Gena: Day Two, June 11th

Today was such a long day because of jet lag. It was soo much fun to go to Yung-Feng High School though. All the people treated us so well and were so kind to us all. We went to five classes, mine being English, Athletics, Civics, Geography, and House Keeping. My english class was the most fun. Some of the students had prepared something to say to me in front of the whole class. In athletics we played badmitten (sp?) and I played against the coach the whole time. It was kind of intimidating! The Civics teacher was hilarious! The class was laughing the whole time. He taught me about some good Taiwanese food and about places to go in Taiwan (Taipei 101). He even sang a song for us and then I had to sing one too. I sang a very commonly known Chinese song called Tong Hua. After lunch was Geography and that's when my jet lag started to hit me. For the first half of class our teacher was speaking Chines so I kind of zoned out. Then, the students gave me different Taiwanese snacks and fruits and I had to eat a little of each. They were very interesting and everyone wanted me to like the food they brought themselves the most. In house keeping, I think that's what it was called, we made some traditional Hakka tea. Unforunatley, I could not partake in it after we made it because it has cafffine, so they gave me this orange drink called "Bicycle" which tasted something between orange Tang and Gatorade.

The way the classes are set up here are very different from America. Instead of the students going from class to class, the teachers do. I like this because instead of the classroom feeling like it belongs to the teachers, it's like the classroom belongs to the students. I really like that.

Dinner was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was called "Hot Pot". We went to this resteraunt where each seat had a hole in the table where they put a bowl of soup and under each hole there was a burner to boil the soup. You could get different flavors of soup, some being Original and Seafood. Then, you went to the buffet like area and chose all these raw things to put into the soup and eat. I felt like such a novice, but it was very interesting. And I think I am too afraid of making mistakes and looking like a fool in front of my family. This buffet also had anything else you would like to eat or drink, it was crazy, and I'm thinking kind of expensive. It was a really cool experience, except I almost passed out and smashed my head into my bowl of soup near the end due to my tiredness.