festival

This weekend was the university spring break so on friday morning we left birght and early with the high speed rail to go to Kenting for one of the biggest music festivals in Taiwan, Spring Scream. Our group, by the way, consisted of Johan, KJ, Anna, Enrike (still dont know how to spell his name), Kai, Yini and me. After a arriving in kaosiung we negotiated a good price with a taxi driver to take us to the festival. The festival actually did not start until around 4 but we were there at half past two for a special reason, we were volunteer workers. 

As a volunteer worker you have to work a few hours every day of the festival and for that they give you space in a tent, a sleeping bag, free entrance to the festival and free food while you work. Our first task was to set up some flags and here you could really see the Taiwanese way of thinking regarding the sexes.  The girls were not allowed to join us puting up flags as they were "not strong enough". As it turns out lifting a flag is not very hard work and any girl could probably do it or at least help with some other part like handeling the tape. It is just a taiwanese way of thinking that girls should not do that kind of work.

As most of us did not speak chinese to any higher degree they had a hard time finding jobs for us except for the flags so we spent a lot of time waiting which was boring. Finally they figured out that we could gaurd the gate that separated the food area from the band area. No one really took responsibility there so I had to take charge.  It was quite a power trip to stand there and tell people if they could enter or not but after a while it got too repetetive for my taste. The first day was not so much fun as I spent most of the time at that gate and less time listening to bands. More on the festival in the next post.