Katrina Johanson—Chaperone

We traveled to Taichung today by way of the Chi Mei Museum in Tainan. The man who built it was an accomplished musician. One display was of armor and weapons. Many of the people were made of wax and very real looking. Keli'i [Wesley] was sure they were watching him and going to come to life. :) I heard a few of the students comment about having visions of "The Night at the Museum". Another display was of real animals from birds and chipmunks to deer and camels. My favorite was one of rabbits sitting on chairs holding instruments. The orchestra was led by a squirrel. I am pretty sure they were real animals. It was very random, but made for some good laughs.

I have often enjoyed the sound of laughter, from Travis [Kneisly's] bus driving antics to jokes by whoever grabbed one of the bus microphones. Laughter is such a blessed sound! And it's often contagious in this group. Sometimes it's forced laughter ("smiles and high fives") and many times it's the authentic, bust-a-gut kind. We're seeing a lot of the latter.

When we pulled into the city of Taichung, we went straight to City Hall where we were greeted by several Taichung City officials. The choir sang a couple of songs in this grassy area in the center of the offices. Leaving there, we were whisked off to check in to our second 'home-away-from-home' for the next couple of days. It was a Holiday Inn Express right next to the Chun-Shin Hall where our major performance is Thursday night. We didn't have long to get settled before we had to run over to Feng Chia University where we were greeted by a wonderful welcoming party with a very scrumptious spaghetti dinner. It was very nice to have some familiar food!

The activity for the night was to go on a guided tour of the famous Feng Chia Night Market. We had some shave ice there that was incredible. There was such a melting pot of smells and sights through this night market—enough to make this prego lady lose her appetite! I was doing fine until I was offered 'stinky tofu'. Supposedly it smells really nice, but at first sniff, I'd had enough. Brother and Sister McCarrey tried it—they were much more brave than I was.

This was our first short travel day and we got to see what the bus dynamics will be over the next couple of weeks of the tour. Some were content just sitting back and chilling with their iPods, while others had to be moving, talking, joking around ... anything to keep from sitting still. I have been amazed at the positive energy this group has. It's impressive to watch them and see the potential and power building within them each day. They are definitely becoming the leaders of tomorrow, and the Genuine Gold that continues to come from Brigham Young University–Hawaii.