Red-carpet beauties

This past Friday (October 10th) Taiwan celebrated its Independence Day.  Its a national holiday (obviously) and therefore we didn’t have school and a lot of businesses were closed for most of the day.  All of the Fulbright grantees were invited up to Taipei for a formal dinner, at least that’s how it was presented.  ’Formal dinner’ does not begin to explain what we witnessed/experienced Friday night.  

So at 5pm we go to a specific metro station to meet one of the program liaisons.  From there we walk about 10 minutes to this very impressive looking government building.  Once the guards check our invitations, search our bags, and look us over, they let us enter ‘VIP land’.  Literally.  Imagine hollywood…or the White house.  We walk along the red carpet, which is teeming with foreign diplomats, business execs, famous Taiwanese people, Miss Taiwans, etc., until we get to the first of many large canopy-tents.  The first stand inside the tent was a create-your-own Häagen-Dazs icecream sundae, so we knew it was going to be a good night.  

Dan and I obviously had to get a picture with the American-born Miss Taiwans

About 2 minutes after we walked into the tent, we were pushed and pulled without explanation (which was ok as long as I focused on the delicious iced treat in my hand) and then THE PRESIDENT walks by.  

Introducing President Ma Ying-jeou! (full credit to Shiela for this photo)

Yes. We were invited to the President’s party! There were tons of tables with delicious food, open bars, live entertainment, and lots of business card swapping.  

View from the terrace of minglers and live entertainment

 10-10 party-scene video

Flower fruit. Always a must-have at these fancy functions.

What can we say...we love fruit here!

One of the many banquet tables. I believe we were roasting meat here.

There were many tables set up where people could get cool artsy things made...this is the clay-figurine table, our last stop of the night

and this is my personalized clay Monkey King...on a stick. Please appreciate the awesomeness of the front and the back!

Future goals:

Go to more of these VIP parties.

Become a VIP at one of these VIP parties.

Make friends with as many international diplomats as possible.

Become important.