Haňule z Kyjova

Hi! I did so many things on this weekend! On Friday I had three classes and then went for dinner with Eva. We bought some fried rice and ate it in the classroom and talked for 2 hours…

On Saturday there was a singing competition at school and Eva was going to sing there, so I went early in the morning to school to hear her and support her. There were approximetly 130 students who joined the contest. Everyone had 1 minute to sing just like that withou music, so it was very hard, and i think many of them did a good job. Eva has a really nice voice and I like her singing.

At 10:30 the English teacher Gillian picked me up and we went south to Hsinchu for lunch with her husband Vincent and friend Julia. We stopped at the centre of Hsinchu were is a City God Temple. This one is special because it is surrounded by many and many food stalls and restaurants, so you can hardly see the temple. In the temple there are more gods then one, but one is the main god, then there is also his wife. Inside there are also a little scayr figures or masks of guards of the temple.

You can “light” a little (electric) light as a prayer in the temple – for a year it costs you maybe 500NTD

The guard that weights the good and bad inside you

We tasted a lot of delicious food like spring rolls, different types of rice noodles (which are famous here),  meat balls and kind of dumplings made of rice dough and filled with meat and oyster omellet. Then we went to Miaoli county to see an exhibition of students from the school. Theare were 5 different schools taking part in this exhibition. I think that many of the works were really good and the studnets are talented. I hope they can find their path and be artists one day.

We also went to visit the Expo Pavillion of Taiwan from World Expo exhibition in Shanghai. It looks like a huge lantern and inside there is a big ball on which are many typical taiwanese things and also other projected. We went inside the ball and a video that was all around us took us through popular places in Taiwan. Then we could “send” our own lantern towards the sky with our own wish. To tell the truth I thought the pavillion would be more interesting, or rather, that there would be more things to see. so it dissapointed us a bit…

But the dinner definitely made it up. We went to taste some yuanan food. It is more similar to thai, a little spicy and sour, but I think it was really perfect after the hot day. We had 9 differetn courses in 3 people!! So again a feast! Thank you Gillian and Vincent.

On Sunday I went with 4 students (Jerry, Joseph, Fish and Llul) to Danshui, which is a northern part of Taipei. It’s a place where the river Danshui flows into the sea, so the water here is a little salty. We went along the banks of the river, there was a lot of people and food again! We tried the specialty “age” – it is a kind of tofu that is filled with special noodles and you eat it with red sauce. Not that it is my favourite but it was good. We also tried a kind of cram with garlic and basil leaves, which was very tasty! We visited some buildings that are left here after the Spanish and Dutch domination. And for me they looked soooo normal:))

We took also a ferry to the other side of river. There was even more people, so we didn’t take a ride by bike as we planned earlier, because it was too dangerous. I tasted typical local thing – a kind of small black egg, but it was definitely better than the century egg!!!

We took a MRT to Shilin night market – a famous one in Taipei. It is very big, also underground, so we have seen maybe a half of it and were very tired, so we decided to go home… But I tried some specialities again – a kind of potatoe dough filled with ham, pinapple, broccoli, corn…., roll filled with special kind of cake (difficult to describe).

On Monday I had only 2 classes and no lunch with students! So I went swimming! and had 2 hours of calligraphy practice. One of the classes was very noisy , no suprise it was full of boys , but I did a good move – I told them to speak only in english, and suddenly it was more silent!

I was so occupied that I nearly forgott that it is Eastern! So enjoy yourselves and the day of in CZE!