In the first week, I was working with four Japanese teachers and two Japanese university students. We planted plants along the river side and weeded the Pig Face and Pelagoniun. Weeding was the most hardest work for me. I had to squatted down and pulled the root out and then putted it into the big plastic bag. It was very very hard to carry the plastic bag to the road side when it was filled with Pig Face. Even though sometimes we had to work in a rainy day and did the hard work, we were still enthusiastic about our mission here. We planted thousands of plants. Good Job!On Saturday, four Japanese teachers left us coming back to Japan. I felt very very sad at that time. Luckily enough, Hiro was still staying with me.
In the second and third week, my project was in Exmouth, which is about 1200 km away from our accommodation(the total length of Taiwan is about 400 km) . Our team leader was Alan who had already had four years experience working with CVA. But it's his first time to work in Exmouth. Our team members included two Taiwanese university students, one Korean, two Australian, Hiro and me.
Living there was quite different from our accommodation. We didn't have enough electricity so that we had to use our mobile phone to light up the corridor. Because of the drought, We also had water restriction as well.
The mission there was more difficult than the first week. We maintained the walking tracks and trails there. We had to dig holes so that we could put the poles in. Moreover, we had to keep all the poles in the same height and in a straight line or curve line. Digging a hole was quite easy until you hit a rock.You had to break the rock so that you could put the poles deep enough.
We were all exhausted whenever we finished our work everyday. That was fine. The most intolerable thing was that we had to work with hundreds of flies. They kept bothering us and sometimes they kissed us...oops... But, we still had a good time there. We saw many wildlife animals and the landscape there was amazing. We ran over 3600 km in twelve days.
After the mission there, everybody left except me. I felt sad again. I could not feel happy anymore. I missed all the people who left me. I missed Taiwan.The mission of the last week was planting. We got new equipment to dig holes. It was quite easy digging holes using that. We finished our work before lunch time everyday. Nothing special for weekday.
The last two days before I left Australia, three new volunteers came. The crazy time began...
Hugo and I play pingpong on our dining table. We used books as racket and CD boxes as net. The last day, we went to SWAN VALLEY to buy some wines and chocolates in the morning. We walked more than 12km there. That night, we went to the pub and the night club. And then, we came back our accommodation drinking some wines and playing "Invisible". After that, we went to the beach one last time. crazy...
You Make A Difference!
