Xi jian

The last day...I wasn't ready for it then and I can still hardly believe that it has come and gone.  Saturday was our last official day.  We had all morning to work on getting our group presentations ready for the afternoon.  My group just had to get all of the parts of our paper patched together and create the power point for our presentation, so it wasn't too bad.  It was really funny though because almost everyone was down in the lobby of the dorm working with their groups.

All of the presentations went really well and it seemed like all of the groups did a good job.  The professors acted impressed.  When everyone had presented, we proceeded to the closing ceremony.  Some of the department heads said a few words, we were presented with our certificates of completion, and we all got a NTU keychain as a gift from the university.  With all of the official business completed, we walked down the street to Cafe 83 for our farewell banquet.

I was so impressed with the banquet. There was so much food that it verged on the point of being ridiculous.  As soon as we got there we had access to an appetizer bar that had food that was more like a main meal, including soups, delicious bread with four types of spread, seafood, pasta salad, barbecued beef, and even a waffle maker.  There was also a salad bar, fresh fruit, desert, and a stir-fry bar.  For drinks they had a soda fountain, a coffee/latte machine, a slushie machine, and a build-your-own-pot-of-tea bar with several types of tea bags and other ingredients like ginger and plum.  All of this was before the entrees we had ordered! I had the salmon which was served with a white sauce, a fire-roasted tomato, a baby corn ear, a few sprigs of broccoli, and a small scoop of mashed potatoes.  Everything was incredible! It was also all western and we ate with knives and forks!

We spent the last hour and a half taking a million pictures with each other since we all would be leaving the next morning.  Of course I forgot my camera! Thanks to Facebook, I have some pics to share :)

Ivy and Cynthia

Rebecca, me, and Flora

Me, Janet, Ruisi, Jenny, Fan, Vivian, Flora, Cassie, Anbo

Me, Jenny, and Corinne: We all had the salmon, yum!

Our fearless leader, Jack

China, represent!

After the banquet a lot of the group went to do KTV, which is like karaoke except that each group rents their own private room.  It was a lot of fun and a great way to spend our last evening together.

 After KTV we caught the last MRT back to the dorm.  None of us really wanted to leave one another, so we went to 7-11 for snacks and drinks, stood around chatting, and finally, slowly walked back to the dorm.  It was probably 2am before we separated.  I was too wired emotionally to sleep, so I stayed up and packed until 3:30. I tried to sleep then but couldn't, so I skyped my sister for an hour instead.  I knew that Fan was supposed to leave for the airport at 5am, so when I got off skype I went out to the lobby to see if he was still around.  Unfortunately, I missed him by just a few minutes, but I did see Cassie and Teresa.  They were camping out all night and all day to say good bye to everyone, bless their hearts!  After that I finally went to sleep for three hours before I had to get up to say good bye to Corinne and Stephanie at 9am.

In the morning Flora brought a few tea pots and cups and was brewing Oriental Beauty and Oolong for everyone.  When Corinne and Stephanie left we were all a mess and in tears.  I don't think we were prepared for it to be over.  The rest of us went back to the lobby once they had left to talk some more and organize ourselves for leaving.  The tables ended up covered in all of our junk that we couldn't fit in suitcases or didn't want to take back with us.  I still had to clean my room, so I borrowed a mop and broom from Flora.  I also gave her my bed set since she wanted it.

I went to lunch with Sharon, Cassie, and Teresa to a famous noodle restaurant across the street from the NTU main gate.  At the restaurant we met up with Vivian, Anbo, and Zoe too.  It was really good, and I realized during that meal just how used to using chop sticks I had gotten. I decided I might even miss them after I got home.  At least I have a set that I brought back with me :)

At 1:40 it was finally my turn to go with Jenny to the airport.  This was the third or fourth round of good byes for the day, so it didn't seem as bad as earlier.  My eyes got misty, but we weren't crying as much as before.  During the ride, Jenny and I were talking about how we couldn't believe that it had gone so fast.  It was really nice to have a traveling buddy at least for the first leg of the trip (she was going to L.A. on the same flight, but after that was going to Indianapolis).

I had a really short time to make my connection in L.A., so that was a little crazy.  China Airlines did give me an express pass to get in the shorter line in customs, which was a big help.  After I found my luggage on the carousel, I didn't notice the express customs examination line.  I stood in the long line for five or ten minutes, getting pretty nervous because my next boarding time was just beginning, when one of the China Air attendants saw me and rushed me over to the express line.  Right when I got up to the front, Jenny appeared at the front of the line next to me! I was glad I got to see her again, but there wasn't time for a real good bye before I had to go.  Thankfully, the China Air attendant was amazingly helpful.  She showed me the way out of customs to the American terminal where I could drop off my luggage directly to the people loading the plane.  I made it through security in record time, and when I arrived at the gate they had just begun calling groups for boarding.  Never again will I book a short connecting interval! Still, it was so much nicer than my connection on the way over!  All of the flights went smoothly, but I wasn't able to sleep at all.  In all, I had 3 hours of sleep out of the last 51. By the time I got to O'Hare I was pretty delirious. My family was really excited to see me anyway :)

 

I'm finally back to finish off the story.  The last couple of days were just so busy that there was no time to keep up with the blog.  So now let's go back in time to Friday, our last day of field trips.

We began the day with a trip to the Taipei City Zoo, where we were given a guided tour by the director of the conservation and wildlife rescue center sectors of the zoo.  We were given a three hour tour which mainly focused on the section of the zoo with Taiwan's native and endemic species, such as the wild boar.  We also got to see the koalas and pandas.

The most important part of our tour was to the Wildlife Rescue Center, which is not open to the public.  This is where we spent most of our time, seeing the tortoises, tigers, orangutans, monkeys, and other reptiles.  Unfortunately, I cannot post any of my pictures from the rescue center because it is behind closed doors. It was really cool because we got to get in the enclosure with the tortoises, pet, and feed them.  Some of them were gigantic, around five feet in diameter!  We also got to pet a boa constrictor and a few people even held it.

After the zoo tour we had some free time (we were supposed to have the entire afternoon off, but the schedule changed so that we had to go to a tour at the NTU vet hospital at 3:30), so a group of us went to eat lunch at the Hello Kitty restaurant.  We got there at 12:30, and they told us that they could get us a table at 1:30 so we decided to go ahead and wait even though it would be cutting it close.  While we were waiting, we realized the table we were waiting for was one we could see from the waiting area.  There were three moms and something like six kids sitting there.  They were taking about a million pictures and just sitting around and talking a lot.  1:30 came and went and they were still sitting there.  We were getting frustrated at them because we had a tight schedule and it was already later than promised.  The kids were running around like crazy too and broke a glass.  Even the staff was getting annoyed by them.  By the time they finally left it was 2:00.

We called Jack to let him know that we would probably be late to the vet hospital and placed our orders.  The meal started off pretty tense, but courses started coming and we relaxed and started to enjoy it.  At the Hello Kitty restaurant all of the food is either shaped like Hello Kitty or has Hello Kitty on the dish.  The crazies part to me is that no matter what you order, you get soup, salad, a roll, an appetizer, your main course, and a custard desert.  Everything was super cute and delicious, and I was really glad that we had stayed.

Clockwise starting from the guy: Tracy, Corinne, Stephanie, Jenny, Carolina, Ivy, me

What was amazing to me was how fast the food came after we ordered.  Even though we got started late, we took a cab to the vet hospital and were only ten minutes late.  That was a miracle in my opinion.  And we did better than about five other people that didn't even bother to show up that afternoon. Not that I blame them too much since the vet hospital wasn't in the original schedule anyway.

Going into the vet hospital I didn't have high expectations because I thought that since I've already seen two vet schools that it wouldn't be very interesting. Despite this expectation, I was pleasantly surprised.  The guide we had spoke English very well and he was an engaging speaker.  After a brief presentation about the vet program (which is really different from the U.S. system because their vet school is only a five year undergrad program before the board exam for licensing) we got to take a tour.  We saw the MRI and CAT scan machines, the surgery prep room, the holding room for patients exiting surgery, the pathology lab/space for the grad students, and a couple of exam rooms.

When all of our official business for the day was finished, Flora and Rebecca took Stephanie, Corinne, Jenny and me to ChiaTe, which is the best pastry shop for pineapple cake in Taipei.  Everyone bought some, and I bought a box of the original pineapple flavor to bring home with me.

♪Oh what fun it is to scythe through a field of golden rice!

The theme of the day yesterday was rice.  We began the morning with a trip to the NTU Farm, which is actually right down the street from our conference room.  I had no idea it was there! Anyway, we geared up with traditional hats and scythes and went out into the ripened research field of rice for the harvest.  It was hot and we were all drenched in sweat, but it was a really cool experience.  Of course, nowadays they use combines to harvest rice, but we used the traditional hand cutting method on the small research plot.  After cutting down the stalks, the rice grain is threshed off the heads with an old-fashioned thresher that runs on foot-pedal power.  We were pretty good rice farmers, which inspired someone, I think Yang Fan, to sing the Farmer's Insurance jingle...♪We are farmers. Buum bum bum bum bum bum bum.

NTU Farm

Rice!

Rice thresher

Me and Ivy

After our harvest, we went to the classroom to watch a video about rice production and culture in Taiwan.  Just in case you didn't know, rice is really important.  The Taiwanese don't hardly eat a meal without rice, either boiled or as a main ingredient.  In addition to the video, we had a special lunch of traditional sticky rice dumplings which are steamed in a bamboo leaf, rice noodles, and some other things made out of rice.  It was really good.

In the afternoon we went back out to the rice paddy to experience planting.  Seedlings that are about three inches tall are transplanted into thick mud paddy.  We got into the mud halfway up our calves and planted 3-5 seedlings at each cross on the grid that was marked into the mud.  Everyone did three rows all the way across the field.  It was a little tricky to walk through the mud because it tried to stay sucked to your feet, but it was so much fun!

Mixed in with all of the fun, there was a little bit of sadness because we had to say goodbye to Tom and Robin. They leave early tomorrow morning and couldn't be with us today. :(  I really loved talking to them and am so glad that they were on the trip with us.  Dr. Tom was always good for the typical American dad type of humor and Robin is unceasingly happy, excited about life, and sweet.  Thanks so much for joining us!

Robin, me, Jenny, and Tom

Yesterday we went to the 921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan.  It is located at the ruins of Kuang-Fu Junior High School, which was destroyed during the Chi-Chi earthquake of 2004.  They built the museum around the wrecked school grounds to preserve the damaged site.  The museum also features educational exhibits about earthquakes, a 3-D movie theater, and a moving theater "earthquake experience."  Unfortunately we didn't get to go in the moving theater because there were too many people ahead of us and our group was too large to get finished before our time ran out.  We did watch the 3-D movie.  It was an animated cartoon called Tree Robo that was essentially a children's environmentalist propaganda movie.  The animation was really cute and the score was great (the Taiwanese really know how to score epic educational videos). Long story short, little boy and solar powered robot live happily in a gorgeous mountain valley.  New, advanced nuclear-powered robots come and destroy the land to take it's resources and take the solar powered robot to do forced labor.  In the smog the solar powered robot can't work, he goes to sleep, and wars destroy the nuclear powered robot world.  Many years later the sun penetrates the clouds and a tree seed that was protected in the robots body sprouts, "revitalizes" him and grows on his back.  Robot goes back to look for the boy, who is now an old man that spent his life trying to replant the valley. The robot is decrepit and about to die, but borne of it's desire to make the land whole again, he and the tree on his back magically restore it to its original splendor (the robot disappears but the tree is still there).  The old man spends his last days in happiness.  Why you needed to know the whole story, I have no idea.

In the afternoon we went to the Biotechnology Center of the Taiwan Agriculture Research Institute for a presentation and brief tour.  The center is only five years old, and the government spent US $10 million to build it.  The focus of the center is maintaining, propagating, and evaluating genetic recombination events (GM crops) for commercial potential and environmental risk.  They have airtight and semi-airtight greenhouses, net houses, and field plots in addition to their lab space.  A few of the projects they are working on include fusarium resistant banana, chrysanthemums and orchids with new coloration, and ring spot and mosaic virus resistant papaya.

Xitou photos

Since I didn't get around to putting up many pictures of Xitou Experimental Forest while we were there, I will go ahead and put a few up now.

Frog eggs inside a bamboo fence post

 Epiphytic ferns! Don't ask me why, but I love them.

Big boulder that broke off a cliff durning an earthquake and rolled down here

Bamboo arboretum

Cryptomeria japonica (a type of cypress) is the predominant species of tree in Xitou.  They were all planted by the Japanese around 1960.

The famous bamboo bridge over the University Pond.  There's some folk tale about crossing this bridge so that you will get accepted to NTU.

Skywalk

My project group and all of the plant species samples we collected

Yesterday felt strange because we did a lot of waiting.  In the morning my group went to the classroom so that we could use the internet for a while after breakfast (there wasn't any in the cottage).  We also got started on our project paper, but we were still waiting for the pH meter to come so that we could test our soil samples.  During lunch they told us that the man with the pH meter would come at 1pm, so we waited for him.  When 1pm came someone told us that it would be 2pm, so we waited some more.  He finally did show up and we got to take our pH readings.  But as with all pH meters, this one was slow and finicky and we had to wait a long time for each sample to finally stabilize on a particular pH.  By the time we were finished it was nearly time for dinner.  It was pretty frustrating, but we got it done.