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Tour of the Presidential Palace – and we meet the Vice President!

This morning, we were crowded in the meeting room at my aunt’s office when Mom dropped the bomb. “Guess what,” she proclaimed, “we may have a chance to meet the Vice President today!” After a few raised eyebrows and a few “whoa”s, we dogpiled into our private van and raced off to the Presidential Palace.

When we arrived, our belongings were checked and taken away for safekeeping. Simon forgot his wallet. (We will come to explore the significance of this event later.) We were not allowed to take bags in, so we had to carry our precious belongings by hand. After the check, we proceeded in and the tour started.

Did you know that the Presidential Palace is shaped in the shape of the Chinese character ri? Apparently, the building was built during the time Japan owned Taiwan, and the ri character was the first character in the word ri ben, which means “Japan”. We didn’t just learn about that. Along with other interesting facts, we saw the clothes that the previous presidents wore! After walking through multiple rooms and gazing at notebooks, we arrived at the gift shop. (Now, does anybody realize the importance of Simon’s wallet?) Within 30 seconds of entering the shoppe, Simon discovered that he forgot his wallet. After sulking for about five minutes, he was back to his energetic and perky self. Megan, however, brought her wallet with her.

Then, we were alerted: We would have the chance to have a quick two minute photo and handshake session with the Vice President! Excited, we tromped on to the meeting room and rested for a few minutes until he came in.

When the Vice President arrived, we all stood up and shook his hand, and then the photo session commenced. After the session, the Vice President left, and so did we.

~Christina

Yesterday

Yesterday we met two people, The editor in chief of the best kids newspaper in Taiwan and the President of a TV station that owns four channels. That was all very fun. They actually were sisters. They both seemed to say that in life you must be patient. We got lots of tours from them they had all kinds of departments. We got to see how they  need them when they were filming because we were in the room when they were filming. That was very fun. We also had a wonderful dinner. It was with legislator Liao. She was so nice and was very humble. She said that in life you have to take the chances that you get. After the dinner I was very full and I think everyone else was too. Sorry I didn’t write yesterday, I was planning on writing last night but i was to tired and went straight to bed.