It’s May, so it must be the Foreign Languages Week. Like every May in the past few years, the Foreign Languages Week this year was kicked off in great fanfare.

The event was unveiled amid great songs and dances performed by talented and gifted students from the six departments under the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures. For example, Lu Kwang-chung, who is a third year student at the Dept. of Spanish, and also a fairly successfully commercial studio recording artist, performed several songs from his newly released album, such as a well known Spanish ballad --“vesame mucho” (Kiss me again), and his own creation “Que te pasa” (What are you doing?). Students from the Depts. of German and French also followed suit with some delightful Lieder and chansons. Chen Wan-ling, a junior from the Dept. Information and Communications admitted that she was pretty clueless what these songs in various languages were about, but she was moved by them anyway. It’s just shows that music transcends languages. As for dances, there were Russian and Japanese folk dances which won rounds of applause, but the real surprise was that Dept. of English, also presented a dance. Wait a minute, isn’t US known for its fast food, Hollywood movies, and rodeo shows? But dance? Yap, in cowboy country in the US, there is a form of dance that is known as “line dance” enjoyed by both young and old folks in bars and public places.

Throughout the week, each department set up a stand at the University Commons selling food, drinks, and some exotic souvenirs, such as German sausages, Russian dolls, stamps, key rings, and badges. Some people got them free in competitions and games designed by each stand. One of the games enjoyed by most visitors was the “Wii” prepared by the Dept. of Japanese.

On Friday, the Foreign Language Week was wrapped up by the “Big Stomach King” competition, attracting at least 30 contestants with elastic stomach and insatiable appetite who needed to devour a table load of food in the fastest and shortest time possible. Well, as this was not a beauty contest, images were not important. All contests wolfed or stuffed down their food as fast as possible, and this not very pretty sight lasted nearly 10 minutes until Wu Horng-zhi, a freshman from the Water Resources and Eviornmental Engineering finished his food first, claiming the crown after 9 minutes and 29 seconds. He won NT$ 2,000 for his special talent and sacrifice. How he felt after winning the award? “Full.” What else? He vows to return next year. ( ~Ying-hsueh Hu )