A Clever Title is in the Works

This week has been fun. Monday before the afternoon class, I saw a gecko running around so I caught it. Since coming here I've seen several different kinds of lizards. One of them I even found in our kitchen. I decided I would let that one stay though, as long as it helps by eating some of the bugs.

This is the view from the roof of the preschool (where I live). There are fields all over and people with cool hats work in the fields in the early morning and evening.
I guess you might say the preschool is in the middle of no where. The mail man even has a hard time finding it, because not long ago, the road the preschool is on, didn't even have a name. Pretty much anything that has english on it, the mail man will just send to the preschool.

Harry Potter 7 part 2. Need I say more. And it was awesome because it was in english!

This weekend I went with the primary of our branch to a cool spot in the mountains that was a logging/train spot. This is a train.

This is the inside of the train. I thought it was kind of funny actually. I didn't really know the significance of all the stuff we saw since all the info boards were in chinese. 

This is the group of us that went.

Taipei for the Weekend

It's been nice this last week. It rained a few times, and was rather cloudy. I love it when it rains! Why? Because it's not as hot. One night Kim and I were biking to a grocery store. When we came out it was pouring. A man we had never met before came up and gave us these ponchos. It was very nice of him.

This weekend I went to Taipei with the Chu Family. We took a two hour train ride. It was pretty amazing actually. Saturday, I took a taxi, train, bus, and the Metro (called MRT). It may not seem that amazing, but I had never taken that many forms of public transportation in one day. We went to the Taipei temple. It was crowded, and small, but everyone was very happy.  

After the temple trip, we went to a museum that taught all about one painting that is about 1,000 years old from the Song Dynasty. It explained a lot about their way of life. This is a picture of me with Greg and Grace Chu. They took turns translating what stuff said so I could learn about it too. 

There was an entire wall made into a copy of the painting. They made it so the people in the painting moved around. It was pretty cool.

This is me and Grace and a model of the type of bridge that was in the painting. In the painting there were pictures of several people carrying a box. It was their taxi. Greg asked me if the US had similiar things. All I could think of were carriages, but that's because the USA has only been around for a few hundred years, not a few thousand.

After the museum, we went to a wedding! It was different from any other wedding reception I've been too. Instead of forming a line, the bride and groom would come out during certain times during the night. The bride changed into three different dresses. They still had sometime similiar to the bouquet toss. What I thought was pretty cool is towards the end of the banquet, the bride and groom and their family came around to each table and gave a toast to everybody. There were 12 courses in the banquet, and most of the food I had never even heard of before.

At the end they gave out gifts of rice. So instead of throwing rice, they want you to take it home and eat it.



It was quite the adventure in Taipei. Sunday we went to an english speaking ward. Lately, I've just accepted that everything here in Taiwan is kind of different, but going to the english ward threw me off a little bit. It was so similiar to what it's like in Utah I felt like I was having backwards culture shock.



First week in Hualien

I made it through my first week in Hualien! It's been fun, but very hot and the bugs here thirst for my blood unceasingly. This is a picture of a banana tree, and you cant really tell, but right across the street is the Owl Preschool where I live.

Everynight there is a night market. It's only about a 3 minute bike ride from the preschool. They sell food there, and it feels a lot like a carnival. Most of the food I'm not ready to try yet, but this stand sold pizza, so I was ok with that. It's kind of hard to order because everything is in Mandarin, but with a bunch of pointing, you can pretty much order what you want. There is also a fruit/smoothie stand I really like going to. They have a menu in english! And the fruit here is amazing!

On Friday we went to an aborigine festival. It was really cool, there was lots of food, cool costumes and dancing. This lady was really happy to get a picture with Americans. Lots of people here want to talk to Americans. A lot of times, instead of saying, "Nice to meet you," they will say, "Nice to see you."

 

This was one of the things I tried at the festival. It's tomatos covered in pretty much just plain sugar. The sugar was hard and was a bit too sweet for me. 



Before Japan overtook Taiwan, it was actually called Formosa. There was a bunch of dancing at the festival which I didn't really understand. And the people I was with didn't know much about it either, but it was cool to watch.



Saturday, I set out and found the ocean! It was actually pretty easy. Hualien is like the opposite of Utah. Instead of having mountains on the East, they have them on the West, and I knew that if I went East enough, there would be an ocean. Here's my bike also. It's rather rusty, but works just fine, except for the brakes are kind of sketchy. 

This is known as a sea termite. They were everywhere on the rocks by the ocean.



On the way back from the ocean was the most random thing ever. Fireworks were going and this parade was going through the middle of the street. It was pretty long too. Some of the people around us tried to explain what was going on, but I couldn't understand their english. Apparently this kind of thing happens a lot.

 Other than the heat, bug bites and difficulty in finding normal food, I like it here in Taiwan. The people are very friendly and a lot of them speak english. This weekend it's been raining, which I like cuz it makes it cooler. And it doesn't make that much of a difference because in rain or shine I'm still just as wet. It's just a matter of whether it's rain water, or sweat.



Culture Shock!

I've been in Taiwan for 6 days now, and WOW, it's definitely not what I was expecting. The first thing I noticed besides the fact that no one was speaking english, was how extremely hot it is here. Thank heavens for air conditioning! Unfortunatly where I live doesn't have air conditioning, but I still have a fan, so I will survive. :)

Since Taiwan is an island, they eat a LOT of fish. Before going to Hualien I flew to Penghu Island for a few days for vacation. My first official meal was in a little restuarant on the side of the road in Penghu. Below is a picture. It reminded me a lot of Lo Mein, but it still tasted different.

Pretty much people would eat anything and almost everything that they could catch in the ocean. Below is what I like to call 'fish jerky.' It's just a little dried up fish. It was actually kind of tasty.

We tried two kinds of fishing on Penghu. The first was with fishing poles, and I didn't catch a thing, except for some sea weed. We fished on a boat first, then we went to an island to go fishing with nets. This was so much fun. You would put the net around some rocks in the water. Then after removing the rocks, the fish that were hiding under the rocks would swim out and get caught in the net. There were also crabs and sea anenomes.People would cut open and eat the sea anenomes right there.



This is a little crab that I caught after we went fishing with the nets.

We went to a park to watch some fireworks. While there we met some people that had this lizard for their pet.

This bridge is very famous in Penghu. I don't know what the characters mean or say, but it looks cool. The girl in the picture with me is Kim. We will both be interning at the preschool here in Taiwan for 6 months.

I think this is called Bear Cave in english. It was very beautiful.

A lot of people go to this place to watch the sunset. It was on a cliff and there were cactus' everywhere. The cactus here is actually really cool because when it turns purple, people eat it like a fruit. I tried some, it kind of tastes like a grape. Anyways, a lot of times people will put it in cold drinks and sell it for about 20NT, which is around 60 cents. Food here is much cheaper than in the US.

I forgot what this is called in Chinese, but it's so good! The white stuff, if milk shave ice stuff. And then there are berries on top and mango on the bottom. The mango in Utah is discusting compared to the mango here.

So far, overall, I've liked being in Taiwan. The people are super friendly and love to practice their english with you. I've also started picking up Chinese words here and there. It's pretty fun.

Shiy Shiy for reading!

(Thank you)