Make Soaps and Make Friends at Soap Workshops by OIA
The Office of International Affairs of NTNU prepared a two day event of soap making workshops for international students, local students and overseas Chinese students as a chance for them to meet new friends while enjoying the fun of making soaps.
According to OIA, it’s common for students with different backgrounds to hang out with their friends from their hometown. Even if they meet new groups of people, they still chat with friends they already know. It’s important to step out of your comfort zone, make new friends and practice your foreign language speaking skills. In the workshops, OIA spread the participants in different groups for them to get to know each other and make new friends.
Every student can make two soaps in the workshop. First, they melt the soap base. Then, they added the colors and glitters and waited for it to cool for 30 minutes. After the soap was done, they sliced it into favorable shapes and successfully got a unique handmade soap. The students will only know how the soap looks when they remove the soap from the mold, which is an exciting moment!
Students chat with each other in English and also learn about conversational Chinese during the course. When they waited for the soap to cool, they talked about life and hometown. For example, a new graduate student of GITI from the states asked about opening a bank account. It’s new for him to learn that in Taiwan, people often open new bank accounts when they change to a new company. A graduate student from Vietnam said that she always wants to learn how to make soap. She doesn’t have the opportunity to know many Taiwanese friends in her daily life and thinks this is a very great event.