I think one of the things that make being a photographer rewarding is the places you are invited to be a part of.

For this event shoot I had to wake up at 4:30AM to prep and head down since it was a lengthy drive. What made it worse was that my body decided that it would only sleep for 2 hours the night before. But that is ok! As I stated above, being a photographer is rewarding because of all these different places you get to go to and be a part of!

The event was sweet in that so many kids from all over the world came to participate. I love being surrounded by people who speak Mandarin too! It felt like Taiwan, it felt like home.

These kids are so amazingly fast and skilled with their abacuses. During the test itself the room was quiet except for the thundering clicks of the kids using their abacuses! Some even did the test with what I call an air-abacus (not using their physical abacus instead just using their fingers on the table!!!). I was wowed no doubt at their skill considering that as a kid all I did with my mom’s abacus was use it as a toy vehicle/toy truck (if you turn the abacus upside down you can roll it along the ground like a car with many wheels)! 

I’ll just be posting a couple of pics so you guys can see what it looked like. I’m glad I woke up at 4:30AM for this =).

Ah the proctor was cool. Everytime he would yell “STOP” when time was up during the dead silence, I would see all the kids startle and jolt in their seat hahah. He even scared me a couple of times too.