Getting Busy

This week things really started to pick up. It feels like I have been here much longer than I really have. We do so much that each day feels like 3 days!

Wednesday night I went to my very first club in downtown Taipei! It was such a long journey to get there! First we went to a hair salon where they washed out hair and styled it! It was so much fun! We then went to a 4 story McDonalds to change into our dresses and then had a little photo shoot there. It was a lot of fun. We then walked all of the way to the club, where we got to sit in a VIP booth. It was a lot of fun there. I recognized most every song that they played because they were all mostly the same as in the States. The DJ was great too, and even sang to some of the songs and has perfect English. I only had a couple of drinks, but it seemed that the alcohol was not as strong, I could not taste it at all. We did not get home that night until 4 in the morning! The clubs here don't even close until 5am! So maybe next time we can stay later. I slept the whole taxi ride home because we had class at 9:30 the next day!

Thursday night Nancy, a student here that I met at OSU on her exchange, took us out to the Shilin night market. My Lonely Planet book on Taiwan calls this the "king of all night markets." It was such a cool experience. The street was filled with vendors that sold almost anything that you would want to find. Most of the things there were priced very low. I spent probably about $35 American and got 2 pairs of shoes and 3 shirts! It was a lot of fun and there was so much to see. It was fun because you can barter about the prices as well. It was nice that Nancy was there with us, because even though I know my numbers in Chinese, it is hard to hear and concentrate with all of the noise and people around. We were there for a couple of hours, but would need at least a couple more to look at everything.

Saturday we went to a small town South East of Taipei called Yingge. I call it ceramic city because it is famous for its pottery. It was a fun trip because there was a lot to look at and the town was so cute! The streets were made of stone instead of pavement and the roads were lined with palm trees and little stores. A lot of the stores had the same thing but it was fun. I had a popular dessert there, shaved ice. You can get it with all different sorts of toppings. It was surprisingly good. After we shopped around the cute part of town we walked to the Ceramics Museum in downtown Yingge. It was neat to go there and see all of the art. I was able to paint a ceramic bowl with an artist who had art on exhibit in the museum! I will be able to pick it up in a month after they glaze it and fire it. I tried to make it look good, but it was hard when a real pottery artist was sitting next to me painting his own bowl. We were gone on this trip for a total of 12 hours, but I was still smiling by the end. We had a great time, the way home on the train Carly and I sang Christmas songs, of course I was in a good mood!! Here is a link to my photo album on facebook with the pictures from this trip! http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2147459&l=fc1f5&id=19712929

Today has been a homework day. I have gotten a lot of things done on my to do list today! I feel so accomplished, I think that I might finally be getting into the hang of school here. It is so hard to try to make myself do homework when there is so many other fun things that I can do!