Full Moon Festival @ Lilly's

So about my first experience in Taiwan...The full moon festival!

What do you think about now? A full moon? Vampires? Twilight? Edward? Or music? Rock Werchter? Well, to be clear, it's nothing like a Belgian festival and there are no vampires included. Actually, I need to check google to see what it's all about ...!? Now that I'm allowed to do it... let's copy-paste!!

The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival or Chinese Lantern Festival or Mooncake 
Festival or Zhongqiu Festival, is a popular lunar harvest festival celebrated by Chinese and Vietnamese 
people. The celebration became popular during the early Tang Dynasty. The festival is held on the 15th day 
of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which is in September or early October in the Gregorian calendar, 
close to the autumnal equinox. In 2006, it was made a Chinese public holiday in 2008. It is also a 

public holiday in Taiwan.

Lilly (My AIESEC correspondent when I was applying for the internship) told me that during the full moon festival, 
everybody goes back to their family to celebrate (just spending time) together. So don't think about booking 
a flight in Asia during that weekend! Following, a few traditions: Let's see what I experienced...

• Eating mooncakes, traditionally consisting primarily of lotus bean paste. CHECK but not really my favourite cake!
• Drinking tea. CHECK, I <3 Chinese tea!
• Matchmaking. In some parts of China, dances are held for young men and women to find partners.
  "One by one, young women are encouraged to throw their handkerchiefs to the crowd. The young man
  who catches and returns the handkerchief has a chance of romance." Mmm didn't think so!
• Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns. Sounds great, but didn't
  do that!
• Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e. No.
• Fire Dragon Dances. Not really. I did however saw some dragons during that weekend..
• Solving riddles, usually written on slips of paper and pasted on the lanterns. Solving riddles, on a
  holiday? 
• Moon rabbit is a traditional icon. Gettin' smarter with the second!

So the conclusion is that I only ate and drank....well, it's not the first time I make this conclusion! 

What were my first impressions during those first days in Taiwan: a lot of scooters, why did I bring sweaters?, 

food is sooooo cheap!, why is everyone staring at me?, Why is it raining that hard on my first evening in 

Taiwan?, Everybody is so friendly!, Lilly's family is so hospitable!, I love night markets! and stinky tofu really 

stinks!

When you type in 'stinky' in google, you find in the following order: stinky little gods (?), stinky feet, stinky tofu, 

stinky cheese,... A little comparison: we have cheese and stinky cheese, Taiwan has tofu and stinky tofu 

BUT our cheese actually doesn't really stink and stinky tofu really does, google agrees! 

Moon cake

The familly tried its best to entertain me at every moment of the weekend! We went to two night markets, 

to the most famous book store of Taiwan, to crazy shops, to a restaurant where you sit on toilets and 

eat out of toilets and to a nice park.

 

On Monday, Lilly and I went back to Sansia (Taipei) from Tai Chung. She dropped me off at an elementary 

school where two other EP's (like me) were teaching. It was great to see all those little Taiwanese children, 

they were all so excited that there was a new 'teacher' in their school. By the way, those little children 

brush their teeth after lunch and clean the school.. talking about education!

Tuesday morning I was going to meet the director of the students affairs department of MY school 
(a junior high school) and he would also provide me a place to sleep, I was so nervous...

See u next time! X