Humidity 94% and Climbing

Hello everyone!!

For this update, I just wanted to share a few things that I might have skipped over in the last few posts.

This is a picture of the practice area when I got my scooter license. I went around this course about four times before I was ready for licensing action!!

Later we went to a Japanese restaurant with live music... aka this guy! He was actually pretty good and his hair was hilarious. Not too cute though. 

This is the rest of the table at the restaurant, diligently discussing important matters. 

This is me at the BIGTOM ice cream shop across the road from my apartment building. Some of you might recognize it from one of my favorite Taiwanese dramas-- Hi my sweetheart. This is the ice cream shop where they filmed a part of it. Thus I like to come here to pretend I am in the drama haha. Really good ice cream also. 

This is a picture of where you order. 

This weekend I went to Taipei again!! Big surprise. It is my favorite place in all the world. First I hung out with Patrick and his friends again. I found mangos along the side of the road which made me extremely happy. My favorite thing!! 

The next day we headed off to a charity concert. One of my favorite groups, "Big Mouth" was there and I was really excited to see them perform!!! We were the only foreigners there and there were a lot of people present whom the concert was benefiting... orphans and mentally challenged people. We paid 30 dollars for our tickets but it was worth it to help the charities, and what an interesting experience!!

Look at all of us wearing our red tshirts!!

Me and patrick... I look really scared for some reason haha

Da Zuiba, or Big Mouth in English. They're so coooool!

This is them getting interviewed, talking about how awesome it was to support the charities and stuff!

This is an actress who is also a singer who also performed, among like 30 or 40 other pop stars. She is one you might remember from Dan Chaofan Egg Fried Rice, with Da Dong!!

Me with my host family!! I've gone out to celebrate the Moon Festival with them, and they are super nice. Their daughter Peggy is especially adorable :) 

This is us allll eating dinner at this all you can eat Japanese restaurant. SO amazingly good and only like 12 dollars a person. Such a good deal!!!! It was so good I ate it twice last week haha. And now I can scooter there!!!

Look forward to pictures of my new scooter in the next post!!!

Signing off...

Fulbright Conference

Last weekend was the Fulbright Orientation Conference! This was fun and all, but not really picture worthy, so I didn't really take pictures of the conference ... Basically we heard all the researchers and other ETAs present on themselves! It was very interesting to hear what the other researchers are doing!

This is a picture of Jess and Liz at the Fulbright Party after the Conference. 101 is in the background!! We were in the World Trade Center building.

Me and Jess at the party

After the party, we went to a sake bar and had really really good, interesting tasting sake!! Way better than any I've ever tried before. It almost made me like it!!

This is a picture of Mia, Ashley, and Liz at the sake bar!! 

We stayed at a really nice hotel, as you can see. This is the view from the breakfast room. My favorite part was the showers though!! The shower in our room had HOT WATER and drained properly, unlike my shower in my room in my apartment. That is always the thing I miss most, I love hot water showers. Oh well.... What I give up to be in Taiwan!! 

This is Mia, Liz, and Ashley, all of us at the breakfast room, right before we left. After this, on Saturday, we went to more meetings and then to the National Palace Museum. I didn't take pictures of it though, because I'd been there before. I'm definitely going back too, it's awesome. 

This is the view from outside the museum though!

Then, we checked in at our ridiculously sketchy hostel. Scary!! They wouldn't turn on the ac before 11 so we went to Shilin Night Market. Then Liz got lost, so we went to go find her and on the way found the cutest little cafe! We went in and had coffee with some of the Fulbright researchers and their friends. 

Yes that picture definitely needs to be extra large. Here is a researcher, her British friend, and Ashley. 

Sunday, we all split up. Me and Liz went to Maokong, which is basically a mountain to the south of Taipei. It was AWESOME. 

To get there, you first take the metro to the end of a line, right next to the zoo. Then you get out and walk a block to the gondola station. Then you wait in like for a while until you get into this little gondola car, which seats about six people. Then you fly up the mountain. Whoooo. Here are some pictures from the gondola window. It felt like an amusement park ride. 

Look, you can see 101 in the distance!! 

Overlooking the zoo.........

Looking straight down.

We got off at the second to last stop, at a temple area. It was beautiful: the temple, the view over Taipei, and the art and landscape. Here's a few pictures of the area!

It's kind of cool how plants grow on the temple roof. 

The incense burner and Liz. People here were both burning incense, praying, and taking pictures with enormous cameras all at the same time. Very odd. We just took pictures, no incense or praying. 

The view! Kind of hazy, but still beautiful. The very farthest you can see is where the ocean is. 

A hand painted walkway down to the less touristy, 100 year old temple farther down. 

View of the temple from farther away.

Next, we took the gondola to the end of the line, to a road lined with tea shops of every variety and age. It was kind of intense. Before sampling these though, me and Liz walked down the mountain a ways to a stream with interesting rock formations that was labelled the "pothole," not the nicest name in English. The Chinese was pot (like teapot pot though) and "cave" or "hole", but it sounded nicer. Like, teapot holes or something. It was pretty anyway. We climbed all over it and ruined nature a bit. 

Christine looking sweaty after hiking down to the pothole, pondering the rock formations.

Pretty cool though hunh. Lol.

The hike down looked like this, it was probably the best part. The bamboo trail was very pretty. 

Later, we sat at a teashop overlooking all of Taipei and had tea and waffles. Awesome combination and it felt great to rest after all that hiking. 

This is where we sat!

And there's my drink, all gone!! So yummy :D

As a side note, as we were walking back from the pot hole, we saw a GINORMOUS spider. I don't know if you can see it in this picture, cause i didn't want to get too near, but it was definitely the size of my had. Eek!! Scary!!!

Bad picture, but it's that thing in the middle! Scary!!! 

Anyway, a great weekend! This weekend has been boring, and a typhoon is coming tomorrow, so nothing special going to go on, but next weekend I hope to go see a fun concert in Taipei, and Wednesday is moon festival, which im going to spend with my new host family, so stay tuned for more adventures from Taiwan!!! 

:D

Oops Too Long Since I've Last Written

Hello everyone!
I must apologize that this post took me three weeks to write... I've been so ridiculously busy lately that I haven't had time to do almost anything!!
In any case... the last two weekends I was in Taipei, first to visit friends, and second for our Fulbright Orientation!
First place me and Patrick went when i arrived in Taipei was 101, the tallest building in Taiwan! This is a small part of the mall inside:

It is almost ridiculously nice inside, everything is designer stores and way too expensive for me to afford! 

Then Patrick had to go to work so I walked to the botanical gardens, which are beautiful and full of palm trees and European/Asian plants. Also lots of bamboo. 

So beautiful!! I took lots of pictures because everything was so green and different from the city around it.
Next, I entered the National Museum of History, which was next door, and really about the history of Chinese art and not history in general. I had fun reading as many signs as I could in Chinese!
This is the facade:

The architecture was very traditionally Chinese on the outside, but western on the inside, as with a lot of buildings in Taiwan and China. 

Next, after Patrick got off work, we went to the Miramar Dream Mall, which has the 2nd largest ferris wheel in the world! We had chuabing, which is shaved ice with fruit (in this case, mango) and sugar sauce poured over it all. Way too good for its own good. Also the waiter at the chuabing counter was extremely cute. Too bad he doesn't live in Gaoxiong :) 

Patrick and the chuabing

The huge ferris wheel all lit up

Saturday we went to Shilin, the huge night market in Taipei, and also Ximending, the huge shopping area, but I went there lots and lots of times last year so I didn't take any pictures. I'm sure I'll go back again this year too, so if anyone wants me to take pictures of these places, just tell me :) They're pretty awesome, maybe I'll do a special post on them sometime in the future. 

SUNDAY we went to Yangmingshan National Park, the mountain north of Taipei, and hiked around a bit. Mountain is a misnomer, it's actually a volcano, which is made quite evident by the sulfur spewing from its side. 

Look it's me and the sulfur!!

So pretty! And then it rained....

Anyway I'm about to die of exhaustion, so you'll have to wait a couple more days for installment 2 of my Taipei weekend trips! 

Signing outtttttttttt

:)