Day 11 - Last day in Taiwan

For our last full day in Taiwan we had two company visits.  We started out our day at Bottlemate Inc, a cosmetics bottling manufacture.  We had a strange start to the presentation.  The slides were all in English, but the presenter spoke no English and just went about saying the presentation in Chinese.  After a few minutes Professor Peng had to stand up and translated for us.  The company originally started as strictly a bottle making manufacturer and now they can bottle liquids and creams for other companies.  They had a variety of products on display for us to try and examine.  Then we took a tour of their plant starting with their history area, showing how they started and advancing to the products they sell now.  We each had to put little blue booties over our shoes before entering the plant.  It is very humid here.  I was a little shocked to see mold growing on the ceiling of in the conference room we were in, but I did not see much in the plant.  As we walked through the plant was saw the stations where they printed on the bottles, colored the caps, and formed different types of bottles.  One bottle we saw throughout the process was a Hello Kitty shaped one.  I was surprised to see how much human interaction was needed during the whole process.

Next we went to a “department store” for lunch.  It turned out to be a high fashioned mall where everything was at least $100 US.  I really wanted to find souvenirs, but this was not the place.  I was able to eat at Din Tai Fung again which was nice.  I tried a pork and pork/crab soup dumpling, but I still like the chicken ones the best.  One thing I have not mentioned is that my camera has been acting up for the past 3 days.  It works when it wants to.  I am guessing it might be because of the humidity.

After lunch we went to the saxophone museum.  While there it poured outside.  It has rained at least once every day we have been in Taiwan.  We learned a little about the four generation of sax manufacturing and how they put quality above everything.  We each had the opportunity to play one.  I tried and could make noise, but not for a long period of time.  The instrument was extremely heavy and hard to hold.  It was fun to watch the people who tried to play.  At the conclusion of the museum tour we each we able to make a key chain as a souvenir.

Our last group activities for the day were a group discussion, learning a little Japanese, and dinner.  About every three days we have a group discussion and reflect back on the last few days.  It is interesting to hear everyone’s different impressions and thoughts of our experience.  Japanese seems to be a little bit easier to learn, however the sentence structure is backwards.  Dinner was crazy!!  We had a typical Taiwanese feast.  Every course seemed to get worse until we had ice cream and watermelon for dessert.  Ryan tried to eat a whole shrimp and almost lost his whole dinner.  I guess most people do not eat the head and central nervous system, but Carol did.  We were served all different seafood dishes and even a whole fish.  I really was not into anything we ate except the pork.  When we got back to the hotel I ran to 7 eleven and bought a bag of made in the USA popcorn, which they popped right there and even stapled a napkin to it to make a carrying bag.  It was so good!!  Other than that I packed, since we had to be up at 4:30 to head to the airport.