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Wrapping up our program

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  "Life is all, nothing is impossible."  This was a random little tag I found on a backstreet one morning as I was walking to Family Mart at 6 AM. I had woken up early to watch the sunrise, and get coffee before an online meeting zoom interview for a job I applied for.  It felt perfect at the moment, to stumble upon those words. As if the universe had really sent me a message that morning. You see, a few months ago, the life I was living now, in Taiwan, was merely just a faint dream with a strong desire.  I had applied for 4 different study abroad programs, and been accepted into all of them, and waitlisted for Design in Taiwan. I felt frustrated at myself for my interview, asking what I could have done better in order to get in to my top choice? For weeks, the choice haunted me. Should I go to Australia for a year long exchange? Would that be too expensive and long? Would the credits line up? Is it worth it to leave behind the life I had just started building roots ...
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Tainan!!

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         ⋆⊱༻𖥸༺⊰⋆ I am learning more and more, the best moments and memories simply do not have a photograph to remember them by. Perhaps this is what makes them so precious to us, afterall. If we have only ourselves, and our friends to remember something, does the memory then become a precious relic? Shared only, and treasured by the people present then and there? There are so many small and individual moments of time, pockets of existence, so vastly  different from one another. Yet we all experience our own perception of a thing, even in moments when we are all physically together at the same time, and place.  There are many things I have witnessed and experienced throughout this whole trip, which I have no form of documentation to “prove” it happened. Before, I used to obsess over my identity on social platforms. So much, to the point where I would wear uncomfortable clothes that made me miserable (but looked cute in photos), starve myself, go pla...
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Taichung

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      On August 31, our class had the opportunity to visit Chen’s Wood, a workshop in the central district of Taichung city. Naomi, our kind and fashionable translator, explained to us the history behind this family business.  “This shop first opened almost 100 years ago in 1926.” She said, “The first location was in Taipei, but after the bombing of World War 2, they had to move back home to be with their parents. Back then,” she continued, “there were 20-30 other woodships. Now, this is the only one left.”      The grandaughter showed us many of the tools used to work the wood before electricity and power tools were common. I’ve illustrated some of them below:      We learned how certain numbers in Chinese are “lucky” and many people believe furniture should be made with these numbers to bring good fortune. We also were taught to use a couple of the tools, including a spokeshave, to create wood shavings. They smelled soooooo goo...
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