Album - USA & UK
Album - Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Philippines, India, Thailand, Nepal & Japan

The Welcome Dinner started in a thrilling performance coming from the band, who has composed the IESO 2009 theme song, to celebrate the event of this year. Director Te-hsiang Su of the Department of Secondary Education, Ministry of Education, had a short opening speech to show our welcome to all participants while Prof. Chun-Yen, Chang declared the welcome party to kick off tonight.

Altogether, 13 countries, including Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and UK have made a series of clips to show their own cultures and introduced themselves. The US team played a creative skit, presenting their lifestyle with a way of sustainability and interacted with all audiences by passing a balloon of Earth to receive a round of applause. “It’s up to you to make a difference to change the planet, our Earth,” they said it out loud after the show.

Two gold medal champions from the1st IESO 2007 in Korea showed on the stage, giving the junior an inspiring sharing. Last but not the least, four Taiwanese medalists in 2008 performed with a local style dance and melody of “You are my flower” sung by a popular Taiwanese pop singer, sending the room into roar. Teams such US, Japan and Korea all joined together with Taiwan on the stage to perform the group dance to end the welcome dinner. 

The 3rd IESO in Taiwan, live witnessed by over 150 audiences, is surely one of the most successful performances to be remembered.

 Before the competition gets started, mentors from all countries have to spend the first night discussing about the overall structure of the IESO 2009. Although a few of the countries arrived Taiwan a day or two earlier, most countries only just arrived Taiwan on the 14th of September. Therefore, attending this meeting late at night after a long day of flying can be fairly exhausting. However, all mentors still remained patient and tried their best to work with the local organizing committee even when the meeting exceeded the expected finishing time. The things that were discussed during the meeting included an overview of important jury events, such as the test discussion procedures, test translation, test scoring, moderations and awards.