Wednesday, July 6: Day Two - More Challenges

The rope jumping was the first activity to start off our day after we fed up our stomach. First of all, we went individually, then with a partner, four people afterwards, eight folks after that, and lastly, the most difficult as well, 16 peers facing the challenge. After that, we had a game that forced our partner to direct and give some orders to help us go through the "shoes sea." And after that, we had a game where we were asked to trade the two unmatched shoes in our hands to our own shoes in others’. We left the gym and headed to the field where we had some more team challenges.

After we finished our lunch and supplemented our energy, we took the vans leaving for Seed Savers. We came across tons of vegetation in the garden and lots of breeds of livestock. The most important of all is to learn about how Seed Savers contributes to biodiversity and what measures Seed Savers take to maintain the variety of seeds.

Soon after we got back to Luther College, the U.S. was the first to unveil their region report. We learned more about food, sports, festivals, etc. of the U.S.

Following the dinner, it was we Taiwanese that were going to give the presentation. Due to some soundtrack and video playing problems, we had discussions about them during the trivial time we could hardly squeeze out and we eventually finished it till the last minute. I need to apologize to all the GYI participants and staff for my ruining the presentation with my horrible Taroko Gorge introduction. I’m the type of person whose brain usually goes blank out when giving a speech to more than a dozen of people. I would like to clarify that Taroko Gorge is genuinely a must-visit tourist attraction when you pay a visit to Taiwan. You will surely be amazed by how magnificent it is and it will definitely take your breath away. We wanted to deliver the best part of Taiwan to you all and we hope whole-heartedly that you will pay us some visits in Taiwan.

Alex then gave us some thoughts on our topic—food security. We had lots of intense discussions and conversation over human rights, environmental justice and food security.

In my opinion, Terminator series gave me the same spark as the game we ran in the morning. The mentors were trying to give us some tasks that seemed to be too unrealistic to be accomplished.

Our ancestors went through a bunch of tasks in order to survive, and the tasks were unknown, mysterious, and continuously happened in their daily life. Still, they survived, and we can be here in the world. We might be confused about why they had the capacity to go through the tough tasks. But after the challenge course, we found that maybe this is human being’s potential: to survive in any situation. We have forgotten what we used to have, but it is still in our body.

We just need to have chance to realize and release our potential and capacity.

-Carolina Yang, Taiwan