Weekend English Village with J.U.S.T. Department of Hotel Management

A week or two ago my mom called me and said that her friend who is friends with the administrator of a hotel management program at a college was looking for some English-speakers to participate in a weekend language immersion event. It sounded pretty fun, and it was compensated, so we said yes.

After a CRAZY 60+ hour workweek, this hotel gig was like a mini-vacation.

^{I got to take a bath. A BATH.
It was SO good, even though I was slightly scared of drowning the whole time 'cause this bathtub is GINORMOUS.}

The view

It was a non-smoking campus.

For some reason our room came with hotplate and cooking implement. O.o

After 'checking in' we had a break before talking to a dozen or so students about their resumes and interview skills. And corrected their English CV and autobiography report. It was pretty chill.

Then, there was dinner. So much dinner.

Tai's first course: chicken with sprouts.

Tai's second course: stir-fried shrimp.

Tai's third course: Fish and Veggies and Soy Sauce.

My first course: mixed veggies with vege-ham!
They didn't know I was vegetarian before I arrived, so I was pretty impressed with how quickly they put together an 8 course vegetarian meal.
Granted, three of those courses were just steamed veggies with salt and sesame oil xD

My third course: cold tofu noodles with taro paste wrapped in something fried. SUPER delicious!

My main course: thin-sliced vege ham, vege meatballs, and mushroom medley.
The vege meatballs were really good!
They had crunchy water chestnut bits in it.

An uninspired stir-fried cabbage.

There were loads of other dishes, but I didn't get pictures.

Then they brought in three HUGE platters of FRUITS!
I ate as much kiwi and guava as I could :D
For some reason, since moving to Taiwan I've started really loving fruits.

After all that eating, they had a welcome party! We played Uno. Kind of.
The other English participants were a couple; they brought their 7-year-old kid, who tried to teach us how to play Uno. For HOURS.

It made no sense. @_@

Obviously, no party is complete without FRUITS.

And PIZZA!!! @_@
There were also fries (regular and sweet potato), onion rings, and a bunch of other stuff.
SO MUCH FOOD.

There was also a game of guess-this-Chinese-word-while-we-try-to-describe-it-in-English, which was pretty fun :) But then they quickly figured out I am too fluent in both to make it challenging. One of the other participants didn't know any Chinese, so then they put us on a team and made us do it in Japanese. And then none of the guessers were good enough at Japanese to make out what we were saying. In the end it just turned into charades :D

I turned in 'round 22:00 'cause we had to wake up at 7:00 the next morning for ROOM SERVICE!!!

Room service comprised coffee, milk, and a sandwich. I wished I'd jacked some of that fruit from the night before, since I'm used to eating a pretty hearty breakfast. Luckily, I had some chocolate left from when one of the girls gave me chocolate :)

The event rounded out with an 'English Corner', which meant let's watch a movie in English and talk about it -- except we didn't get to talk about it because we ran out of time. Oh, and then we did an event review and critique. The director wants to make it a recurring event, so we went over what would make it more beneficial for the students, such as letting everyone have a chance to do the reception desk, and doing some role-playing to practice.

All in all it was a great experience :) the students were super-nice and accommodating, if a bit shy, and the facilities were excellent.