow healthily and that they are of better quality to be sold and eaten. He then, introduced the types of birds that can be seen in the park - kites, egrets, gulls, stilts and etc. - especially the black-faced spoonbill where there are only 2000 of them left in the entire world. After one hour, he finally finished and we were able to go see the actual birds instead of just photos of these birds. We drove around the park stopping at a places where there would seem to be more birds. During our first stop, as we only had one normal pair of binoculars, we borrowed one of the telescopes that a tour guide had brought - to allow his group of tourists to watch the birds - to get a clearer view of the birds. After bird watching, we then went to Budai where one of the teachers treated us to a hearty lunch at one of the seafood restaurants. For instance, we had oysters, clams, prawns and fried body parts of octopus. After that, we went to the Budai market to have a look around, trying some of the food there before heading over to the seaside to go fishing. That was my first time fishing, and it wasn't boring at all, it was pretty fun to me. I caught a few fishes although they were all the same common ones; I was hoping I would be able to catch a rare or a big fish but did not manage to do so. As we fished until dinner time, we had dinner at one of the teachers’ house - ginger duck and Thailand prawns. The prawns were really large and delicious. Sunday turned out different from what we had originally planned. The initial plan was to visit Sanmen, get lunch and then play tabletop games with a few other teachers. And so, me and three other teachers went to Sanmen, an old village with antiques like telephones and typewriters. There are several ponds where fishes are bred, acting as a place for fishing, charging those interested at a price per hour. We looked around for about half an hour, and that was when the sudden change of plan happened; we decided to go to Sun Moon Lake. Thus, we first had lunch at La Morning in Minxiong, before going up to Sun Moon Lake which took us around two hours instead of the expected travel time of one hour. We took a few pictures of the area, walked around, tried muachi - which was a little tasteless - and ate ice-cream cones from a Family Mart nearby. After that, we went to a farm - if directly translated from Chinese to English is called basin - where the land is so soft that it shakes and feels a little bouncy if you jump on it; it was intriguing