Making zongzi

I've been anticipating this year's Dragon Boat festival because I really want to go home and have some Zongzi that my mother makes. Making Zongzi is one of my family's traditions, but the preparation of making zongzi takes a lot of work. First, we have to make rice and peanuts fully mixed and half-cooked in the pan. Second, prepare meat, mushroom, eggs, and chestnuts. Third, wash all the bamboo leaves, and dry them. Lastly, wrap the ingredients with the leaves! I admired my mother and grandmother for making delicious zongzi and other delicious cuisine. Although they are not famous chefs, but in my heart they make the best dishes! I thought to myself while eating zongzi, I'm going to learn how to make zongzi and pass this delicious tradition to my children!

31 Golden melody award in NCCU

  Golden melody award is a Music Award held by a student club, Golden Melody. This is my second year participating in the club and I've met a lot of awesome people and music lovers in the club. What we do is planning a Music competition for all the university students in Taiwan to participate. We invite famous judges and music performers to the event. This is the 31st years of Golden Melody Award and every year we are making changes to the planning of the event. Our ultimate goal is to create a stage for all the student bands and singers to shine a light on their talent. This year, we invite a lot of big and famous judges and the competition gone very well. Although the process of planning the competition from the start of the semester to the end of semester, it is worthy to see that our hard work paid off. I really enjoy the atmosphere of different student bands and singers on the stage, their music and their dreams are so beautiful. I am very proud to be a part of the staff of Golden Melody Award in NCCU. We helped a lot of young music lovers to fulfill their dreams and supports Taiwan's independence music.


NCCU Golden Melody Award https://www.facebook.com/nccugoldenmelody

Intern curator in the Ethno museum

This semester, I'm in a elective course called The Design and Formation of Museum Exhibition in the ethnology department. Students in the course all have a chance to plan an exhibition and the topic are not limited. From the start of the semester, my classmates were divided into groups and planned exhibitions different topics,such as Scout's patches, Logo designs, Traditional Chinese birthday theme, Instant noodles, Old glasses! My classmates are all very creative and planned amazing exhibition every week. And this week,it is our turn to plan the exhibition. We decided to plan a theme that matches ChengDa's 60th birthday. Our topic is The Ethnic Groups in Wenshan District in the Early Settlement Period. We collected information from an essay, and turned the maps in the essay into a 3D model. Also, we printed out some information for our audience to read. We spent all weekend on building our model and organizing information. What's more, our professor is very strict on the tidiness and the atmosphere. Therefore, we spent a lot of time checking important but easily ignore things such as the lights. I hope that everybody can learn something from our exhibition on the ethnic groups in Wenshan district. And I think being an intern curator in the museum is a very unique and once-in-a-lifetime experience!

Mother's day

Going home for the second time since February, I'm very excited to go home and relax. Although I have a lot of school work in May, including Spanish literature presentation, Museum exhibition planning and English readings. Before all the work rush to me at the same time next week, I think going home to see all my family are my source of strength. I took High speed rail on Saturday, and arrived at Tainan in two hours. My mom was busy so I told her i'll take bus home. I got off the bus and walk home, and I really enjoyed the easy and leisure walk through my neighborhood. After entering the house, I saw my twin sister and my brother on the sofa and my mom and dad in the kitchen. I know I will be full of energy next week with a wonderful weekend with my family. We had a small but warm-hearted celebration for mother's day.

summery of Akeelah and the Bee

  I really enjoy the inspiring movie a lot. Seeing Akeelah and her couch working so much to reach the goal, and the support of her friends and family. I like the part where they went to the regional and Akeelah's mom came and did not allow Akeelah to join the competition. However, Akeelah and her mom made up at last, and became a big support of Akeelah. On the competition stage, Akeelah's friend was trying to wait for Akeelah to come back to the stage, so he was trying to asked as much as question as he could and try to earn more time for Akeelah. I really liked that scene because that where you can see the true friendship of Akeelah and her friend. Apart from the spelling contest, the movie also depicted about the relationship between friends and family, including Akeelah's couch. I think that Akeelah is like a daughter to her couch, and she reminds him of his daughter. Although it was a painful memory for the couch, it also strengthen their beliefs and relationships. I really enjoy the movie and it is definitely inspiring!

My cousin got married!

  My cousin, Amanda, got married last weekend. My brother, sister and I went to her wedding and helped. Amanda and her boyfriend(now is her husband) have been together for 10 years. They met each other in college and after graduated they went to United States for further studies. When I was little, my sister and I loved to go to Amanda's room and saw what's she was doing. Amanda is 10 years older than me, therefore whenever my sister and I went to her room, she was always studying. After we grow up, getting busier in schools, we seldom see my cousins and seldom spent time together. However, she is very smart and whenever she comes back to Taiwan for vacation, she will share her stories in the US. I liked her wedding very much because the atmosphere is very nice and cute. They made slide shows of their 10 years together and video of the blessings from their friends in the US. They also arranged a little dance performance in the middle of the wedding. And the couple was very cute! I hope they will have a very happy time together!

I'm 21 ！

I turned 21 this month on the 9th. I was very excited because I got to see my friends and we planned to go for dinner. Four of my friends were all in different departments, but we used to be in the same one. We can always have so much fun together and what I like them the most is that we all have goals in the future and we are all doing our best to achieve the goals. Whenever I feel frustrated, I know I can share my feelings with them and they will understand and encourage me. I really enjoyed my time with the girls and feeling relaxed (not to think about that the midterms are coming lol ). Before I came to Taipei for college, I usually celebrate my birthday with my twin sister and with my family, however, after coming to study in Taipei, I didn't go home very often. This is my second year not having celebrated with my family, but I was very blessed to have my friends with me, and my family on the phone! I felt like a lucky girl!

Spring break adventures! Osaka,Japan!

  On this year's Spring break, my family went to Osaka,Japan for a short trip. We planned to go see the cherry blossoms! I was very excited for the trip, although I don't know how to speak Japanese. We went to Kyoto for the first day to see cherry blossoms on a famous trail-The philosophy Road. The cherry blossoms are so beautiful that they caught people attention in every ways. There's pink cherry blossoms and white ones. They looked very elegant and charming with the breeze blowing on them. We also saw many vendors selling souvenirs on the sidewalk, mostly handmade Japanese style bags and wallet. What I enjoyed the most was there were people dressing up in Japanese traditional dress-Kimino, walking on the trail as well. I like their colorful dress because it represent every girls' styles. We also went to a famous old temple called Kiyomizu-dera for viewing cherry blossoms at night. The next day, we stayed in Osaka to explore the city. Osaka is a very big and modern city with a lot of department stores and malls. During the weekday the city is very busy and all the people wear suits, but in the weekend, the city is very relaxing with people picnicking under the cherry blossoms trees in the park. I really enjoyed the trip to Japan, I had discovered a different kind of beauty of Japan than i used to know!

An Atayal tribe-Cinsb

My department is holding a summer camp for high school students to participate. The purpose of holding a camp is to let high school student to know more about our department. As a member of designing courses during the camp, we invite professors in our department to give lectures. However, besides professors from our department, we also want to have a field trip to a Atayal indigenous tribe in Hsinchu county. We went to the tribe for a visit last weekend, we met up with pastor Ataw from the church, and he showed us around the tribe. The scenery up in the mountain is SO beautiful and the weather is perfect! Pastor Ataw also told us a lot of Atayal culture and traditions. One the place he took us to was the entrance to the cypress forest, the Atayal people set up a rule restricting people going in at night. Because some people went into the forest illegally to chop down the precious cypress trees. Atayal people were very angry about people illegally chop down the trees, they were not only hurting the environment but also breaking the laws. The tribe are calling for people's attention to respect the tribe and the environment we are living in. I learned a lot from the trip to Cinsb. We should learn from Taiwan's indigenous people, they have a great connection to the land and they love the land they live in. Taiwan is our home, and home to different ethnos in Taiwan, we should all love the land we live in.

Pastor Ataw demonstrating how to make fire using wood.

The beautiful Cinsb church.

     Pastor Ataw telling us about the restricting rules, and people that is chopping doen cypress trees illegally.

Visit grandpa in Keelung!

  My grandpa lives in Keelung. When we were little, we always went to visit him in the summer. However, after I came to Taipei for college, I'm too busy with school and even though I'm closer to him than when I was in my hometown, I haven't visit him very often.
  Last weekend, my brother came to Taipei for job interviews. My brother and my twin sister decided to go visit my grandpa. It was a provisional decision, but we agreed immediately. We took a train to Keelung and I enjoyed the scenery from tall buildings of Taipei city to the countryside. Looking outside train window, I can see less greyish building, but more green trees and mountain view. After arriving at the peaceful town where my granpa lives, we went to my grandpa's and saw him chatting with his friends. He looked happy and healthy, and never stops talking, as I always remembered. After my grandpa's friend left, he brought out some snacks for us...SHRIMPS! I love eating seafood and as Keelung is near the sea, I can always expect some really good seafood when I visit my grandpa. We chatted with my grandpa for a while, he is healthy and enjoying his retirement.  Then we took a bus to Keelung downtown for dinner and said goodbye to my grandpa at the train station.


                                     This was taken at the Si Jiao Ting station where my grandpa lives.

Sing our songs on our Land!

  After studying a year in the department of Ethnology, I feel like I have known more about different ethnos in Taiwan. There are aboriginal people, Holo people, Hakka people, and new immigrants from other countries that consisted Taiwan's culture today. We discussed a lot of issues about ethnos nowadays and how to define an ethno. The questions such as: What's the traditions that can represent Holo people or Hakka people? What's the importance of a genealogical tree of your family? What can truly decide your ethno, blood or self identity? I have never learned and thought about these kind of questions before. There are no definite answers to these questions, but they make me think lot about myself, my family and my culture.

  Aboriginal people in Taiwan have been under the influence of dominant culture(the Han culture?), and are slowly losing their own distinguish traditions. However, nowadays the awareness of aboriginal people's self identifications are rising and some aboriginal people are speaking up for their own.
  Last weekend, I went to a mini concert of one of the aboriginal band-台玖線(Tai Nine Line), and they sang some songs about their tribe and sang in their own language. I really enjoyed their music, and their performance was very inspiring too. They encouraged people to sing in our native languages(such as Taiwanese, aboriginal languages), which is the most genuine ways to convey our feelings! I had a very spiritually satisfied night! 

3 days excursion to Haulien! Part 1

  Last weekend, my club went on a 3 days excursion to Hualien. We were very excited about going to Hualien because we are longing to see the beautiful  scenery.

  

  The first night in Hualien, we went to Zhichiang night market to taste some local food. We tried for the BBQ that is famous, grilled corn, and boba milk tea. The fortunate thing is that the night market were not as crowded as we expected! Then next day, we had traditional breakfast with porridge. We headed to Taroko National park to see the introduction of the park. Then we went to Swallow Grotto (燕子口) to see the Taroko Gorge, the scenery is really amazing!! For lunch, we went to an aboriginal restaurant to taste some aboriginal cuisine. I really enjoyed the food, they are very delicious! Later in the day we went to Liyu lake to ride bike around the big and beautiful lake. The weather was cloudy, but wasn't raining. And it made it so comfortable to ride bikes! For the last stop for the day, we went to the coast to see the pacific ocean. It was very windy at the coast, and the waves were big. Even though the weather was getting worse, but we still had a lot of fun at the coast with the wind and the waves. For dinner, we went back to our hotel and had BBQ. After the BBQ, we had some card games and beer. It was a very relaxing and fun night!

My sister is going to be an exchange student!!

  My younger sister is going to be an exchange student this year. My family is busy helping her with all the paper work for applying. First, she had to complete a lot of paper forms of introducing herself, family, and her interests. After all the paper documents, she had to choose some photos of herself and our family to put online. Finally, her had to make an video introducing herself, and the city we live in.  It was a long process of completing all the work, but the work is very important for host families to choose their exchange students. What's more surprising is just after we finished editing the video and uploaded for two days,and email came and surprised my family! An email from a host family that want to have my sister as their exchange student! It was a very exciting news and we decided to skype in the weekend. However, I wasn't home for the scheduled skype time.
  I'm very excited for my sister, because she is going to be an exchange student in a future with a very nice host family. I believe she will have a very fun and special experience in the future.