OELP DAY 3

JIANGUO HIGH SCHOOL

When we went there, the students happily welcomed us. They waved at us happily and welcomingly as we stepped out of the bus. The students brought us to what they called the Red Brick Area. Over there, they gave us a brief introduction about their school. A funny duo, Darren and Derrick, were the presenters. Their explanation was both funny and engaging, which made it very interesting for us. Even Mr Chua Shi Rong, who found almost everything boring, found the introduction funny and interesting. After that presentation, we were brought downstairs to enjoy a performance by the Jian guo students. There were violin, viola, cello performances, and a circus show. Even though the students were amateurs and failed to do certain tricks successfullly, they did not show signs of giving up, and pesevered. They even got some of us to go up on stage to peform with them, which made us realise that it was not an easy task, but Owen however, mentioned that he "felt like a pro".

After that, some of us went up to stage to present them the dance they learnt before the OELP trip. After the dance, all of us went up to stage and put our hands over each other and sang “立化情”, a song dedicated to our school. The Jianguo students also joined us and put their hands over us, and they even lifted their legs to the rhythm of the song. They encouraged us to follow them and we did the same as what they did. After that, each of us were assigned a buddy, and they brought us around Jianguo high school, introducing it along as they walked. Their school building was very historical and they mentioned that we shouldn't attempt to jump together at the same time for the building would collapse.😂😂😂 Soon, it was time to leave and we were moret han glad to be able to go back the next day. We were touched by the hospitality and sincerity of the students as they not only put in the time and effort to prepare the performances for us, they even treated us to shaved ice. 😍😍😍 

CHIANG KAI SHEK MEMORIAL HALL & SUN YAT SEN MEMORIAL HALL

At the Chiang Kai Shek and Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, we were able to catch a glimpse of the changing of the guards ceremony at both places. It was truly an eye opener, and the discipline of the guards were amazing, seeing how they were able to stand so still for such long periods of time. We also got a better understanding of two very important historical figures in taiwan, Chiang Kai Shek and Sun Yat Sen, there, we learnt about their contributions and sacrifcies for the country. Without them, there wouldn't be the Taiwan we see today. The trips to both museums were truly enriching and we learnt alot there. We were tasked to do the 'Matt Harding Dance' there. We got Mr Chng to help us film it and everyone stared at us like we were crazy. It was pretty embarrassing but at the same time, we were glad to be able to complete the task. 😅😅

[we had a great meal before going to ximending after dinner!!!]

XIMENDING

After dinner, we went to the long awaited XIMENDING!🎉🎉🎉 There were many teenagers there, as the items being sold there is very trendy. For Owen, he bought a plastic chicken that shrilled whenever he squeezed it. The sound when you squeeze the chicken is both annoying and funny, expectedly, we received many prank calls with the chicken shrilling when we returned to the hotel. For Shi Rong, he bought soft toy that was pervertic and too big for him to carry which made him hug it. Why do we say that the soft toy is pervectic? It is because the toy was a baby which had diaper on and when you remove the diaper, it shows the baby's private part. As for Shi Wen and Laetitia we both bought wallets.  

Blog work on chinese economy, Chua Shi Rong

Higher economic growth means that more factories have to be builted. By building more factories, there would be more harmful gases such as greenhouse gases which would polluted the air,causing air pollution to occurs. Which would lead to health problems or even death. By doing so ,china have to choose the right thing to do or the population of china would decrease due to the death cause by the pollution. 

OELP TRIP DAY 2

TAIPEI TRIP SUNDAY 25/5/2014


Today, we went to the National Palace Museum, Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, and Shifen.

NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM
Over there, we saw the Jadeite Cabbage, Meat-shaped Stone, Calligraphy, Chinese Painting, Porcelain vases, and different types of copper containers. The visit to the museum was extremely enriching, and very thought provoking. Although the Jadeite Cabbage and Meat-shaped stone was smaller than what we imagined, it makes us wonder how the craftsmen of those olden times make such masterpieces, while we are unable to produce similar products of higher quality, even when we have more advanced technology now than they had then. Furthermore, we got to learn more about the history and got a clearer picture of how people lived in the past after visiting the exhibits. It was a pity that no photography was allowed in the museum, so we do not have any pictures of it.

SHUNG YE MUSEUM OF FORMOSAN ABORIGINES 

At the museum, we learnt about the different aborigine groups of Taiwan, and viewed various exhibitions of their traditional clothing, weapons, houses, and ceremonies, these led us to better understand their living environment, traditional lifestyles, and culture. Throughout the explanation by the  tour guide, I felt that i understood the aborigines better, and i feel that how they built their houses is very unique, as it serves a purpose. For example, there is one clan that builds their houses partially underground with a small door, so intruders and theives have to bend down low to get into the house, allowing the people in the house to be able to attack them as they would be in a more vulnerable position. We felt that this visit to the museum was very meaningful as we got to have a more in-depth understanding of the history of the aborigines, and even got to view life-sized exhibits.

SHIH FEN 

When we reached Shi Fen, we released sky lanterns and went shopping! The sky was dotted with lanterns of different colours, and as we walked nearer, we could clearly see the lanterns growing smaller as they floated further away, some rose to great heights, while others fell to the ground becoming a pile of ash, needless to say, it was a spectacular sight.  It was difficult to suppress our excitement and even the slight drizzle could not possibly dampen our moods. We selected our lanterns and wrote our heart-felt wishes on them. To get started, we were told to decorate our sky lanterns with our wishes, at first, it sounded like a pretty easy job, but we soon realised that it was more difficult than it sounded, scanning around the area, we realised that most of my classmates had wished for health, and good grades, but besides that, none of us really had anything else to wish for. 

It was then had we realised how blessed we were, we had a roof over our heads, we had a family, we had food to eat, water to drink, clothes to wear, we were able to get an education. We didnt have to beg for money, we didnt live on the streets. We didn't have to wish for much, we didnt need much, and in between the wishes for health, success and all other things, we didnt need to wish for anything more. 

We were blessed, and as we lit up the lanterns and watched them disappear from our sight, i was reminded of how often we took what we had for granted, even greedy enough to ask for more, we had what many people didnt have, and we should be grateful. We were alive, what more could we possibly wish for? 

After that, we were given free time to look around the old street, and do some shopping!😄💕😄💕 We even "attempted"to take a photo with the "sunset". We were given a task to take a photo that depicts "strength". After much contemplation, Shirong decided to finally comtribute, and demonstrated his amazing (superhuman<---like real) strength by carrying Owen, bridal style. With the romantic lighting from the setting sun, and the sound of the flowing water below us, Shirong went forward to pick Owen up. Left arm on his back, right arm under his knee, Shi Rong lifted Owen up gently with his eyes sparkling. Owen's expression brightened, smile as wide as his face. (They then pledged to each other, "在天愿作比翼鸟，在地愿为连理枝。"<---wow romatic much) We then noticed a sign saying "平安幸福”. Conincidence? We think not.😏👬❤️💍💏💪

                            

[after another delicious dinner, we headed back to the restaurant]

Taipei OELP Trip Day 1 (24/5/14)

TAIPEI TRIP SATURDAY 24/4/2014

Today, after our plane arrived at Taoyuan airport, we were introduced to our tour guide, David 叔叔. He welcomed us warmly. After that, we went to the famous Taipei 101, and checked into our hotel, RF Pretty Hotel, after a scrumptous dinner. 

TAIPEI 101

When we visited Taipei 101, we were treated to a beautiful bird's eye view of the Taipei cityscape. Taipei 101 is a very tall building, with a super fast lift that goes at 1010m/min, and has a super big wind damper which is 5.5m tall and 660 tons. The damper is officially known as "tuned mass dampers" and is the only damper in the world that is open to public view! It is made up for 41 thick steel plates, as high as 5 floors, has a diameter of 5.5 metres and it weighs 660 tons, which is as heavy as 132 big elephants. The ball is suspended by eight very strong steel cables, and each cable is woven of more than 2000 strands of steel! Supporting the ball, there are 16 big hydraulic viscous dampers-8 are slanted, 8 are level. The damper reduces swaying to the Taipei 101 buidling by 40%! That's amazing! It was really fun and the view was fantabulous! 

There were many exhibitions of corals and we took many photos :) We're glad we were given a chance to visit this place! 

:)

Less than 24 hours left! -Tegan Liang Shi Wen

现在离我们上飞机的时间也只差二十四小时了！你兴奋吗？我是绝对超级兴奋！可是，在兴奋的同时，我也不知道为什么，我的心里也感觉有点空空的…

Tomorrow is 24th May, the day we've all been waiting for! Only a couple of hours left and we'll be on the plane. In all honesty, my mind has not really registered that WE'LL REALLY BE GOING TOMORROW! I can't wait to visit the places described in the itinerary, like the night market and the bookstore… I definitely hope the prices in Taiwan are cheap... After all, I want to buy tons of books as well as souvenirs for my friends... I even made a list. :)

I wonder who my buddies will be in Taiwan. Will they be nice? Will they be friendly? Will they like the souvenirs I've prepared? These questions have been stuck in my head for the past few days... How will I feel when we come back from Taiwan? What if the trip will not be how I imagined it to be (though I don't exactly have very high expectations)? What if we screw up for our performance? As the scriptwriter for the skit (half of) my class is performing, I'm quite disappointed myself by the script I have written... It's SOO CLICHE and I myself cannot stand it... (why are all 'educational' and 'appropriate' and 'morally sound' stories with a happy ending be so typical amd cliche? They are just soo predictable it's boring...

((My souvenirs aka bottle nebula))

((POSTCARDS FOR THE WIN!!! although they are kind of unrelated to Singaore...))

I'll be sharing a room with Laetitia and I wonder what kind of strange sleeping habits does she have? (I plan to take photos 😏😏😏)

It's a pity that we're flying off tomorrow though... My cca, choir will be singing as a guest choir for Dunman High Choir's concert tomorrow and I won't be able to participate 😭😭😭 It's such a pity...

Well this will be such an eventful holiday that I doubt I'll even have time to study O_o

For instance, I have choir camp after this trip, and I friend of mine from HongKong will be visiting soon... After that I'll be going to Japan... With all these activities planned out... WILL I HAVE TIME TO STUDY? 😱😱😱

less than 24 hours!!!!!!!!!!! (laetitia)

we're now down to less than 24 hours till we're on the plane off to taiwan!!! after some quick run throughs and editing of our performance, we're safe to say that we're finally ready to perform (hopefully) 

now all i have to do is to head home and finish up the final touches of the gifts and pack my luggage!!! i'll definitely not be able to sleep tonight 😅😅

also, we just recieved a task sheet from mr chua, which assigned different kinds of pictures for us to take and hashtag to instagram! of course, the details are secret bc they're different from all the other groups :x we're definitely going to have lotss of fun while taking the pictures, and whats more, there

are prizes if we won!

here's our task envelope taking a selfie with xinyi's group's 

i'm already counting the hours till we board the plane, and we have to get up really early tomorrow, so hopefully i wont oversleep :P

-laet 

Countdown.. 2 mOre days!!! (laetitia)

i honestly cant believe we're down to 2 days till we head off to taiwan! it seemed like just yesterday were we still preparing for the trip, talking about the trip, finding out we would be going to taiwan, and now i'm already packed and ready to go! i wish time'd fly fasterrrr.

i'm really looking forward to visiting the schools and getting to know how school life is like over there, is it more stressful? or is it less? whats their uniform like? how are their lessons conducted? i have so many questions and now im even given a chance to experience it first hand! we were told to put up a performance for the students there, so not to be a spoiler, bht we're gonna do 15 minutes of a skit ((more like a musical)) and dance!!! 😉 not to mention how we're going to sing 立化情 at the end (: 

preparing presents for the students is also something never to be left out 🎁🎄 and for me, i've prepared a badge that represents singapore (for them to remember me) and a bookmark with well wishes on for them (: as a class, we signed on a card which the gift bearers are going to present to the schools, tour guides and bus driver! hopefully, they'll all like them(: i'm really in love with the gifts i got, and because the badges are customised, i got one for myself as well! 

thats mine, which is going to go pinned on my bag 

and stuck in between my favourite books 

and these are the ones i've gotten for the students 

we'd visit at wulai and jianguo (:

we also got our class tee rushed out just in the nick of time before oelp, and we're going to be wearing it ((which i designed 🙈🙊🙉)) back to the topic, it's so near yet so far away! just 2 more days and we'll be on the plane off to taiwan! even though i was a little disappointed that we wouldnt get to take singapore airlines, i'm also really happy with taking china airlines, afterall, its what we've gained for the trip that counts, and i'm probably going to fall asleep on the plane :3

yesterday, we heard that there was an earthquake in taiwan and we got super worried that we couldnt go, but we're still gonna go and thats amazing! cant wait

-laet