Visiting the National Palace Museum

On Wednesday, June 28th, the students were in for a special adventure. The morning schedule was their class time, but in the afternoon, they were exploring the National Palace Museum! The students were able to see the famous Meat-Shaped Stone in person and take selfies with them. They had a great time exploring the history of Taiwanese people through sculptures and ceramics. Here is a blog of a student's day:

"Today was National palace museum day. We had our regular class in the morning from 9:10-12:10, but for lunch today, I decided to try out a restaurant I had not tried yet. There I got spicy noodle soup with two program leaders and two other students, before going out to complete my community conversation with one of the locals in the area. The task was to ask (in Chinese) about one of the cities in Taiwan, the weather in said place, and what to pack to accommodate it. We boarded the bus after to ride to the National Palace Museum for our daily cultural activity. There we got to see a lot of significant works ranging from calligraphy to sculpture to pottery, exploring in our own groups to find things that interested us. We were tasked with finding three treasures that resonated with us and describing them, our impressions, their history, and what makes them important. These were my three. Near the end of our time at the museum, we got to go into the gift store to buy souvenirs, and we took group photos outside to remember the trip and share it with others. Back at the hotel later on, we had free time until curfew so I decided I would have a little fun and go to XiMenDing with one of my friends, a shopping area popular among local teens. We looked around at all the small clothing shops, laughed at all the shirts with bad English phrases, and got persuaded into buying things that we probably didn’t need by merchants. After spending all my cash on clothes, we went to a “Mos Burger” for the cheapest meal we could find, only for my card to get declined on a $3 burger because they didn’t take American cards. Thankfully, I had just enough cash (and Chinese vocabulary) to be able to get by successfully with my burger. Later, we were running a bit late back to the hotel on public transportation, but we ran into some of our fellow classmates and sent a disappointing late-notice selfie to our disappointed program leader. We got back only a few minutes late to curfew, but right on time to start the homework we put off from the rest of the week before going to sleep." -- Hannah