Hi guys! I am here to recap one of the best weeks so far. Although this week was very busy, I made so many 忘不了的经验 (unforgettable experiences). One of the highlights of this week was 清华之夜 (Qing Hua Night). This was a night where we would perform for our teachers, host family, and language partners. The requirement was that each class needed to put on a 15-20 minute play, so our class did 十二生肖比赛 (The Zodiac Race). The Zodiac Race essentially explains the origin of the Chinese zodiac, and the story is essentially a race where your position in the race dictates the order in the Chinese zodiac you are in. I was the 老鼠 (rat), and since the Rat is the first animal in the Zodiac, I won the race. It was a fun experience acting out my scene because in the story, every animal has to cross a river, but the rat doesn’t know how to swim, so the rat begs the cow to help him out, so in our play I rode on one of friends back who was playing the cow, and the crowd thought that was funny. I also last minute helped out Sam and Nikhil, to friends from NSLI-Y with their song 飘向北方. Although I learned the song at the very last minute, we put on such a great performance, and had the whole crowd clapping. What was especially awesome about 飘向北方 is that it has a lot of rapping in the song, and Sam was about to rap all of it perfectly. Chinese is already hard, so trying to rap in Chinese is 10 times harder but Sam did it very well. After putting on a spectacular performance, we went to our host family for the weekend. As usual we went to many different places, but some of my favorite places were the science museum. Now when my host family told me we were going to a Science Museum, I thought of my local science museum back home, but I was very surprised to see the museums in Taiwan. The museum was 10 (fact check) floors, and was the nicest museum I think I have ever been into. At the Museum there were a lot of interactive things that you could do there. One of the coolest ones was riding a bike on a rope. Watching someone do it, It looked very scary, but when I did it myself, It was actually very stable because there was a counter weight under the bike. After going to the Science Museum, I was very curious why they had such a huge museum for science. It made me think about 三民主义 (Three People’s Principles) with them being Science, Democracy, and Ethics. It overall made me realize how important science is to Taiwan. Finally, our host family took me to 十分老街 (Shifen Old Street) where we made our own 十分放天燈 (sky lanterns). Me and my host family chose the colors blue, white, pink, and purple. Each color represents what you want to have in your life. Blue represents a good career, white represents a bright future, pink represents bliss and joy, and purple represents doing good in school and studying hard. After getting our lantern you are able to write whatever you want on the lantern. I decided to write about how I was going to miss my host family, and how I wanted a future career using my Mandarin. Making the lantern was a great way to end my time with my host family, and it made me realize that my trip was coming to an end. It was kind of sad doing it because I knew it was going to be the last activity I would do with my host family, but all good things have to come to an end.