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Days 27 - 30 : Photos

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20th of March, Tuesday. 6.55 a.m. Finnish time.

After spending 11 hours on flight from Hong Kong The Team has just arrived at Helsinki Airport. We spent an exiting weekend in Hong Kong and are now ready to dissolve the team. Goran and Markus are going to Norrkoping and Dana, Anna and Janis will fly to Riga in a couple of hours.

We want to thank Rotary International, our sponsoring clubs in Sweden and Latvia, Ms.Delphine Chen, Mr. Ti-Lin Kuo, Taiwanese outgoing GSE team, all our Taiwanese friends and last but certainly not least all the hosting clubs in Taiwan for their warm hospitality that made our trip an unforgettable experience. 

We would also like to thank all our blog viewers for supporting and interacting with us. We are pleased to see that we have had more than 2300 views of our blog during the last month.

Thank you all!

Have a wonderful Spring all around the globe!

With Kind Regards,

Dana, Markus, Anna, Janis, Goran

Day 20-29, Tainan

Nine days full of visits and meetings with hosting Rotary clubs. On March 7th we were back in Tainan, and we moved to live at Southern Taiwan Science Park. Dana and Anna stayed at a host family, but boys stayed at hotel. We visited Wu San To Reservoir to see the irrigation system and dam. 

On March 8th we visited Tainan National Univeristy of the Arts – we heard a student’s music performance and learned how ancient Chinese and Japanese paintings are restored and renovated. We had a nice dinner at Esay House Vegetarian Cuisine. 

March 9th – visit at The World Vegetable Center – we learn how the company produce fast growing vegetables for the countries that suffer after different disasters. We also had a visit at Nationa lMuseum of Taiwan History.

March 10th – A perfect day – we started by going up to the mountains where we enjoyed the hot springs and Taiwan Orchid Show that happens only once a year. Amazing flowers!!!

March 11th – A visit at Taijiang National Park to see rare bird – Black Faced spoonbill – that migrate between Korea and Taiwan each year. Afterwards we visited Taiwan Wedding banquet and the Taiwan Salt museum. 

On March 12th we left Tainan county to get back to the city. We saw amazing place – Anping Tree Houses – an old Japanese warehouse that has been left and 50 years ago bayana trees „occupied” it showing the power of nature. Today the roots of the trees cover the walls and roofs of the house and make a non forgettable view. We also visited Duch Anping Fort. 

March 13th – we started with at Tainan University of Technology / Theatre art and Music where we saw department of communication and industrial design. Seeing us tired the hosting club made a spontenious decision and sent us to the Taiwanese feet massage! That was the thing of the day! A  perfect change from the plan. We also visited Apple Line Radio Station.

March 14th – a perfect day! Nice and relaxing visit to The Magic School of Green Technology and a perfect lunch at a hotel with a view to the city from 38th floor. Afterwards boys went to shopping, but Anna and Dana was accompanied by Andrew (a host of Dana) to a nice tea shop and Japanese slipper shop. The evening continued with all the team members having dinner with their hosting families. In the very evening Dana and Anna visited Andrew Page’s piano concert feat with a wonderful latino music guitar artist.

The last day in Taiwan – we visited the historical center of all Taiwan – i.e. Tainan down city. Our visit included meeting one of Rotarians who is also a Chinese painting artist – Mr. Wang. All of team got a wonderful present – in front of our eyes artist painted small paintings for us listening to our wishes about the content of it. A beautiful experience! We had an easy lunch at a French/Italian restaurant with our hosts and got back to the hotel for packing.

At our farewell party we met some of our friends – Mr. Li-Lin, Mr. Tank, Jean, outbound team members, hosting families and others. The party was short but nice. Tomorrow we are heading to Hong-Kong and than back home to Europe again!

Day 26: Photos

Day 25: Photos

Day 24: Photos

Third week: Mid exchange break and visit to Taipei

March 5th. A busy week is behind us. After the district conference last weekend we had our “mid-exchange break”. That turned out to mean the same as shopping. The boys, young and old, bought electronics and the girls bought clothes. Göran and Janis also took the opportunity to by some real Wasabi. Real Wasabi is pretty much non-existing in Europe, and when it exists it is very expensive. In Taiwan, however, it is cheap. In the evening we went swimming in the ocean outside Tainan (You have already seen the pictures, right!?). The water was warm and the waves awesome. It’s interesting how something as simple as 25 minutes in the ocean immediately turns in to a treasured memory

March 6th. Early Tuesday morning it was time to board the High Speed Rail (HSR) Taiwan’s super-fast train system. Taipei was less than a two hour ride away even though several stops were made during the ride. Our day in Taipei started at the National Palace Museum, an ancient art museum covering Chinas entire history and many dynasties trough the art and material artifact point of view. It was easy to find personal favorites among the many beautiful items. The most difficult was trying to avoid being overrun by the hordes of mainland Chinese who roamed the museum.

In the afternoon we made a stop at ICRT, Taiwan’s only English speaking radio station. It was a vocational visit for Markus and he got to try recording a radio commercial. He definitely has a future in that field. 

Leaving ICRT the team split in two. Dana went to meet Mia, a performance artist just like herself, who turned out to work with almost exactly the same thing as Dana. They are already planning to collaborate in the future. The rest of the team went on to visit the tallest building in East-Asia, and up until last year the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101. From ground level Taipei 101 does not look that impressive, despite its height of more than 500 meters.  That impression changed as soon as we reached the observatory at floor 89. Other tall buildings adjacent to Taipei 101 dwarfed in comparison when you could see them from above far far below.  The panorama view from the observatory was ecstatic and will remain with us forever. The elevator of the building is worth mentioning. It is not exactly your average office elevator but more like a space shuttle. It takes you from the fifth to eighty ninth floor in 35 seconds and reaches top speed of 1010 meters per minute. 

From morning to night our detour to Taipei was our longest day so far in our trip, but it was trult worth every minute.

Day 23: Photos