Day 88 -- August 20

Well today was my last day seeing my classmates. We met up at Shilin station around 1. We were going to do an MTC event of going out and making pineapple cakes. We all got together and it was good times and stupid laughs for all. We walked over to a rather non-descript building and wander up to the fourth floor. From there were we given all the supplies necessary to attempt to make pineapple cakes. It was just a good time for all us. We were laughing and harassing each other, to be honest at one point I thought that Shun and Chinatsu were going to stat a food fight. But we managed to get everything made and then the spirited us away to a different floor while our cakes cooked.

    On the next floor up we learned about traditional weddings and Reid was elected to act out a particular part of the wedding that essentially involves a lot of puns. It’s lucky to give the Bride and Groom gifts that have similar sounds to the Mandarin words “bride” and “groom”. Mandarin in a language of many homonyms, so pretty much weddings are play on words. After that we were given the opportunity to dress up in bright wedding garbs which was fantastic. It was good fun and I think Laoshi had way too much fun trying to get me into the clothes and making sure they were correct. The hat was really heavy but totally worth it. Then we headed back to get our cakes.

    The people served us some awesome lavender tea and we at small samples of cakes. The lights were off and they had some more traditional sounds playing for us. It was very nice a relaxing. Reid unfortunately has Cilliac’s disease so he was unable to eat anything. He still laughed with all f us and he really liked the tea. We then had to go package our freshly baked cakes. After that everyone exchanged hugs and it was our last good bye. I really loved the group of people I was with for this semester, We all laughed and were frustrated together. I don’t think I laughed more than when I was in Class. It was a great experience to start my Mandarin learning.

    Chinatsu and I decided that we should go out to dinner one last time. Her and Shun came home with me to GongGuan and I gave them a tour of my city jungle. We stopped at one of my local eateries that I can get shredded turkey. We also wandered and got ice cream of sorts. Then I had to say my final good bye. I will miss everyone, but I don’t think it’s a permanent goodbye. I will see them again some at least I really hope so. Thus my journey at MTC comes to an end in terms of class. I still have to run some paperwork over there tomorrow unless the typhoon floods out the MRT hopefully not and everything should work out ok. Four more days and counting!