Week 45: Row, Row, Row Your Dragon Boat

This week was the second-to-last week of the grant period, and it was also the week of 端午節 (duānwǔjié), or Dragon Boat Festival. We spent the week making last minute memories, revisiting our favorite sites, hanging out, and saying goodbye to some local friends. One of our cohort members also spent her last weekend here before heading home a little early.

Monday was my first day of school without the sixth graders, and I missed them dearly. At the very least, the English activity for the morning assembly went well. To practice the phrase, "Try again", one kid from each class had five tries to make a successful bottle flip, and their classmates would cheer, "Try again", after every attempt. I think the kids liked it!

Classes went ok. I only had two in the morning since the sixth graders had graduated. In the afternoon, the other Little K ETAs and I went to Nanshantou Beach for one of our last lunchtime hangs. Since it was incredibly hot, we didn't spend long there, but I'm glad we could revisit the beach where we spent one of my favorite afternoons of the year. We also thanked the heart shaped rock we saw earlier in the year for the luck and love it brought us during the grant period.

The rest of the day was pretty chill. The first graders were adorable, as usual, and one of them gave me a "United States" sticker that the FET (presumably) had given him earlier. Then when I got home, my partner showed me two tiny horseshoe crab shells his students had given him as a gift.

For dinner, I went to the Indonesian restaurant in Jinsha with my partner. It was nice to see the owner again! As usual, she was sweet and funny, and she chatted with us while she put on news about deep sea marine biology. Neat. Then at home, my partner and I chatted with another Hong House ETA about the past weekend. The rest of the cohort did pub golf, and apparently it was a pretty fun time.

The next day, I had all five of my usual classes. Most of them were my last actual classes with the kids, so we spent the time playing some of the kids' favorite (educational) games like Blooket and Four Corners. I'm gonna miss the kids so much! After my third grade class in the afternoon, I played a card game with them for a bit. I still only mostly get the rules of the game, but the kids usually help me out. I also got $300 NTD ($10 USD) in Carrefour money from the school, which was nice.

After classes, I spent some time driving around Little K and exploring some places I hadn't been before. I went to Qingyuan Lake, then saw the big wind chicken near Shanglin Coastal Beach. As hot as it was, I had fun just driving around Little K and seeing places both old and new along the way. Not to be biased, but I think Little K might be my favorite township in Kinmen.

That evening, we had our cohort-wide Unhinged Powerpoint Night. We had seven presentations that encompassed topics like what classes everyone in the cohort would teach if they were a professor, why Justin Trudeau is definitely Fidel Castro's illegitimate son, why Taylor Swift is gay, and which celebrities are decidedly Jewish (plus how lactose intolerant they are).

The last presentation was a twenty-ish minute long presentation of how the Kinmen cohort (and a couple others) would do in the Hunger Games. There were elaborately made photos of us pasted onto Hunger Games backgrounds, detailed backstories, and devastating stories of our deaths, and through it all, only one ETA survived: one of the Jinhu ETAs.

Me? According to the story, I died first—I stepped off of the platform too soon and got blown up. As for my partner, he ate berries he forgot he wasn't supposed to and died. Other notable deaths included a tree falling on an ETA, one ETA being chased by a hologram of her most ferocious students, and another ETA trying to save a mutt (mutated creature) that she shouldn't've. Overall, it was an incredibly fun presentation night.

Wednesday was our last day of school before Dragon Boat Festival. I taught my morning classes, then headed home with my partner. Later, we went to Maestro Wu's, which is a famous knife making franchise on Kinmen. During the war, Kinmen was bombarded with a ton of artillery shells, many of which are still scattered across the island. One knifemaker used the leftover artillery shells and combined it with regular steel to create higher quality knives, and his knives are now famous across Taiwan.

I bought a couple cooking knives, and some of my friends brought small daggers or switchblades. If we spent over a certain threshold, we also got to spin a wheel for a prize. Good news: we all got little knife keychains.

I spent the rest of the day running errands, then got Vietnamese for dinner with some other ETAs. We all ate in Houhu Plaza, and a visiting ETA from Changhua came and hung out with us too. Unfortunately, my partner wasn't feeling well, so he went home, but I liked seeing everyone. After spending the evening with everyone, I went into one of the little shops that's not usually open and bought a little clay fella! He's adorable. Presently unnamed, but shall be named soon. Maybe "Toto".

Thursday was the day of the dragon boat race. We woke up early, threw on our team shirts, and headed to Ming Chuan University for the race. It was incredibly hot and humid, and neither my partner nor I fared well in the heat. He'd only come so his team wouldn't be disqualified for a lack of registered members, and as soon as he was cleared to leave, he headed home. Fortunately, we had a couple of subs come in through the day, including the visiting friend of one of the Little K ETAs.

Right before the race, I was starting to develop heat exhaustion, and I was worried that I was gonna pass out or have to step down as a drummer. Luckily, putting a damp towel on the back of my neck and borrowing another ETA's bucket hat cooled me down a bit, and I was able to drum. I also thought the drum was neat! I'd always seen traditional drums growing up, but I'd never had the chance to play one.

Since our teams were in the Women's Leisure category, there were only three teams: the Fulboaters, the Kinanigans, and a team in green whose name I don't know. We lost to the team in green, but us Fulboaters scored second place with a time of 1:37.02.

Between our first and our second race, I went to another ETA's apartment and took a much-needed nap in the AC. Back at the festival, I saw a couple of my students, including one of my 小班 students. The latter gave me a couple finger hearts and told me to 加油!

In our second race, my team finished in second again with a 1:35.92. We won second place overall in our division, and we even got $7500 NTD to split amongst the team! Once we'd all taken photos with our surprisingly heavy trophy, the cohort headed to Xibian Beach to cool off. One ETA and I saw a turtle in the road along the way.

We swam and chatted for about three hours, and we saw lots of little silvery jumping fish as well as some sort of anemone/nudibranch creature. It was wonderfully refreshing to cool off after a long day of being sweaty and tired. Afterwards, I got dinner with a couple other ETAs, then stayed in and called some friends from home.

Friday morning, I ran some errands, which included running food and water for my partner, who was even sicker than the day before. Then in the afternoon, we went back to Xibian for a beach darty (day party). It was a good time! Everyone brought snacks, I brought some bubble wands, and we all swam for a couple hours.

Among other things, we had chicken fights, jumped off of each others' shoulders, and played Marco Polo. We also saw two dogs—a rotund white bulldog and a beautiful golden retriever—that we got to pet a little. While we were swimming, we saw a rainbow in the sky, which felt like a good omen for the rest of the grant period.

Everyone ate a waidai-ed dinner from Kim's Noodles afterwards, then I hung out with some other ETAs before we went to Livehouse for drinks and general good vibes. Among other things, I played darts for the first time. I still scored the most poorly, but I did okay. At the very least, I hit a couple bullseyes.

On Saturday, I went to Little K to revisit some places I loved. I met up at FamilyMart with some other ETAs, then we went to the honey shop. I got ice cream, but some other ETAs got tarts, drinks, and even honeycomb. The beekeeper was there, and he let us hold part of a hive, then showed us the bees.

We went to Donglin Seashore Park afterwards and had fun running around and playing before heading to Hujingtou Battle Museum. Back at Hong House, we spent the rest of the day prepping for the final party that evening. Then, at 8pm, we had our final hurrah.

The party started off with a recap video of our year, then we played some of our favorite drinking games and other activities. One such activity was sock wrestling, which was chaotic, as usual, but wildly entertaining. We also decided to adorn ourselves, our phones, and others with some fun, glittery rhinestones.

As much fun as we had throughout the night, there was definitely a bit of a sorrowful air to it all. It was hard not to think about the fact that it was our last party together, and for some of us, our last weekend together. It's been a good year, and we're not ready for it to end yet.

The next day, I went to my last Mongolian folk dance class to say goodbye to my teacher and classmates. Although I'm sad to be leaving so soon, I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet everyone. At the beginning of the year, I was a little intimidated to join a local dance class by myself, but I'm glad I did it! Everyone was incredibly kind, patient, and welcoming, and I had a good time. I'm also glad that I was able to perform with everyone (and see my students in the process).

I met up with some other ETAs at Maestro Wu's afterwards, had lunch with my partner (who seems to be getting sicker by the day?), then ran errands and tried to tie up loose ends to get ready for the end of the grant period. As of this Sunday, I only have five days left in the grant period. Five. Am I doing well mentally? Absolutely not.

In spite of all the errand-running and panicking, we still had time for one last hotpot night. Almost twenty of us rolled up to dinner, but we fit in our usual room. It was wonderful just to sit together, chat, and savor the last Sunday of the grant period. We also all signed a series of postcards we're handing out to our local friends, including the lady that runs the hotpot restaurant.

Photo credits for BeReal (right) to Olivia Cohen, 2023.

I think it was bittersweet knowing that that was gonna be our last hotpot together. I'll miss our weekly events—hotpot night (Sundays), egg dumpling night (Tuesdays), badminton, boba, and/or workshops (Wednesdays), Jinning movie night (Thursdays)—but I think I'll miss hotpot the most because it always feels like a much-needed weekly check-in.

With the end of the grant period rushing up to meet us, I'm glad the cohort had an extra long weekend to spend together. It's been a good week at school, and an even better long weekend with everyone. Despite my probable heat exhaustion, I had fun participating in the dragon boat race with my team, and I'm glad we were able to compete together. From there, the weekend was a blur of swimming at Xibian Beach, revisiting our favorite spots in Kinmen, and just hanging out.

There's only so much time left, and so many people and places to spend it with. Here's to entering the last week of the grant period.

Writer's Note: This post was originally written on July 3rd, 2023.