This is the Good Life

In my opinion, we definitely saved the best school for last. At times, touring Kuang-Fu High School felt more like spending a day at a resort than at a high school. From five star dining, to a spa, and car shop, this place had it all. In fact, it's so large that a small number of students actually lived here.

Before entering the lap of luxury, we first had to sweat it off in a little dance off against some of the students. Though many of them were quite skilled, none could compare to Robert's masterful sprinkler. After that, we performed the Hoedown Throwdown and were joined by the school's principal at the end trying to show off some of his moves. Once done with our performance, we were escorted across the campus to the school's cooking classrooms. We were to make pizza with the school's full-time cooking teacher, Chef Moro. It was such an honor to work with a five star restaurant chef. While we waited for the dough to rise, we were escorted on a brief tour of the nearby school grounds. We didn't get very far once we discovered the cosmetics classroom. The students in there were practicing for their massage test. We knew we had to take a detour for this and help them out. Everyone was more than willing to donate their bodies for the sake of education. It must be so hard for these students to go to school everyday. Now if only the schools back home could implement such a program...

Ten minutes later, we returned to the kitchen refreshed and ready to make some pizza. Chef Moro declined to teach us the fine art of pizza tossing as he was afraid we would create a gigantic mess tossing pizzas haphazardly in the air, so we instead rolled out the dough using our hands, a roller, and our handy dandy national champion student chefs to assist us. Once our pizzas were done, they led us into their tourism training center, which looked more like a fine dining restaurant. The waiters were students who were our age training for their waitstaff license. I felt like royalty when I was politely asked, "May I please?" every time they tried to refill my glass or take my plates away.

A trying, yet hilarious time of beading and balloon animal making followed lunch. Although I had managed to expertly whiz through the first beading session earlier in the week at Cheng Te, it was apparently due to the great help I had had rather than my natural knack for beading because this round I needed three people at once to help me! The comforting words of, "Oh gosh" and "Uh oh" frequently rang in my ears. Balloon time came a bit easier to me, but the sound of the teacher's chuckle at my terrified face as I held my balloon as far away as possible, wary of the potential "pop", yielded little encouragement. Nevertheless, I made it out of the session without any balloon casualties, proudly showing off my Snoopy with lopsided ears.

Next we were whisked away to watch a singing contest held by the school, where we found some very interesting characters. Many of the students were dressed up in costumes for their performances so we saw everything from girls in kimonos, to guys in all out makeup--even some guys in some very flattering dresses. I have to admit that I found the random students running on the stage dancing in the middle of the performances and the bizarre costumes worn by the performers quite entertaining, distracting my attention from the actual singing.

We finished the day by dropping by the school auto shop where we got to test out some mini motorcycles that the students built. It was so much fun! They definitely reawakened my need for speed! And so, another day full of adventure came to an end.