國際志工第五週來台心得

First day of the week started off with Class 304 inviting me over to have breakfast with them; we talked and took pictures together. Before leaving, they even gave me more food and snacks – it was a hearty breakfast. Besides that, I had steamboat with Class 205 on Friday as well. They had prepared a few small performances for me and their teacher beforehand. And so, we watched them perform before eating together for around two hours. On Tuesday, three teachers invited me to join them for dinner in Minxiong. Apparently, in Taiwan, they usually have roast chicken to celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas day itself. That explains why one of the teachers took us to a restaurant located near the National Chung Cheng University to have roast chicken; it’s Christmas Eve. We had half a chicken each and it was a delightful meal even though we only had one hour at our table. This is because the restaurant was fully booked and so they put a one hour limit on each patron in order to cater for the large number of guests. After that, we walked to the Chung Cheng night market that opens every night to have fruit juice and chat. On Christmas Day, I had roast chicken again for dinner but this time with another group of teachers including the guy undergoing national service. We had that in a Carrefour building in Douliu and then went window shopping in the building before going back to Dalin. I started my second lesson in Taiwan on Thursday. In this second lesson, I introduced them to Malaysian food, sports and also traditional games. I also taught them one of our favourite games that we used to play in primary (elementary) and high school. It’s a game called ‘ceper’ or ‘tutup botol’ and it is very convenient game as the only thing one would need is five tin bottle caps and a flat surface. The first two classes went well and the students seem to like playing the game even though there are some who are not interested. There would definitely be some who are less interested in the game as this situation is inevitable - everyone to his taste. Saturday was like a Sports Day. Three teachers and I first played 'The Strategy Game' and 'Tiki Topple' in the morning until lunch time. After that, we had Japanese food for lunch in a restaurant near National Chung Cheng University before entering the university. As we are not allowed to drive in, we walked in and towards the gymnasium building of the university where there are lots of sports facilities available. We first played squash. As none of us knew the rules of the game, we read the rules online and roughly played according to what we understood as the rules were not very clear in words. We then found out later that squash is actually very tiring as one needs to stretch and run around a lot. Then, we played table tennis for a while before going down to play three rounds of bowling. I had a great time playing these three sports and as usual, I never had enough of them. After all of that, we went to the Carrefour night market in Chiayi for dinner and also to walk around the place. We played darts while we were there and one of the teachers actually won a prize from that. Besides darts, we also played softball and baseball, once each. That was when I finally got a taste of how playing baseball feels like - awesome. It is not as easy as it looks though. The faster the ball gets, the harder it is to hit as you would need more strength, precision and speed to hit the ball far and high up. Following that, we had tau hua (tofu pudding) and sweet potato balls (one of my favourites). As for Sunday, the guy doing his national service and I followed a teacher to a few places. Her husband and her smallest daughter tagged along too. Her husband first drove us to Pineapple Hill in Minxiong where every visitor would get one free pineapple cake. We had ours and then walked out into the farm to have a look at the pineapple trees. Afterwards, we went to a famous temple in Xingang, Fengtian Temple. Before going in to the temple, we had ya rou geng (thick soup with duck meat and bamboo shoots) which tasted pretty delicious. We entered the temple, prayed and walked all the four floors. As we leave the temple, we had octopus balls which tasted delicious as well before having the famous steamed dumplings and suan la tang (hot and sour soup) for lunch. Next, we went to a joss sticks making place to see the process of making joss sticks and also the different types of materials used to make them. After we had seen everything over there, the teacher dropped the two of us near the intersection of Zhongshan Road and Wenhua Road in Chiayi City and we started walking along the two streets, stopping at stores to see if there is anything we would like to purchase. We walked until about 5 o’clock when another teacher came to join us. At that time, we had seen almost all of the stores on those two streets and so we took a taxi to Nice Plaza which was close by to continue window-shopping until it was time for us to leave.