Team America!

July 19

Today the school gave us a free day where we were able to do whatever we wanted as long as we returned back to the dorms by 10:30. Since the World Games were now underway, I wanted to make sure that I was able to watch them. The event that I chose for this day was Flying Disk, aka Ultimate Frisbee for the Americans. It was an event where I not only knew that the Americans would be playing, but favored as well. The tickets cost NT100 and covered six games, three in the morning and three in the evening. I was only able to watch two of the games because of other plans for the rest of the day. The last game of the morning session was the United States against Australia (which was also the match-up for the championship game. Yay for retro-diaries!). It was pretty fun to watch. I have to admit, those guys are a little bit better than the people I played with in Chiayi. Unfortunately, the wind in the stadium created problems for the players and prevented many long throws from being made. However, I still got to cheer for the Americans and they responded by winning the game 13-11.

After that, I met up with some of the students from China, as well as one from France. We headed over to the Kaohsiung 85, the second tallest building in Taiwan. I bet you can guess how many floors it has (No Jeremy, it's higher than 12). It was a lot of fun. The view was amazing, and Kaohsiung has many different things to look at. We ended up spending a lot of time there hanging out and talking. There were also plenty of photos taken.

Finally, as the nightcap for the day, all of the students from the Wenzao program were invited to the American athletes night at the Dream Mall. Seeing that I am American, I gladly took the opportunity to meet some of the athletes. The event was pretty good. They set out a lot of food, but by the time that I got around to getting in line for it, everything but the dessert and beer was gone. So it turned out that my dinner was a can of Texas Select. I may not be an expert on Texas beers, but if that is what Texas selected then I have no desire to try the rest of their choices.

I was able to talk to a few of the athletes. There really weren't too many of them at the program. Over half of them were the Dragon boat team, which are the ones that I ended up talking to. One of the interesting things that happened while I was there was getting interviewed. This interview was different than the other ones that I'd had. I was still carrying all of the stuff from Flying Disc, which included the American flag. I had given it to one of the Chinese girls, Jiang Lai, to wear at the American event. The two of us were talking when a woman came up to us and wanted a quick interview, apparently unaware that I was the only American she was talking to. I don't think Jiang Lai was very comfortable being interviewed in English, so the answer she gave was really short. Luckily, my wit and charm made up for her shortcomings. All in all, it was a fun and eventful day.