Happy Holidays!

Over the next three days, we continued to teach about American holidays.  The students visited Easter to learn about the story of Jesus' death and resurrection as well as have an Easter egg hunt.  They went to a Thanksgiving celebration to make Pilgrim hats, turkey gobblers, and cranberry sauce.  They also had a scare in Halloween as they carved pumpkins and baked pumpkin seeds.  We also taught them to how to play football and basketball.  It was a very busy week!

That was just our school day.  Every morning, our Taiwanese friends gave us a traditional breakfast.  We had seaweed-wrapped rice, a type of Asian omelette, a steamed dough ball fill with pork.  Everything was pretty good.  If you like sushi, you won't mind the seaweed.  Lunch usually involved rice, meat, and an Asian vegetable.  We also had a snack of sweet soup and a sweet roll every day.

Because of our long lunches, we would go out on a little exploration some days.  On Tuesday, we took a walk around the neighborhood, but we soon realized why no one was out.  It was boiling hot!  We took a look around the 7-11 and headed back for the cool air-conditioning at the YMCA.  On Wednesday, our host took a shopping for beautiful pieces of jade.

Each evening was packed with activities as well.  On Tuesday, they took us out for an American-style meal with an Asian flare.  Our foods consisted of French fries, fried chicken, spaghetti, and pizza, but we took of our shoes to eat and sat around a table that was very similar to something you would see in Asia.  After the meal, the high school volunteers showed us around the shopping district and their high school.

On Wednesday, we went out for my favorite meal, Hong Kong Cantonese dim sum!  Dim sum means appetizer or small meal, and they serve you over twenty dishes that you can pick and choose from.  My favorites included pork-filled wontons, fried noodles, and bok choy, an Asian broccoli.  Delicious!  The scenery wasn't bad, either.  We ate on the 12th floor with a beautiful view of the city.  From there, we went shopping with Christine, one of our hosts, who helped us bargain for some great deals!

On Thursday, we finished the day at the Taste of Texas, where we had hamburgers and spaghetti.  It was the first time we were given knives and forks!  Our Taiwanese friends also put on a great show to wrap of the week of hard work.  We also exchanged gifts from our different cultures.

It has been a wonderful week of learning about Taiwanese culture and making new friends.  We have one more day in Tainan with the children at the YMCA as we teach them how to make American food before we head off to Taipei courtesy of our next host, Jackie Yang, a Taiwanese employee of the CUW School of Business.  It should be an exciting weekend!