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14. Circular Design Lecture, Project Work, Indigo Dying

After another circular design lecture, we got back to ideating since we needed an idea to use the new design tools we were given. I was really attached to the idea of incorporating the iron flower window designs, so that is where most of my thoughts went to. We came up with a repair system used to encourage people to give new life to old things and used the flower window designs as the look! Happy with our base idea, we moved on to using the new tool to examine the life of our product. I thought that this tool was much more useful than the others we had been using and helped me to get all of the concepts I had floating around in my head down on the page.

After lunch we went to the much-anticipated indigo dying workshop. I had a lot of fun learning about the process, but doing it afterwards was even better. The indigo shade is so beautiful, and I picked out a cool pattern that looked kind of like snakeskin.

My final indigo dye piece

Seeing everyone’s designs hung up afterwards was so awesome; not a single one looked bad.

15. Boat Tour, Anping Historical Walk

I know that I have been away from bodies of water for too long because as our bus was getting closer to the boat tour area I was getting more and more excited. I had looked at a map of the area we were going the night prior, but it was hard to conceptualize from the ariel images of these small chunks of water separating by thin lines of land.

Being on the boat was so much fun, I especially appreciated getting to try out the big fishing nets and touch the jellyfish!

View from the boat

After getting lunch on Anping’s old street and trying out fried mochi, we met back up with the group to start the walking tour. Our guide took us through many interesting locations, but my favorite was the temple. I have seen many temples during my time in Taiwan, but there were many details I didn’t know about. The doors being different for temples where only an Emperor was originally allowed to enter was my favorite of the facts she told us. I also enjoyed learning about how to use the moon blocks. Elden got three “yes” in a row asking a question we had been wondering for quite some time… 

Top of the temple we went in on the tour

16. Early Concept Presentation, Circular Design Lecture

Our group started off the presentations again with our flower window repairs (it has since been named Hua Mend). We all felt like it went well and appreciated the feedback that was given. After another lecture and work session, we went into more detailed critique with both professors. This was so helpful because we had a lot of big decisions that we weren’t sure about and wanted to present all of our ideas to them. Our concept was really starting to iron itself out and we were all getting excited for the final product.

Hanging out with our group has been a real highlight of our time here in Tainan. This night in particular they took us to the food court under the hospital, a staple for them. We had tried to go the night before but the shop they like was closed, and they all said nothing besides that was worth it. I understand now what they meant because the food we got was amazing.

17. Free Day!

On our final free day Ai, Alexa, and I decided to take it more chill to get ready for the last few days of the program. We had a few cafés we wanted to go to, so we took our laptops there and worked in a few different locations throughout the day. Right as it was getting dark we decided to head back to Shennong street for a night walk, since our last adventure there we didn’t get to see the lanterns lit up. It was so beautiful, I was feeling really nostalgic even though I am still here. I’m so excited for everything in the coming days, but I’m starting to get sad about leaving my friends and all the places we have gone behind.

Intricate flower window design

Shennong street at night