We left for Taiwan December 24th of the year 2007 to join the World Conference on Youth and Community Service. The flight took a little less than two hours. From the airport, we were taken to the Taiwan Adventist College in Nantou County around four hours from Taipei. It was the beginning of our 2 week stay in Taiwan.The "AIIAS" Group in Taiwan:
- Abishek Deepati
- Aimee Tapeceria
- Aldwin Tapeceria (me)
- Edmund Solaiman
- Francis dela Cruz
- Grace Ragui
- Ian Mambu
- Ji Hyuk Song
- Kenneth Deles
- Lorjean Carpena
- Obed Soire
- Tamira Sandagsuren
- Yeji Choi
Week 1:
We stayed one night in Taiwan Adventist College before moving to Taichung City the next day. Our group was split into three. One group stayed in TAC including Aimee, Grace, Yeji, Ian & Ji Hyuk. We, who left TAC, first, traveled four hours south to Pintung where Tamira's group was dropped off. Then we traveled 2 hours north toward Taichung. We stayed at the Taiwan Conference.The Community Project
We spent the week doing community service in Taichung. The first 2 days, we cleaned the Conference Building -- scrubbing the stairs clean, painting, and preparing some rooms for other guests. On Friday, we headed to the nearby public elementary school to do more cleaning.
The public school was really big! We had the task of cleaning a few of their stockrooms, the performance stage, and the basement. After that, we were treated to a really delicious lunch in a restaurant.
While at Taichung, after the cleaning in the day time, we had free time at night. We took the time to go around Taichung City.
My thoughts on Taichung: Taichung is a beautiful city. It has lots of parks around just walking distance from each other. We found good parkour training spots in some of these parks.And it's pretty cold there too. Walking around the city is a nice thing. Electronics is also cheaper in Taichung compared to Taipei.
>Thanks to Francis for the pictures in Taichung.
Week 2: We headed to Taipei for the World Youth Conference on the morning of the 31st. We stayed at the Chien Tan International Youth Activity Center around 30 minutes from the Taipei County Hall were the convention was held. The afternoon of the 31st was spent for registration.
On New Year's Eve, we were free since the convention didn't start until the afternoon of January 1, so we decided to go see Taipei 101.
The MRT stations were crowded! We entered the Jiantan station at around 9:30 PM. The station was so crowded it took us almost two hours to get to our destination which would have normally taken around 30 minutes. The streets were crowded. No motor vehicle could pass through. We had to walk from the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial station to were we could get a nice view of the 101. It was worth it. Watching the 5-minute fireworks display from the 101 was a good enough reward for the long wait.To see a video of the fireworks display from the 101 click the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycnB1U8Y034
The Convention
The Convention started on the afternoon of January 1 after a New Year's celebration by the Taipei County Government. It kicked off with an opening program that included a Lion Dance.
The rest of the week was kinda busy. The morning devotionals started at 8AM so we had to leave the hostel by 7:30AM. After the morning devotionals were a series of seminars. There were two tracks of seminars and then lunch at 12Nn. Right after lunch we had tours of Taipei to various tourist attractions like the Taipei 101, the Martyr's Shrine, some temples, and other places.
The afternoon tours would be back to the Taipei County Hall by 5:30PM, we would have supper and then the evening sessions began at 7PM. We would have reports from various divisions on the achievements of their youth department. This would be followed by the Power Hour.My thoughts:
We were really blessed at this event. We had alot of world leaders there with us (The GC Youth Director and 4 GC vice-presidents), the youth directors of the divisions around the world, great speakers like Mark Finley & Fordman Fortham, we met lots of new friends. In total it was a great experience.
