16th to 22nd March

16^th to 22^nd March

Monday

Nicholas, Jocelyn and her Mom will fly to Hong Kong for 4 days to some type of exhibition.  Since Jocelyn’s Mom buys and sells jade, this is one of the gems that will be featured there.

Nothing too exciting today materialized.  School was as usual and nothing out of the ordinary.

Tuesday

Not sure what the Government calls this but from 1:30 to 2:00, there was a make-shift scenario of a war.  No pedestrians and/or autos were allowed to move about during this half hour of exercise.  This takes place annually and is to provide a mock exercise for the military and the people in case such a real event took place.

I didn’t know anything about it until I wanted to exited the school grounds to walk to 7-11 for a latte.  With the help of a passing by student, they explained this to me.

Lee sent me a photo he took of the area where he works and it is like a ghost town.  Everyone abides by this as it is taken very seriously.

Paul was telling me that prior to that half hour if there are any cars driving about then they must pull off to the side or off of the freeway and stop and wait until the exercise is complete.  I’m wondering what happens if the HSR is in motion at 300km, what happens??  Hmmmmm  I need to ask that as I’m curious.

Good thing the campus café is now open so I could go there for my latte. 

Now about the latte – the ladies working at the small student run café were inexperienced about preparing lattes so they invited me in to show them.  I prepared my own latte and at the same time showed the students the process of making it…haha  

I still had to pay $50 for the latte I had to prepare J

Thursday

Today was graduation photo day.  Again this is every year on a chosen day that all graduates have their photo taken professionally.

This begins at 8:30 in the morning and runs usually until noon in order to have all the graduate classes photographed.  Each group takes around 10 minutes or so.  The photographer is the same one who I remember from 2 years ago.

Later on, I met up with Randy for a coffee at Starbucks.  Randy was one of the work study students who worked in the ITM office next to where I am.  He always prepared my coffee for me (as they have a nice machine in the office) and was very helpful in many school events.

He left last March for a 1 year working holiday in Perth, Australia and just returned back to Taiwan 1 week ago.  He contacted me and we arranged to meet up.  It was great catching up and of course seeing him.  His English improved dramatically and he now admits he is a coffee connoisseur.  He stumbled upon the art of a barista and now loves doing this.  He wants to open his own coffee café one day.

Finished off the day by going with Lee for beef noodle soup for dinner.

Friday to Sunday

Lee and I rode the scooter to the EDA Shopping Mall on Saturday.  This is a HUGE shopping complex northeast of the city, maybe an hour’s drive.

It is situated basically in the middle of nowhere.  There is also the EDA University located there.  This mall is similar to Dream Mall plus an amusement attraction park.  The rides are what you would find at any large amusement park. (better than Canada’s Wonderland)

I think we spent at least half a day there walking around and had lunch there as well.  There’s also a skating rink inside the mall and we spent almost half hour watching a group of people taking skating lessons that looked like was their first lesson.  It was just too funny to watch so the entertainment component was amazing.

This was probably the highlight of the week and I’m ready to go back.

Upon arriving back in Kaohsiung, we noticed a large passenger ferry approaching the river.  As it got closer I could see it was the ferry from Penghu. 

We rode the scooter to the location where the ferry would embark and watched as the people came off.  That was also the first time I had seen the ferry from Penghu arrive in action.  Maybe I’ll try it next time…hmmmmm….maybe not, don’t like boats.

Tomorrow is Monday, week #5 of the semester.  Before I know it, the end of semester will be upon me.

This coming week will have a lot of activity involved as at some point (I think Tuesday), the announcement of the new incoming President will be announced and on Friday is the school’s anniversary and that day is always filled with fun going activities, including the cheerleading competitions.