SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2015
Sports Day
Yay! It’s Saturday! But I have to go to work 🙁 It’s not the worst thing to happen to a person, especially since we get Monday off. I will admit I was not excited to go to work on Saturday, but it’s only this week, so I’ll live.
What is Sports Day? The best comparison I can think of is field day that some elementary schools have. In Taiwan, every school normally has a day in early November, in which the students participate in relays and physical activities.
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| Kindergarten dressed up as Marios and Luigis. |
The day started with each part of the school performing a warm up stretch/dance. Afterwards, they were separated into different parts of the school, where they competed in various activities. What is interesting to note, in the U.S, usually each class or grade will choose representatives to compete for their class/grade. In Taiwan, everyone participates. In the U.S., the students would most likely be given the option of participating, but it’s mandatory in Taiwan. No kid is seen sitting on the sidelines.
Some of the activities were mad dashes, where groups of 5 students would run the straight part of the track and try to be the first one to make it to the end. There was another activity where students had to use a broom to move a soccer ball across the grass and around a barrel and back to the starting point.
My co workers and I did not have a role in sports day. We were actually expecting a regular work day at the office. However, they locked the entire school, fearing that people would steal from the school while everyone’s attention was outside for sports day. Sports day is kind of a big deal. Parents come out to watch their children perform. And they mean business! Two weeks before the big day, each grade was practicing their tug-a-war, while the junior high students were practicing a group jump rope with 10 people jumping in the middle.
Luckily, we were allowed to leave early. I left around 10am, went home, chatted with my parents, and took a nap.
Sweet Popcorn
I woke up at 2pm to meet Rebecca. We made plans to go to Hsinchu (30 minutes from Miaoli) and see a movie. We took a train to Hsinchu and Rebecca actually introduced me to this free shuttle that runs from the Sogo (department store) in Hsinchu to Big City, a mall 5-10 minutes away. The bus comes pretty frequent, every 10 minutes. Neither of us ate lunch, so we grabbed something at the food court. I had some Thai food and Rebecca got Pizza Hut.
We went to the movie theater, Vieshow, at Big City on the 4th floor. It might seem strange, but I was very, very excited to go to the movie theater. Why? Sweet popcorn. I think Rebecca sums it up perfectly with the following words: It’s like crack. It tastes like kettle corn with a thin glaze of hardened sugar.
Afterwards we shopped around the mall a bit before heading back to the train station. Rebecca went back to Miaoli and I headed towards Taipei.
