August 5-8

Time is really flying. This was going to be the last full week of classes, because next week we have our final presentations and exit exam during three of the five days of classes. Anyways onto the weekday report.

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I had arranged with my 老板 to have a meeting on Monday August 5, and go in and say thank you for the internship experience. After pushing back the meeting two hours I finally got to say goodbye.

On the way to the meeting I was leaving from the apartment and I figured that there was probably a quicker way for me to get to the office then taking the MRT. When I looked on Google Maps it showed that there was a bus that took me to that area in less time that it'd take to use the MRT. So I figured I'd give it a try. When I got to the bus stop, I didn't completely realize that I'd have to almost "hail" the bus so it'd stop. Needless to say I gave up on the bus riding option really quickly. Thankfully the MRT wasn't far away, and I still managed to make it in time for my meeting.

My meeting went well. My boss gave me some feedback on my last paper, and then we talked for a bit. I had brought some local Sedona tea to give to him, and he was very confused that stuff actually grows in Arizona (honestly, sometimes I am confused as well). Then we talked a bit more and I learned that he had lived in Wisconsin for a bit of elementary school, and that he also can speak some Indonesian. He definitely seems like a very cool guy.

When I finished saying goodbye, I figured that it would be as good of a time as any to go visit the Huashan 1914 Creative Park. To be honest, I'm not sure what happens there, and I probably wasn't in the exactly correct spot in terms of experiencing the area. Besides a lot of interesting looking empty buildings I did see a few local artists and companies with their small shops. Ultimately it was an interesting area to be around, and I'm happy that I finally went there this summer.

August 6 I had class as I have been doing for the entire summer. I know, it's completely bizarre. In my one-on-one class I worked with my teacher on last edits for my presentation about my Guangzhou travels and we began working on pronunciations with regards to my speech. Besides that, really nothing much happened in classes.

Unfortunately, Tuesday was our last "Lunchbox Lounge." Every Tuesday this summer we had lunches provided (through CET) and we got together and talked about our week at our internships and really what had been happening. At this point, basically everyone was done with their internships or they just had a few more hours to complete. So most of the people were just going in for a final time to say good bye to the people in the office and their bosses. Last week CET had a photo contest where students could enter in their best photos. I entered in my top 10 favorites from my pictures. I got to see a glimpse of a few of the other photos from those that entered. Of the other photos, there were some pretty cool pictures. I'll have more information on the status of the photo contest hopefully soon.

After the final lunch box lounge, I ventured off to find a museum that i had been meaning to visit for a while now. It is the Miniature Museum of Taiwan, and if you guessed that there'd be a lot of miniature models of things making you feel like Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels, you'd be absolutely correct *There was even a display for Gulliver.*

The entire museum had a lot of displays of childhood stories, old homes from around different places around world, and even a few dystopian displays. The attention to detail that went into each display is ridiculous. Whether it was large displays of British forces or Jack and the Giant climbing down the beanstalk to small displays of baking and dining rooms, the artists payed attention to EVERY SINGLE DETAIL.

You can really grasp the attention that went into the detail of the displays when you see these next photos. The pianos are from different displays, however they both have look so realistic when the camera is zoomed in onto them. But in all honesty, they were in tiny displays that were probably a foot wide. After a semester in an introductory architecture class, I have a general idea as to how difficult it'd be to make something with such a great deal of attention.

The Miniature Museum of Taiwan was definitely really quite interesting, and I believe there are a few other museums like this around the world, and I'd love to be able to go visit them as well (assuming they actually exist).

August 7 was only Wednesday. Crazy. For the last week or so, Taipei had been really luck and hadn't had any crazy rain during the day. It had been wonderful. On my way to class I regretted not looking at my phone before leaving the apartment, because I was drenched from rain before I even got to ICLP. Oh well. I knew it'd probably happen to me more than once over the summer.

When class finished at noon it was pouring. I was happy to know that I wasn't the only CET student who neglected to bring some sort of rain "protection" to classes today. So, those of us unprepared for the downpour went to Andrew and Chunling's office as we tried to wait out the rain. We were unsuccessful, however hanging out with them really is always a blast.

Andrew is our resident director who is in charge of us on a normal day basis on the off chance something goes wrong. He helped me at the beginning of the program when I was trying to figure out where my luggage was. Chunling is a local Taiwanese citizen who has been with CET since 2017 when CET Taiwan first began and she is our Internship coordinator. Talking with them is always so much fun and I'm really going to miss them when I go home next week.

The day had come. August 8 in the evening Taiwan was going to be hit by a Typhoon.

Oh wait, backtrack. For the last few weeks nearly everyday people had been saying "OMG. Did you feel the earthquake?" or "Did you know there was an earthquake?" Every time I said no, because I honestly didn't notice any difference. This morning at 5:28:30ish I woke up for some reason and I didn't know why. But then I felt the room shaking, and I looked up at the ceiling in my room and it was shaking. That's when I realized that an earthquake had hit and that it was one that I could actually feel, which meant either it was really close to where I was, or it was a really strong one somewhat far away. I didn't bother looking it up because I wanted sleep so that's what I ended up doing.

So finally awake and ready for the day, I knew for sure that I'd bring a raincoat with me to class today based on my experiences from the day before. I also felt like it was as good of a time as any to go and see what was up with the earthquake. Apparently an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.9 hit Yilan, a province 62.6km away from Taipei in the morning. Thankfully where I was there were no casualties, however, it did scare a few people. Unfortunately there were some power outages closer to the epicenter and one person died from a fallen over wardrobe.

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With that I'm going to conclude this post, because the next bit of information is so important it can't just be jumbled in with the rest of the week information.