Tuesday, May 19th

-subway to Gakushuin
-Japanese calligraphy class
-watched tea ceremony
-Dr. Fox led a lecture where we took a survey in groups as American Boys, American Girls, and Japanese Girls and learned there is a huge cultural and gender difference between all of us
-Ernst and Young...a few of us had trouble staying awake during the 3-ish hour long presentation
-Tom from Ernst & Young took us to the Kill Bill restaurant and bought us an amazing dinner
-he ordered us mixed drinks, pitchers of beer, a set-course meal, and sashimi for me
-to repay him we told the waiters it was his birthday and they brought out a huge dessert platter and sang to him

Monday, May 18th

I'm getting tired of writing novels so I will proceed in list-format from now on.

-got a private classroom for a presentation on how to navigate Tokyo's Metro
-stopped at the Meiji Shrine for our first Metro trip; it looked just like the woods back home
-went to Gakushuin University for a welcome lunch reception
-Danny and I sat with Aya and Yumi, 2 students
-Charles, Megan, and I participated in a flower-arranging class
-for dinner, the group met Erika and Mizuki at a traditional Japanese restaurant
-I made Danny try sake for the first time

Sunday, May 17th

We had to load up our bus to take us to the airport early in the morning, but somehow we got a smaller bus than when we arrived and had to pile the luggage in the actual passenger part of the bus.

We left TPE around 10am and on the flight we had free drinks and good food; I sat with Danny after we convinced people to switch seats. We arrived in Tokyo around 2pm, only to take a long train ride in a private car. Carrying our luggage up and down stairs and escalators throughout the airport and even through the streets of Tokyo was killer...many suitcase wheels broke, including mine.

We checked into our own rooms at the Olympic Center and then went out to find dinner on a street near the hotel. A group of us ended up eating at this amazing Nepalese restaurant called Himalaya Curry and then Jake, Jenna, Josh, Mel, James, Tara, Taylor, Meredith, Danny, and I explored a little bit while drinking Kirin Lemons from 7 Eleven, since there are no public drunkenness laws in Japan.

Saturday, May 16th

This was our last day in Taiwan. We took a cab for Thai massages at noon and met up with Charles, Chad, Trey, Megan, James, Charlie, and Jerry. We got there and had tea prior to a hot water bath foot massage, then they led us by groups to rooms where the massages took place. Everyone in our group was split into rooms by gender...except Danny and I. I'm not sure why, but they placed us into a room and handed us clothes to change into, then closed the door. It was a little strange how they expected us to change in front of each other, but anyways...our two girls came in to do the massage and it was amazing! They twisted, pulled, stretched, and rubbed us in so many different ways...at one point, Danny fell asleep and started snoring and the two girls and I started laughing as his girl hit him to wake him up...it was sooo funny! My girl was pretty impressed with my flexibility because as she'd go to stretch me, she kept going until I was pretty much folded in half or until the bed stopped me...Danny, on the other hand, wasn't so...lucky. After the 2 hours was up, we got dressed and went back out to the main room for a light lunch/snack, consisting of apple slices, more tea, and an adzuki bean soup.

Our farewell dinner was at a HUGE buffet...I think I ate at least my weight in sushi and sashimi. I also tried some really strange things...no one else was brave enough to try them except me, the vegetarian...I ate chicken heart, throat, and pig butt. Surprisingly, the chicken throat wasn't half-bad. I sat with Danny, Chad, and two girls from Taiwan who joined us, Chin-Min and Ting-Ting.

After dinner, Chin-Min and Ting-Ting took Chad, Danny, and I to Taipei 101. Danny broke his camera somehow walking to the building, adding to the numerous camera losses and breaks of the group.

Friday, May 15th

The best company tour happened at AGV, an antiseptic beverage bottling plant. We got to sample several of their drinks, which were all amazing. Oh, and they gave us all baseball hats that said "antiseptic VIP" on them...awesome...

We visited another college, Chung Cheng University, and met our pen pals. They threw us a welcome party and one of the guys made a powerpoint presentation for us that was pretty funny, complete with a traveling bicycle guy. They gave us a tour of the place after our tea party was over and there was a bridge that was bad luck to cross if you had a boyfriend or girlfriend.

On the bus ride back, we stopped at the 2nd largest city in Taiwan for dinner. A group of us (Megan, Emily, Taylor, Jake, and I) ate at Chili's in a mall.

When we got back to Taipei, we all went out to Barbados again, where Danny taught me how to play pool...and we smoked the opposite team!

Thursday, May 14th

Today was Joy Enterprise, the best company tour so far on the trip. The presentation consisted of playing games with us like we were elementary school children learning English. It was so fun, and my team definitely won!

Later, we went to National Taiwan University to present our case study with MBA students from there. My group sucked...we had Megan and I, two non-business majors who were clueless about what a case study even was, Danny, who was along for the fun of it and didn't actually read the case study, and Jake, who was a business major yet to take a business class. The highlight of the case study was when Dr. Fox fell asleep and banged his head on the desk...hilarious!
Luckily, to make up for the case study part, we got to try our hand at Chinese calligraphy, much harder than it appears and way more difficult than actually writing the characters with a pencil.

For free evening time, Danny and I decided to wander aimlessly around Taipei for three hours straight...we went down a small alley with street vendors and I had him try takoyaki...I think it became his favorite dish in Taiwan.

Wednesday, May 13th

We visited the Presidential Office today. Charles was doped up on Benadryl for allergies and fell asleep numerous times on his feet, while several people almost passed out from exhaustion and heat. Our guide had a lot of trouble giving our tour in English, so he would switch back and forth between English, German, and Chinese, confusing all of us. It also took at least twice as long to get through the tour as it was supposed to because he wanted to give us every single detail of Taiwan's history.

Next we went to a Bubble Tea cafe to go over our OLPC case study...I love bubble tea, but I think most people didn't care for the tapioca pearls. We met some Canadians and invited them to come with us, until we realized they could be carrying swine flu and promptly dumped them.

That evening's entertainment consisted of Party World! We stayed there for hours singing everything from Backstreet Boys to Skynyrd to The Beatles. The biggest hits of the night turned out to be an Avril Lavigne song and The Beatles' Hello Goodbye...changed to Nihao, Bye-Bye, of course.