A List of Our Adventures in Taiwan!

Vocational visits:

• Red Cross (2 – local Taoyaun branch and National Society Headquarters in Taipei)
• Afamado Goods Inc (a vehicle accessory international trade business)
• Tranergy Technology Co, LTC. (a solar company)
• Hsinchu Science Park Authority
• Hsinchu City Mayoral visit
• Foreign Affairs Administration visit
• Famous “meatball soup” store
• Orchid Farm (2 – Hsinchu and Taoyuan)
• County of Hsinchu (Governor) and Magistrate
• ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute)
• Hsinchu Incinerator Plant
• National Tsing Hua University
  
• Lin Yuan Food Factory with a DYI "popcorn snack"
• Mr. Tea factory
• KY Handmade Paper Mill
• Dairy Farm (family destination)
• Mt. Snow Tunnel and Control Station for the National Freeway 5, the longest tunnel in E Asia
• King Car Group Whiskey Distillery
• Ai Jia Development Center (handicapped children’s home run by a Catholic church)
• Eva Airlines, Cargo division
• Doctor’s office visit – impromptu for team member
• Mayor of Dasi’s office
• Chuan Gui Soyfoods Processing Plant (tofu factory)
• Ceramic Art Plant tour
• Toilet factory (a diverse array of ceramic household items)
• Extreme Fitness - which included an entire mall floor of family entertainment: batting cage, pitching games, bowling, basketball, jogging & rollerblading track
  

Cultural visits:

• Glass Museum
• Buddhist temples (7) and Tao temple (1)
• East Gate (Hsinchu)
• Markets – Old Streets, Night, Jade, Snake Alley
• Historic Train stations (2 – Hsinchu and Miaoli)
• Military Dependents Village Museum of Hsinchu City
• Nan Liao Fishery Port (We ate sushi, shark and more)
• San Yi Wood Carving Museum
• Lungteng Historic Bridge “The Fallen Bridge”
• Tours of the Miaoli District Agro-museums - silk, farming, bio-produce, etc
• Brooke Trail hike
• Shei-Pa National Park area exploration and museum
• National Palace Museum
• Taipei 101
• Nature walk at the Pottery Mill
• Danced with Aborigines
• Pinglin Tea Plantation & Museum
• Mingte Reservoir private collector's "museum" tour
• Aboriginal elementary school visits (2)
• Lanlashan Forest Reserve… Hiking in the mountains…viewing the 1,000 year-old large trees
• Flower gardens and tea farm
• Bus ride to Yilan County to the northern-most point of Taiwan where we viewed the Pacific Ocean and the Taiwan Strait….drove the Pacific Coast Highway of Taiwan
• Toucheng Farm, a 110 acre oasis of orchards, crops, plants and animals
• Shihmen Reservoir
• Taipei County Yingko Ceramics Museum
• DIY pottery painting
• Visited the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial (learned about Chinese and Taiwanese history and watched the changing of the guards)
• National Theater and Concert Hall (briefly heard the symphony practice!)
  

Other:

• Reflexology massages
• Attended formal wedding engagement party
• Rode bicycles along the Taiwan Strait shoreline
• Karaoke at Party World/KTV - VIP room
• High speed rail, subway, boat ride and taxi to, in and around the Taipei Metro (public transportation is excellent)
• Spa swimming, hot spring and relaxation
• A vast array of food that was diverse, beautiful in presentation, tasty, healthy and a fun adventure! Our entire team did a fantastic job of learning and using chopsticks!

Taiwan Street Scenes

Preschool

Parade performers

Scooters

The Rotary Flag Gift

The gift of a Rotary flag is recognized around the world as a gesture of friendship. Each Rotary club designs its own club flag and these flags are exchanged with other Rotary clubs and are given to community & civic organizations & businesses.

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Hand-Processed Oolong Tea

The production of delicious oolong tea requires time-honored tradition and outstanding craftsmanship. The best oolong tea is picked by hand during the spring and winter months in southeast China and Taiwan. Oolong teas are partially oxidized teas and undergo the most difficult and time consuming processing method. First the leaves are withered in direct sunlight and then shaken gently in bamboo baskets to lightly bruise the edges of the leaves. Next the leaves are air-dried in the shade until the surface of the leaf turns slightly yellow. The process of shaking and drying the leaves is repeated several times. The oxidation period for oolong teas is less than that for black teas and depends on the type of oolong. After the desired oxidation level is reached, the leaves are panfired at high temperatures to prevent further oxidation. http://www.thefragrantleaf.com/oolongtea.html

In small mountain towns where tea is grown, we were fortunate to watch many small shops process their own tea leaves. To our untrained eyes, the tea leaves looked the same, but we discovered that there are rigid standards for quality in these highly-prized oolong leaves.

Seafood, Glorious Seafood

It's hard to believe that less than a month ago we were dining on the incredible seafood of Taiwan.

生日快樂 Happy Birthday, Meagan!

By the ocean in Taiwan

With the aboriginal kids Meagan loved so much

Surprise, Meagan...it's your birthday!
If you'd like to wish Meagan a happy birthday, please post your comments below or find her on Facebook - Meagan Morris of Nebraska.

Students Learn about Taiwan from Jill

Jill gave her first presentation about Taiwan to students in her son, Zachary's, class. And as you can see, they all like showing the "Victory" sign that we learned in Taiwan. Since then, Jill has given presentations to her co-workers and others at Red Cross, too.

Thanks for sharing our Taiwan Adventure, Jill!

The Nebraska Fight Song - Singing for Our Supper

We were invited to a Rotarian's home for dinner in the mountains of Taiwan. The hospitality extended to us was amazing - they prepared many, many dishes and even bought us Coke since they heard our team likes soda.

Performing "The Nebraska Fight Song" was a big hit. We became known for singing this song and including everyone in our "Go Big Red!" chant at the end!

Xie xie (thanks) to our hosts and their friends for an enjoyable evening & dinner!

Scooters - So Popular in Taiwan

We saw all kinds of things and people being carried on scooters, including many dogs.
People rode in all kinds of weather, in all kinds of clothing and in all types of shoes. Most people wore helmets, many wore face masks and some wore cloth mitts on their hands like the girl in the picture above (we heard to keep them shaded from the sun and to keep them clean.)

Train - Subway - Boat

We rode a bullet train, a subway and a boat - all in one morning - on one of our trips to Taipei.

No seats on this subway - just a railing to lean against.

Fun boat ride both ways - we made friends on each trip.

Cultural Drum Exchange

USA Chris and Taiwan "Jason" share their drum talents when we visited an aboriginal school in Taiwan as part of our GSE trip.

The World's Mr. Tea

Our team learned about the historical Taiwanese industry of tea when we visited the factory of The World's Mr. Tea.

With all of the automated factories we saw on this business exchange, the tea business appears to still be very labor-intensive, from the ladies who handpick the tea leaves to the people working in this factory that bag the tea and prepare it for shipment.

Superb!

Fast Food Taiwan-Style

One of the most frequent questions our team has been asked is about the food. Yes, almost 100% of what we ate was local Taiwanese food. Only once did we eat as a team at McDonald's and that was in an emergency situation, a story for another blog...

When we visited Taipei 101 (the tallest building in the world), we enjoyed walking around the food court and comparing it to American food courts. We found that most fast food restaurants had variations of food for their local customers. McDonald's - called "My Dung Lao" in Mandarin - served green tea. Domino's Pizza offered giant shrimp pizza.

And this submarine sandwich shop offered a fruit sub!

One part of Subway's menu says "Local Favorites."

We found very little fried food in Taiwan, but it appears that KFC fried chicken is gaining popularity there. So, even though it was available, we avoided eating American-style fast food and instead ate local dishes - lots of seafood, pork, noodles and delicious fresh fruit and vegetables.

We love the iPhone...and the newest iPhone!

How cool!
One of Chris's host families had this newest iPhone - much smaller than the iPhone available in the U.S.
Chris and his iPhone. Our iPhones worked in Taiwan (at least where there was wi-fi), so we all got to Skype and check emails courtesy of Chris. Chris downloaded a neat iphone app for learning Mandarin and I kept my Mandarin and Taiwan notes on my iPhone.

Taiwan - Beautiful Island (like Hawaii!)

The morning view out to sea from a Taiwan golf course...stunning.
In so many ways, Taiwan reminded me of my home state, Hawaii, including of course the beautiful flowers, sunny days and ocean views.

Taiwan (historically 大灣/台員/大員/台圓/大圓/台窩灣), also known as Formosa (from Portuguese (Ilha) Formosa, meaning "beautiful (island)"), is an island located in East Asia off the coast of Mainland China, southwest of the main islands of Japan but directly west of the end of Japan's Ryukyu Islands, and north-northwest of the Philippines. It is bound to the east by the Pacific Ocean, to the south by the South China Sea and the Luzon Strait, to the west by the Taiwan Strait and to the north by the East China Sea. The island is 394 kilometers (245 miles) long and 144 kilometers (89 miles) wide and consists of steep mountains covered by tropical and subtropical vegetation. (source: wikipedia.com)

Delicious Food

Are these American french fries? Almost - they're fried sweet potatoes sold by a street vendor. Yummy! or in pinyin Mandarin - Howtzuh!

Another street vendor - this time it's a Build-Your-Own-Ice Cream-Bar. The ingredients you see here can be added to your own ice cream, including the phenomenal Taiwan pineapple, lychee and beans (also popular in Hawaiian snow cones/shave ice).

Chicken fingers!
Actually, it was a delicious shrimp dish, but I remember when this was served at dinner and Chris very excitedly thought it was American-style chicken fingers.

Rotary Service Project in Miaoli

Rotary is a service organization -
and here is one great example of service, a community park in Miaoli that Rotary helped fund.

A timecapsule for the residents of the city - to be opened around 2060 if I remember correctly. What a fun community idea!

Popular Fashion

Fashion in Taiwan is fun, trendy and cute!

These are fashions that we saw are popular in Taiwan:

layers, English writing, long necklaces, lots of bling, crystals on clothing (men's & women's), very short layered skirts over leggings, knee-high socks, fashion jeans, genuine Rolex watches, no wedding rings, American athletic shoes, fancy sandals, Crocs, jade, school uniforms, very long shirts, mens' polos, Hello Kitty

Toucheng Farm - Relaxing Recreation

From Violeta's blog: Toucheng Farm was graced with five American visitors, all members of the Rotary Group Study Exchange. They were accompanied by the President, Mr. Anton Ku, and other members of the Taoyuan Rotary Club. They stayed for a half day visit last April 28, 2009.

Violeta, in the red vest above, is a wonderfully energetic tour guide who is fluent in many languages. Originally from the Phillipines, she has lived in Taiwan for 30+ years and used to run a company that brought in workers from other Asian countries to Taiwan.

Jill wrote wishes on a piece of bamboo and tied it on the wishing tree.

Ahhh - we could have stayed here all day! These wooden hammocks were surprisingly very comfortable and with a fountain to the side and ducks wandering around, it was the perfect way to relax on a sunny day.
Check out Toucheng Farm's blog with pictures from our GSE visit (http://tcfarm.blogspot.com/) and their website (http://www.tcfarm.com.tw/en/html/aboutus.htm)

R2D2 a.k.a. Swine Flu / H1N1

We started hearing about the swine flu in our last week in Taiwan, but it didn't hit home until we arrived at the Taipei airport and saw more people in face masks than usual. They passed out forms on the flight into Tokyo asking if passengers had been in Mexico, Canada or the USA in the last 10 days. Since we'd been in Taiwan for the last month, we were OK.

Once in Tokyo, we saw medical teams passing through the airport. Later we learned that these medical teams were boarding planes coming in from Mexico, Canada and the USA and were screening passengers for high temperatures and other indicators of swine flu before allowing the passengers to disembark.

The funny flight attendants on our flight from Tokyo to Minneapolis said they made up a new name for the swine flu since H1N1 sounded too uptight - they are calling it R2D2!

Rotary GSE - Business & Cultural Exchange

GSE: A FANTASTIC professional & personal opportunity happening around the world every year!
Pictured above, the 2009 GSE teams exchanging between the USA and Taiwan:
D5650: Team Leader - Mailani Veney
Team Members - Jill Orton, Jeff Barclay, Meagan Morris & Chris Gorman
D3500: Team Leader - PP Peter (Wu Te-kun)
Team Members - Wayne (Peng Gwo-wei), Liber (Chen Jia-jun), Alice (Chen Pei-Chun), Jessica (Chang Fang-Chieh)

The Rotary Foundation’s Group Study Exchange (GSE) program is a unique cultural and vocational exchange opportunity for businesspeople and professionals between the ages of 25 and 40 who are in the early stages of their careers. The program provides travel grants for teams to exchange visits in paired areas of different countries. For four to six weeks, team members experience the host country's culture and institutions, observe how their vocations are practiced abroad, develop personal and professional relationships, and exchange ideas.

In a typical four-week tour, applicants participate in five full days of vocational visits, 15 to 20 club presentations, 10 to 15 formal visits and social events, two to three days at the district conference, three to four hours per day of cultural and site tours, and three to four hours per day of free time with host families.

For each team member, the Foundation provides a round-trip airline ticket between the home and host countries. Rotarians in the host area provide for meals, lodging, and group travel within their district.

For more information, contact your local Rotary or visit www.rotary.org

Incredible Chinese Art

We were fortunate to be invited to view a person's private collection of Chinese art, including statues, silk hangings, calligraphy, portraits and many more. This collection was on three floors with lots of security. Since Taiwan is in an earthquake-prone region, many of the pieces of art were secured to the walls and floors, like the statues in the picture above.

My favorite piece of art - this enormous jade boat. The detail on this jade boat was unbelievably intricate and I could have studied it for days. We saw art that ranged from the microscopic to the large - Chinese art is amazing in its diversity and perfection.

The picture doesn't do justice to the size of this piece - it was big and impressive.

Chinese art (中國藝術/中国艺术) varies throughout different periods of history and is influenced by religions, politics and philosophers.