Trip to Taidong

A couple of weekends ago all the exchange students in my district (around 44 of us) took a trip to Taidong, along with another district from Taipei.  The main purpose of the trip was to see something called Za Han Dan, a very unique festival where one man is hoisted onto a small platform and paraded around in a circle while he has firecrackers thrown at him for a few minutes.  It was one of the craziest things I have ever seen in my life.  I took some video, you can check it out.

It was really quite a strange experience to throw firecrackers at someone, intentionally trying to hit them.  Of course the person you're throwing them at has volunteered to do this, but it still feels very odd!  In our trip I stayed with a Mexican exchange student in a host family in Taidong for three nights.  It was a very different feeling from any other host family I've been in, as it was really rural.  The house was very open, which is more traditional in Taiwan, and had a large garden, and chickens which woke me up very very very early... I didn't love this aspect of the stay.  However the host family was incredibly kind, and it was in general a very good stay.

Another fun part of the trip was a quick stop at a hot spring.  Hot springs in Taiwan are really famous and nice.  This one featured a sauna as well, which was great.  There was also a place where you could cook eggs and corn in the hot spring water.  We didn't actually do this, because we couldnt find the place to cook the eggs, but oh well maybe next time.  Another place we visited was the famous "water flowing up" landmark, where it appears that a small stream is going up a hill.  However, the mystery was ruined when they told us that it was just an optical illusion and that the water was just flowing down the whole way.  So disappointing.  Otherwise it was a wonderful trip and I got to meet a bunch of awesome exchangers from Taipei.  I met my first exchange students from Australia and South Africa.  Both seemed nice, but I didnt talk with the Australian so much actually.  They both had dark green rotary blazers, which I had not seen before actually.  I also met a bunch of new Germans, and I have come to the conclusion that in general Germans have the best english of exchange students from non-english speaking countries.  Many of them could also speak French which was pretty cool.  One of the highlights of the trip was a soccer game we played with almost two full teams.  It was pretty interesting to play soccer with people from USA, Mexico, Brasil, Ecuador, Hungary, Russia, France, Germany, Denmark and more... quite an enjoyable experience, especially after not playing for such a long time.

Something else new:  I have begun going to a sort of ping pong club near my house with my host mom, about once a week.  It is really a load of fun, but everyone there is REALLY good.  Most are middle aged to elderly, and are all better than me.  It's amazing to watch some of them.  The other day I took some video of them playing, so maybe I can include it in another post sometime.  Until then, bye!