MTC Christmas Party

I didn't realize that this was just a draft before; I forgot to publish it. It's a little late.

Friday, Dec. 19th, our school had their annual Christmas party. Among other attractions there, they had several stands set up serving food, both Eastern and Western styles. My friend Anna volunteered to make some and asked me if I could help, too. I agreed. The office staff told us we needed to make 250 portions of mashed potatoes and a salad (pasta salad). They took us to Costco (there are two around Taipei) to buy most of the stuff we needed. We spent a few hours Thursday night and many hours Friday preparing the dishes. I must say that the kitchen at school was grossly under-equipped for preparing that much food at once. All we had to mix the potatoes was ONE electric hand mixer. It was hard work, but it was fun. We chatted with other people in the kitchen making cookies and other sweets, Korean dishes, dumplings, etc. Anna and I served the mashed potatoes at the party, too. I'd estimate they sold out in about 45 minutes. I felt like I had been working in the deli again.

After serving the food, I grabbed a couple beers at the nearby convenience store and came back to watch the talent contest. There were people playing musical instruments, performing karate routines, dancing, and singing. It was all fun to take in. Among the dancers there were some girls that did a native Malaysian kind of dance, and many people that danced to hip hop, some of which was pretty cool. One thing about Taipei: if you go down into one of the underground malls (and there are several around Taipei Main Railway Station, where I live), you will invariably see several groups of teenagers or twenty-somethings practicing dance routines to hip hop music, it's ridiculous how many of these groups there are. After the party, Anna and I went with another group of people, who had prepared and served the sweets, and walked around the Shida night market for a while, stopping at one place to get some fruit-based deserts and some really funky tea drinks. I was really down to drink a lot that night after busting my hump all day, but none of those other people drank (?) and Anna was too tired. So we called it a night. All in all, it was a good time.

Also, you know it's not America when your school has a Christmas party, but you still have to go to school on Christmas day. Also, the school encouraged people to show up in costumes, kind of a cross between Christmas and Halloween, strange...