國際志工第四週來台心得

The weather got colder this week. Luckily, one of the teachers said that winter in January would be around the same as this week so I do not have to worry much about not having clothes warm enough to survive through the winter. On Monday, after I was done with my classes, one of the teachers in the school invited to play kendo (Japanese fencing). I got to learn a bit about the rules of the sport, where you will only earn points if you say a Japanese word that refers to the part of the opponent’s body you hit - 'man' for head, 'tore' for both sides of the waist, 'koteh' for the hand the opponent is using to hold the bamboo sword. Also, this week, class 111 invited me over to their class on Tuesday to eat glutinous rice balls with them whereas class 105 invited me to their class party on Thursday – to celebrate their winnings in the school’s sports day the week before. I had a great time especially seeing their enthusiasm trying to converse with me in English even though they struggle at the language that is almost foreign to them. Apart from that, on Tuesday, after school, I learnt to play two tabletop games, ‘Bang!’ and ‘Tiki Topple’; the former taught by one of the probationary teachers and the latter by one of the teachers in the school. I played both games with them including another teacher and the two guys currently doing their national service in this school i.e. they aid the school in anything they need help with. Both games were amusing – I loved both of them. Friday morning, after my only class for the day, I went to the Dalin train station and I took the 10:05 a.m. train over to Douliu in order to get on the Taisi bus heading towards Junfusan Fancyworld. I reached Junfusan at half past 11, paid a rather expensive entrance fee and started playing the rides as I was afraid that I would not have enough time to play all the rides. However, as it was a weekday, there were not many people around, and hence, I did not have to wait for a long time to go on each ride. Of all the rides that I sat, the relatively more thrilling and breathtaking ones are G5, space shot and the floorless coaster. At 2:00 p.m., I watched a performance held at the Rainbow Theatre. There were clowns, aerial dancers, trampolining and also dancers who incorporated contemporary dancing, ballet, hip hop, tutting and popping. After the performance, I walked around the whole theme park, taking pictures until it closes indicating it was time to leave. The next day, three teachers and I went hiking up Dulishan which is in Zhuqi. We had lunch first in Zhuqi and then started hiking up the mountain at around 2 o’clock. It was pretty slippery as my pair of Vans shoes do not have a good grip and there was a slight rain earlier in the morning. Also, I wore the wrong clothes – the temperature was low but we didn't hike much before I started sweating. We went all the way up to the peak of the mountain – a little over 800 meters – and stopped at the resting place to have a short break before going back down, leaving the mountain. We then went to one of the teachers’ house where I watched her father inspect and separate the different maturity of the areca nuts (pinang), ate glutinous rice balls made by her mother and also played a few rounds of mahjong before having dinner at her house. Sunday's destination was Kaohsiung. It is a two-hour drive from Dalin and so we (myself, three other teachers and one of the guys on national service) left early i.e. at 9 o'clock. We even bought takeaway food for breakfast to save time. When we've reached there, we went to Guoshan and walked along the pathway close to the sea and the ferry terminal. According to one of the teachers, there are many locations in Kaohsiung couples usually go to and one of them is that pathway. We then went up to the entrance of the British Consulate at Takao (a.k.a Kaohsiung) where I saw a fascinating machine that as you insert TWD 10, a woman would walk into a miniature temple to fetch you a scroll and in that scroll would be your fortune paper. I tried and the teachers helped translated the Chinese words for me, telling me that I got a lucky one. I then paid the entrance fee to enter the British Consulate area and walked around the two buildings, looking at the interior and the exterior of what used to be the consulate. After that, all of us took a ferry over to Cijin and each rented the bicycle there as the island is relatively too big to walk – it would require a lot of time. We first rode to a nearby restaurant to have lunch where I ate sea snails for the first time. It tasted a little weird at first, and then it turned out to be really exquisite. After lunch, we rode around the island, stopping by the beach to walk around a little and enjoy the sea breeze. A few hours later, we rode back to the ferry terminal, returning the bicycles before taking the ferry back to the mainland to have dinner. We had a look at Kaohsiung Normal University, watching one quarter of a basketball game before leaving for Dalin. On the way back home, I also got to see the beautiful Love River, a famous dating location at night in Kaohsiung.