BIENVENUE: janvier 2015

晚安!
*) Read: Wǎn'ān,which means 'good night'.

Well, hello people! I am so glad to finally be able to write another post tonight :D

If you read my previous post (about a month ago), you will have known that I am currently involving in an Exchange Program offered by AIESEC. Perhaps some of you are not familiar with this organization. Well, AIESEC is an international student organization that is located in many countries. They provide several programs which are volunteering progam for students and global internship program for professionals. They basically sending their local participants to AIESEC in another countries and also recieving as well as hosting a project in their own countries for the foreign exchange participants.

Back to my story, I applied for their volunteering project and permited to choose a project abroad. After a long consideration and discussion, I finally chose to do a project in Taiwan. The name of the project is 'Embrace Taiwan - Tuscany Restaurant'. The main reason I chose this is because the period of the project is quite flexible and fits my holiday period. The default duration of volunteering project is 6 weeks depends on the project requirement. Unfortunately, I only got 30 days of VISA. So I will only be here for a month. But, the positive side is that I do not need to miss classes because my winter holiday is only a month.

I went to Taiwan on Sunday, Dec. 21st 2014. I considered myself brave enough to do this because firstly there is no other Indonesian student joining this project. Secondly, I cannot speak their language. I think I only knew around 15 words plus numbers and it was not helping at all! And lastly, I did not even know who will pick me up in the airport.. During the journey, I kept on convincing myself that everything is going to be alright, don't think too much, and just enjoy every second of it. When I finally arrived at the airport, there was no one holding a board/paper with my name in it. I already passed those people twice or three times but still cannot find anyone. At that point I was like "Okay..... Nothing to be worry.... Keep it cool..." And after a while, there was a girl who looked confuse and lost approached me, and she said "Is it you???" while showing my Facebook profile in her phone. I was so thankful and reliefed then said "YES! YES! That's meeee!" and I hugged her.I think that was a reflex LOL.

The next day, another girl named Jenny took me to High Speed Railway Station to meet the owner of the Tuscany Restaurant where my project takes place. Tuscany is located in Hsinchu. It is a region in the north of Taiwan, approximately 1.5 hours to Taipei. Before going to Taiwan, it was not so clear for me about how the project will be like. It turns out, Tuscany is basically a hostel (in the second story) and a restaurant (first story). But the restaurant only serves people who booked, so it is not a daily open restaurant. Beside this, they also have a farm, where they plant stroberries and several types of vegetables, and a terrain which they rent for the campers. Every morning in the so called factory, just across the hostel building which they also own, they make and deliver a fresh juice. So yes, they own a big land and operating an integrated business.

There are 5 people who live here. They are the owner (husband and wife) whom I call Mr. Lo and Ai (means aunty in English), their 13 y.o son named Lo En, Ai's daughter named Meng Xue (I don't know how to write it correctly), and her 3 y.o daughter called Ah Pi. Anyway, there is also another student from Malaysia here. His name is Adrian, but we call him with his chinese name Yu Sheng. Obviously he is chinese and he can speak Mandarin! So, it's my luck to have him here.

Now the question is what do we do here?

Basically, we just do what they need us to help. For example, packing dried vegetable to be sold in the market, harvest and pack the stroberries, clean up the building if there will be guests coming, sweep the (large) garden the day before campers come, planting new seeds, etc. But when there is nothing to help, Yu Sheng regularly go to the farm to take care of the plant and I usually remake the old albums by retake the pictures and crop it one by one. Those albums belong to the church (the family is chatolic and they are quite active in the church actvities) who wants to make a digital documentation of the old albums. We do not work on the weekend, but Ai usually go to the market to join their product on Saturday. So, Yu Sheng and I usually go with her.

Well, what else can I say... The Taiwanese are so friendly and warm to the foreigner. I really feel welcome not only by the family, but also by the people around their community. This family is very health-conscious, especially Ai. Their home cook are mostly vegetable and I can hardly find a deep fried food. They also prefer the natural taste and not adding much spices in their food. If you are not familiar with this, you will probably think their food are quite plain. Every breakfast (on the weekday), they always give us the juice they make. It's always a mixed juice, sometimes vegetables, fruits, or pumpkin. Honestly, I enjoy their diet a lot! Everything is healthy and mostly homemade (for example kimchi). I really want to continue this lifestyle when I go back to Indonesia.

FYI, I will be going back on Monday, Jan 19th 2015. It's the day after tomorrow! I don't know whether to feel sad to leave Taiwan or happy to be back home. After all, this has been an incredible experience I will not forget :). Anyway, I will also post another story about the trip to Taipei. So, just wait for my next post ;) ;)

Here are some photos for you, my faithful readers!