Another day at Taichung. We started it with a class of making a mini Doraemon's sculpture attached to a piece of chopstick. The process might be a bit difficult, or maybe it's just me, since I wasn't into play-doh or sculpting stuff. Everyone was free to modify the Doraemon (even Monika's Doraemon was cross-eyed, sadly).
I decided to make my own mini Doraemon to have a bowler hat and a black stick, to look kinda like Charlie Chaplin-ish. After finishing all the Doraemons, oiling it, we had to place it on a piece of board, to wait until they got solid enough.
Even though it looked simple, I was quite happy with it. Haha, but wait till you see the result on the next post.
In the afternoon, we went to the hall to dance to Shinchan's theme song. Nothing much to tell. It's just the song was even more cheerful than the one we danced to before, with many jumping, spinning, stuff like that.
Evening activity was EPIC. Haha, not really, it's just...a bit surprising, since I'd never seen something like that before. Anyway, what happened was, after the dinner, we were told to stick at our dining tables. The leader of the fu dao yuans came to the stage at the restaurant and started complaining about how late we often came lately.
I just put this O_O face. Totally had no idea, since my group was always punctual! At the end of his whole complaining speech, he read out some names that were believed to be late very often. My O_O face grew wider when he started calling out some of the names of my group's members, including Monika!
After about two rows of people gathering on the stage, the fu dao yuans continued complaining. I'm sure those who stood on the stage would drop their jaws immediately. But at the end, it turned out that they'd got pranked and that they were those who celebrated their birthdays on June - July. Since it's my first time witnessing a mass birthday party, I was thrilled, and surprised by the fact that some people had to celebrate their birthday before their actual birthdays (like Monika whose birthday was on July 7, celebrated on June 28).
The fu dao yuans hurriedly brought out some cakes for each groups dedicated to the group's birthday people.
The best part of this whole activity finally came: LET'S GO EAT THE CAKE!!!
Since the next day we were going to leave for Tainan, we decided to pack our things and later all of us Group 4 gathered in Jessica, Didi, Felicia, Shelly, and Audrey's rooms...to watch Deep Blue Sea on TV! Honestly, I'd watched the movie for like thousandth time but it felt more ecstatic to watch it with friends!
Tenth day: June 30, 2010 (Taichung - Tainan)
Some of us woke up late. Those who had woken up early and got to have breakfast before all the food ran out, quickly grabbed the remaining sandwiches and stuffed the dumplings and fried rice into two plastic glass for those who woke up late (since we had no time anymore for breakfast and that we had to leave).
My friends who woke up late went 'awww...thanks' after receiving the food we had wrapped up for them. Anyway, they decided to eat them in the bus.
Our first destination today was Earthquake 921 museum, located somewhere between Taichung and Tainan. It was effin' hot once we got there, the sun was right on top of us, and the fact that we had to walk a bit further from the parking lot to the museum made us all groan in disappointment.
However, when we entered the museum, the cool air coming from the heavenly AC quickly blasted out. Paradise, it was.
We quickly toured around the museum and found out that the building and its surroundings used to be a school back in 1990s, before the earthquake hit on 1999, destroying everything, and even tore the field's running track. We got to see the ruins of the building. Seeing how severe the damage was (it was like the building got squeezed), I could hardly imagine that it was a school.
In the other side, this place was probably one of the most exciting places of interests of the whole destinations in Taiwan. We even got to watch two movies. The first one was a normal 3D movie about earthquake and tsunami, kinda like the Day After Tomorrow, and the second one was shorter, but even more thrilling.
Anyway we snapped a few shots in the long line before entering the next studio for the next movie.
So, 20 people were to sit inside a small room decorated likely a normal living room with a couch, cabinet, framed photos on a shelf...In front of us was a giant screen attached to the wall. Frankly, I felt creepy even before entering this studio because of the thundering sound I heard outside it.
When the movie began, suddenly the floor we sat on shook, and it shook even harder and harder. It was almost like a simulator rides like the one you usually see at theme parks, except this one didn't provide buckled seats as we sat on the floor.
The screen said the violent shake we were feeling at that moment was measured around 7 Richter scale, the exact scale of the actual past earthquake. It wasn't all that scary, but surely it would feel scary if it happened in real life. Even, after getting out of the studio, I still had that shaky feeling and a bit trauma, since I had experienced a pretty violent earthquake before.
From the studio, we headed out of the museum and found this vast field (which used to be an actual school's field before the earthquake) an interesting photography object. We took our positions and did a group picture!
Before heading straight to Tainan, we stopped by at a traditional coffee shop, sipped a glass of coffee which was served by, again, an Indonesian waitress (she was Javanese, I could tell from her accent and look), and then we went back to our bus.
Took some pictures at the parking lot.
Turned out, even though we still had an hour or two remaining before we reached our destination, we couldn't sleep at all in the bus. Coffee effect much? Instead, we ended up singing various songs from Chinese to English songs which ended up an Indonesian song, which was Laskar Pelangi. Even our fu dao yuans tried to spell "Laskar Pelangi". LOL! Nice try :)
The hotel was located on top of the hill which overlooked the city of Tainan and Taichung. Despite being in the high ground, strangely we didn't feel chilled at all, unlike what we felt in Puncak or Lembang.
Anyway, after dropping our bags in our cottages, we strolled down the main road in late afternoon. The fu dao yuans urged all of us to bring a mini flashlight given to us earlier (it was a pink pen actually, with a mini flashlight on the back of it).
When it got dark already, we spotted a bat's lair at the river bank but didn't spot any of those animals and later we headed to this small muddy path and that was when we were told to switch the light on. When it got totally dark (and some people started to get creeped with the whole darkness surrounding them), we were told to switch the light off.
Oh, how I hated this moment. I thought the fu dao yuans were going to prank us. But then it turned out we were going to spot some fireflies. Too bad I only spotted a few. I was thinking we were going to end up in a large meadow in the middle of the forest, with fireflies surrounding us. Haha...
I'm going to tell you about Celine's birthday surprise in the next post, as this post is already tad bit too long.
So it's coming up next :D
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