A tremendous, full day here at Dong Hwa Universary in Hualien. The school pulled out all the stops in a day full of surprisingly impressive performances by artists local and international. Personal highlights included a multi-ethnic dance performance by artists from Xinjiang in the morning, and an amazing African bongo drummer (bongoist?) in the evening. Here the perks of being a foreigner in Taiwan were obvious: being invited up to the stage for the climax of the dancing; being sought out afterward for English conversation; and later picked out of the crowd by the bongoite and allowed to bang on his drum in the middle of the performance ("not bad", he lied in Taiwanese). A day of adrenaline rushes, and if I can scrape up the jack, I'm going to Xinjiang to visit my new friends.
