Taiwan Day 8 Clinic Day Oh. My. God.

How come I have only just discovered Mo Mos sell jelly beans? Last day of the 15 day course and only now have I noticed them. Little licorice babies Come To Mumma!

Its the eighth day of teaching and Clinic Day. The therapists worked hard all day assessing and treating clients who arrived describing a range of hobbies and all kinds of musculoskeletal ailments, including two clients who practice taekwondo, two basketball players, a ballet dancer, two social dancers, two women who love cooking (and had overuse injuries as a result), yoga enthusiasts, two doctors, a badminton player, and many with office based occupations and associated disorders. After each of the clinic sessions we discussed the clients main problem and the treatment solutions each therapist had implemented. We saw the usual mix of ailments: supraspinatus tendinopathies, adhesive capsulitis, anterior knee pain, low back pain, thoracic pain originating from hypermobility, two cases of elbow pain, hamstring and calf pain, and of course, neck pain. The students seemed to get a great deal from the day and although we were all getting tired, remained focused and attentive. It was rewarding to see the therapists putting into practice all that they had learnt. I was intrigued to observe them implementing strapping and taping, giving it a go to see whether it would work for some of the clients. With a little help they successfully strapped for an internally rotated shoulder, a kyphotic posture, a hypermobile knee joint and an AC joint displacement. I was very impressed.

Victoria and I had lunch together today, downstairs in the food hall. She ordered something spicy which came in a steaming pot. I ordered Thai coconut curry. Yoo want get married again? she asked in her matter-of-fact way. My advice? You wear different clothes. Not this top, she said, pointing to my sweatshirt. Yoo wear something different. Yes miss.

We continued with clinic sessions after lunch. At the end, students requested to have their photos taken with me and I stood dutifully, smiling in front of the flipchart and with the skeleton. We finally wrapped everything up at 7.30pm and the students packed up their towels and oils and began their journeys home, back to their different parts of Taiwan. By December they will have been studying and practicing sports massage for 11 months. They have their exams in December and will submit all of their coursework, case studies and project, all of which is being translated to be by Victoria, at the end of the year. The plan is to award the students their Diplomas to

coincide with Chinese New Year, a suitable time to be rewarded for so much hard work. At the end of the day I see workmen and women trudging home dressed head to toe in their orange boiler suits, their clothes plastered with dried beige mud from digging drains all day, hard hats in hand, mouth masks at their necks. Walking back to my hotel I looked for the last time at the plastic shoes for sale in the windows of Mo Mos. (Not much point wearing leather when it rains so much.) Drag Queen heaven.

Victoria accompanied me. She was listless, as was I, and she was suddenly overcome with exhaustion, come down from being on an adrenalin high all week and in high demand as an interpreter. She seemed out of sorts. I said it may be the result of being in a room all day of so many different energies, those of the therapists and of the clients, plus the fact that it was the end of a very long week, and the last time we would be together. Yoo want go eat? she asked kindly, offering to be a host right til the last. She was on her last legs and leaning against the window of the Brother Hotel. I declined. I was actually ok but then Im used to standing up all day, used to teaching, used to answering questions. And I only have to do it in one language. So we hugged and parted and she hailed a cab home. Back in my room I packed, counted my remaining money and looked again at all of my gifts. I was tired, yet sad to be leaving. Everyone here is very generous of spirit. I will miss Victoria. I will miss being able to walk out at night wearing just a t-shirt. (Even if it is two sizes too small). I will miss the music selections at breakfast, (Rachmaninoff one day, ragtime jazz the next). I will miss the stories in the Taiwanese Times. On Saturday, for example, the paper reported how researchers have successfully grown Kyoho grapes, each grape weighing between 9 and 14grams with a sweetness at high as 18 brix (the unit used to measure sweetness in an aqueous solution). Or that of Taipei-based publishers Star East Publications, who intend to publish Fifty Shades of Grey who have high hopes for sales of foreign erotic books. Fanny Yang, Star Easts chief editor, declined to reveal how much her company had paid for the right. Or even the article revealing that 1,200 Taiwanese farmers are about to attempt to break the Guinness Word record for simultaneously transplanting rice seedlings on a plot of land. Only in Taiwan.