Taiwan Tech Trek orientation, day 1
The coming posts will outline my TTT orientation, which consists of lots of free food, visiting various places in Taiwan, numerous guest speakers, and new friends. I would have loved to blog every day, but unfortunately, Internet access was severely limited during orientation, if not completely nonexistent. However, worry not! I’m here now, with lots to share!
I arrived at Jhongli train station last Wednesday at 10:00 am, where I saw a bunch of people clustered around a Taiwan Tech Trek sign. Soon after, we were all herded onto a bus bound for Chingyun University, where we would be issued name tags and meet our small groups (the 200+ students in the programmed are divided into groups of roughly 9-10 people each).
With name tags around our necks, we filled out waivers, ate from a small buffet, and began getting to know each other. In my small group, there were people from not only the US, but also Great Britain and Brazil. I met up with PW, who arrived from Massachusetts just a couple of days before. We then headed over to a large auditorium to listen to our first guest speaker, who did an empowerment/motivational type of talk. It was also there that we received goody bags, which contained stuff like a travel mug, brochures, Chinese knots, and a set of utensils.
After the talk, we boarded buses again to go to our first lodgings, either at the Sun Moon Lake China Youth Corps or the Ching Sheng Hotel (my group was assigned the latter). Once we checked in, we left again to attend the official welcome dinner, where aboriginal Taiwanese dancers performed while we ate.
Later, we returned to our hotel to have our first group meeting – all of the groups were supposed to prepare some sort of performance for the end of orientation. We didn’t do anything except brainstorm and write ideas down. After that, we played cards, and I taught my group Contact (an awesome word game with no required materials – everyone should try it). And then sleep.
