Day 33 Presentations, and Certificates

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08.08.23 In contrast to the previous day, our second to last day of the program felt quite packed with events. The day started off quite interesting. The day before I had prepped for my presentation for the Final mandarin presentation, and felt quite confident about it. What I had not prepared for was all of the distractions that would happen during the presentations. Throughout most of our presentations the building we were in was testing their fire alarm systems, so many times presenters were interrupted by a loud noise followed by “testing, testing”. On top of that during my presentation both the professor who accompanied us to Genshi county, and one of the directors of our program came into our classroom to listen in on my presentation. To say that I was a little worried about my pronunciation and grammar would be an understatement. To top of my presentation in the best way possible. At the end of my presentation I had made a joke and related it to Snow White the cartoon movie, and I do not think either of them understood nor laughed at the joke. After the presentations ended we had some extra time left before our program had a scheduled lunch, celebrating the completion of the program. During this time our teacher brought in calligraphy materials and we spent the rest of the time talking and doing some pretty bad calligraphy (at least mine was pretty bad) and enjoying the last moments of class. After our class had finished everyone gathered and went to our scheduled lunch.

Before our lunch began we had a short ceremony that was the official ending to the program, during this time both Sienna and Philip gave a wonderful speech recounting some of our favorite class memories over the program. After the speech we received certificates showing our completion of the programs. Afterwards, we sat through a slide show displaying many moments and memories from the program. One of the most memorable moments being our entire class doing the cha cha slide in front of the entire Genshi Elementary school community. It was definitely a very embarrassing moment in my life, but I will definitely not forget it. After the ceremony had officially ended we got the chance to dig into our meal. The meal was an assortment of Taiwanese dishes, all so delicious. But understanding that we are all from the US, they also provided us some options that would fit our American pilates more, one of the trays had both french fries, and onion rings up for grabs. While really funny, I did genuinely miss onion rings, so I was quite happy to see them there.

After a very filling lunch I packed up and headed back to my dorm to finish up my research paper, which was my very last assignment. As the clock ticked closer and closer to the 11:59 pm deadline everyone focused in and worked to finish all the final touches on their essays. While a few (like me) ended up turning in their essays late that night, most were able to finish it up. At 12:00 am that night in celebration of the final paper being finished we had a paper plate superlatives, which did a lot to put a smile on everyone's face and also give people the chance to wind down before going to bed. Over the trip I have learned about so many different unique and interesting aspects of Taiwanese life, identity, and culture. This has been definitely the best trip of my life so far, and I definitely know that this will not be the last time I visit Taiwan 致杰










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