Let's Clog! Clog "Sweet Sweet Smile" to Spread joyfulness

Let’s Clog! Clog “Sweet Sweet Smile” to welcome the New Year. This time we clogged in HsinDien Nursing Home. Dancing is the 2nd love of my life, yet finding time to do it regularly seems quite difficult. There are always so many more important things standing in my way and occupying my limited leisure time. We dance not to perform, but performing on stage helps us enhance our skills and master the steps. The other joy of it is that goldies would get together more to rehearse and do heart-to-heart chat.

It may sound unbelievable that I hadn’t been to any nursing home before. “Nursing Home” had been our chatting topic for a couple of times – the practical fact that we will have to face when our children can’t be around, or taking care of ourselves alone or with spouses becomes a hard task. Sherry has been keeping helping HsinDien volunteers regularly for quite some time and involving golddies in some special occasions. Goldies don’t confine themselves, and would break boundaries when chances knock on the door.

Three goldies, Lydia, Sherry and I, joined today’s activity. We were supposed to sing a song and perform clogging there. Others couldn’t get away from their office. To me, this would be the last episode of a string of activities we did in the long holidays with my goldy pals before the school opens.

It’s another early-rising day for me – early bird gets the worms. This time Lydia did the driving throughout the day. When I hopped in Lydia’s car, a huge beautiful firecracker caught my eyes.
Lydia said there’s another one even bigger lying in the trunk. Lydia borrowed them from the security of her apartment building all because of Sherry’s another crazy idea. Yet, I must say: what a brilliant idea! They certainly created a festival and cheerful effect on the stage. The dress code Sherry set was “Red.” Everyone had something red on. The glaring red on us made the spirit high and greatly excited the atmosphere. You will see how they worked from the photos and movie clips we made. (http://picasaweb.google.com/taipeitmtrini/0206NursingHomeActivity, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcIMBV13xKk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMDptoBWvR8 )

It was not until a few min. before the Ceremony began that I realized that we were not there to entertain the elderly. They will not be in the audience. It was actually a Certificate Awarding Ceremony for all the volunteers of Northern Territory in Taipei. All the participants were volunteer workers and they were there to entertain each other while receiving the Award from the Ministry of Interior Affairs. Each team provided one or two programs by either singing or dancing on the stage. We are one of nine teams. It was a very successful Ceremony. Every performing team charmed the audience with their talents. The interaction between the performers and the audience created by each team proved that they were all passionate and affectionate people with a big warm heart.

Though I didn’t get the chance to entertain the elderly this time, I believed there will be always some other opportunities. Actually when we did rehearsal outside the Auditorium, some elders sitting at the corridors enjoyed our dance and gave us a big applause. In a way, we served our purpose of being there though not to all of the elderly.

After the ceremony, each of us received a rich lunch box. How thoughtful they were! Then Sherry led us; Lydia, me and two other HsinDien volunteers; to a classic restaurant名流水岸 sitting right by BiTan/Green Lake and generous treated us an afternoon tea. The pastry, always my favorite, was on the house. Nobody else except we five occupied the whole extended coffee area. It’s not difficult to guess how noisy we were and how encouraging it was for us to let loose ourselves. The place became our exclusive photo studio. Interestingly, Sherry’s big wig turned into everyone’s prop for a hilarious photo effect. When we finally had enough play there, we noticed that actually the restaurant was fully packed in the dining area. We were simply too into our game.

After having enough fun there, Sherry suggested that we went for a tour into the mountain to see the lake, river and flowers. A new discovery, if not because of the tour, I would never have known such a place. Sakula blossoms were in full bloom, so many along the road. I thought this was an exclusive scene of YMS. The廣興公園was amazingly picturesque, surrounded by the 平廣river with lots of trees. It was another photo shooting time. How wonderful it would be if we can bike there someday. I already included it in my plan.

We didn’t stay there long as it was getting late and it was drizzling. Suggested by Sherry’s friend Amy, we took a detour into HsinDien. Shortly after we got into the car and hit the road, a flower
garden like a secret garden caught our eyes. Being attracted by so many colorful and beautiful flowers, we got off the car again to take a good look of all those amazingly beautiful flowers. We ended up taking some more photos and having our hands full of flower plants. They were mostly auspicious plants for bringing luck and fortune to us in the new year of Ox. This time, our tour definitely came to an end and we called it a day. Lydia dropped off one after another leaving me accompanying her all the way to her home where my car parked.

While writing the minutes, I realized that my winter vacation was practically over. How reluctant I am to see it end so fast, so soon. Next time, it’ll be our reading activity on Feb. 14th at 名流水岸 for which almost all of us will join. And when we will go hiking again? Definitely in March soon after Pamela comes back from China.

Trini