Be prepared for a novel! We went on a one week long trip to the southern part of the island. It was an amazing, but long adventure!!!
Day 1: 10-13-08 Alishan
We started off the group trip by being picked up by a tour bus at 7:30 am. Our tour guide's name is David.. I thought that he said Davey, so that is what I called him all week. He was funny, in his own weird way, which made him very entertaining. We headed south along the West side of the island. (Davey would have told you East, his East & West and left & rights were very mixed up!) The scenery was really pretty, but I used up a lot of my motion sickness pills. (Thank you mom for the supply!) We stopped for lunch, this would be the beginning of a week of meal segregation. All traditional Taiwanese meals are family style, you get a bunch of different plates and everyone shares them. Well, since Shauna, Carly (she eats meat but rarely) and I are vegetarians, we had to sit at a separate table than the rest of the group. It was kind of sad, but we got over it. Almost every meal that we ate was like this. The meal at this first restaurant was very big for the three of us, but it was yummy! After lunch we got back on the bus and continued on to Alishan. Shan means mountain in Chinese so we were heading to Ali mountain. We got to our hotel that was close to the top of Alishan around 4pm. Dee, Hayley, Carly, and I checked into our room together and then we got ready for a 2 hour walk/hike through the wooded areas of the mountain. It was so beautiful. It felt so nice to have clean air going into my lungs! And it was great to not hear any cars or buses, only silence and birds along with the occasional train. We really enjoyed the hike! Then we went back to our room and all took warm showers and read our books together. It was so nice to relax and not have to think about school for an entire week! Our room was neat because there were 4 single beds, and 2 of them were in a loft! It was like being at camp! We all fell asleep early because we had to wake up at 4am the next morning!
(*I started to develop a cough :( and I was on medicine from the doctor on campus to help me with some of my bathroom issues... it was definitely working!!)
Day 2: Alishan Sunrise - Travel to Goahsiung
We all woke up at 4am to hop on an old school train to the top of Alishan. From here we watched the sunrise up over Yushan (Jade Mountain). It was such an amazing and beautiful site. You can only see this happen 120 days out of the year! It was a little interrupted by 2 guys speaking super loud through bull horns in Chinese, but they stopped before the sun actual came up over the mountain. The train ride was fun, I felt like I was living sometime in the past! After we the sunrise we ate some breakfast (which had many things that you would also eat at lunch or dinner. but there was toast... and my new favorite thing soymilk... warm soymilk!) and headed back to the bus to get on our way to Goahsiung. On our way off of the mountain we stopped at a tea plantation to take a look and take some pictures. It was so neat to see! The tea trees look like low bushes along the ground and were growing up and down the side of the mountain. It was so pretty. Again on the bus ride I needed another dose of Dramamine, I was also able to distract myself from the jumbling ride by listening to my Christmas music! We got to Gaohsiung (which depending on who you are in Taiwan could be Kaohsiung, it is spelled both ways on maps and stuff... weird) and checked into our super nice hotel. The beds were so soft, which is nice because everywhere in Northern Taiwan has very hard beds!! Carly and I roomed together and the first thing that we did was jump on our beds!! After that we started getting ready to go out to our fancy (& expensive) dinner. We went to a buffet called the Splendor, it was on the 39th floor of a tall building on the harbor, we had a gorgeous view. The dinner cost us about $825 each (about $25 USD). We all ate a lot because the food was great! And we took so many pictures! I ate my fill of amazing sushi and delicious green salad (which you can not really get in Taiwan because they don't have many vegetables, mostly just cabbage and corn). We got fresh fruit and fruit and fruit juices, choices of so many different breads and rolls, and tons of dessert. Luckily I didn't like half of the desserts that were on my plate otherwise I might have gained 10 pounds! After dinner we went on a boat ride down the love river! It was so nice... the four of us girls held hands since we had no boyfriends with us!
We went back to the hotel with our bellies full and tucked into bed.
Day 3: Goahsiung - Travel to Kenting
Carly and I woke up at 6am to head to the hotel gym to work out. It was a small but nice facility and nice and warm at like 80 degrees. We were sweating like crazy! But it felt nice after the big dinner at the Splendor. We ate another nice and health breakfast of toast with an egg, fruit, and soymilk (!!) before jumping back onto the bus to tour a little more around Gaohsiung. We went to the old British Consulate which is now sort of a museum with shops and snacks. It was right on the harbor and very beautiful. We took a lot of pictures and then spent some time by the water. We then rode a ferry across the harbor to play on the beach! It was interesting because the sand was black! I picked up a lot of shells and packed them away with me before we went to lunch! The sun was really out and I got a nice tan (and tan lines). We ate another traditional Taiwanese family style lunch but I stole some fish from the meat eater table. It was great because it was nice and fresh! We hopped on the bus and headed to Kenting. We made our first stop at one point in the Kenting National Park. It was so pretty. The beach here was different. It was more like the Oregon Coast with high cliffs and rocks. It was very windy but absolutely gorgeous. It was also soo crowded, it turned out that there was at least 1000 high school and junior high students there too, and so many of them wanted to take pictures of us. Turns out we were practically celebrities here! We went to another spot to watch the sun set... and all of the high school students were there too! But they were much more brave about taking pictures this time. The 4 of us girls walked down the pathway and they just started flashing their cameras. I felt like some movie star on the red carpet. We all laughed so hard, we thought it was so funny so soon we started playing along! We really could not believe how many people were taking pictures of us. But the sunset was wonderful! Then we headed to our hotel that was not too far from the beach. The four of us girls were able to room together again (we were so lucky on the trip!) and pushed our 2 huge beds together to make one gigantic bed! It was a lot of fun!! We all fell into bed laughing about our paparazzi moment, 45 minutes of fame, and fell asleep. (I had a lot of problems falling asleep because my cough was pretty bad at this point, I tried to just get through it all so that I could have as much fun as I could)
Day 4: Kenting
This day was supposed to be full of sunshine and tanning, but we all woke up and it was raining! We went downstairs to breakfast hoping that the rain would stop but as we boarded the bus for more adventure it only got harder. We first went to visit a lighthouse in Taiwan, it was cool, but we got entirely soaked and could not take many pictures because we didn't want to stand in the rain. Our guide and bus driver were such good sports about it all and still wanted us to be able to see everything. We next went to the southernmost point of the Island. It was a trek to get there, and not all of the girls on the trip wanted to go, but I was for sure going too, (even if I was hacking up my lungs, I could not believe that they would have rather sat on the bus!!! This chance does not come around very often in someones life!!!) It was so beautiful despite the rain. We still got some great pics and I loved looking out on the ocean. We got back to the hotel a little earlier than planned but we didn't mind. We dried off and got ready for some lunch. At lunch we got a small cake and celebrated one of the girls on the trip, Nancy's, 23rd birthday it was pretty nice. By now I was getting a little bit tired of the vegetarian food, it was pretty much all the same! For some reason vegetarians in Taiwan also skip out on eating garlic, so they season every dish with ginger, and I am not a fan of ginger, but through the trip I have come to tolerate it. After lunch the rain was not as hard and we headed out on a "van" to go partake in some water activities. The "van" turned out to be a small pick up with benches in the back, no tailgate, and a netted canopy over the top. It was a freezing, but entertaining, ride to the part of the beach we were going. I almost thought about not going because of my cold, but I knew that I would be missing out, and I really really would have been. We got to the beach and were made to put on wetsuits (my first time) life jackets, and little helmet things. All of which were too big for me. I looked so funny, we all did. Then we went on banana boat rides and I got to ride on a jetski! The jetski was by far my favorite. Carly and I wanted a fast, fun, and intense ride so we agreed to go together. We were the last pair to go and the driver really gave us a good ride. I think that he felt like he had to try harder because we were laughing the entire time!! We loved it. We would go over so many waves and we would fly up off of the jetski! After the ride I thought that we were very lucky that the driver weighed so much cause I was holding onto him tight to try to stay on! Then we did a little snorkeling and more seashell hunting! The fish were pretty and there were so many, but I was nervous because I kept thinking about seeing the barracuda when I was snorkeling in Mexico! The fish, in general, did not seem as colorful as the ones in Mexico, but they were still very pretty and fun to see! We went back to the hotel and showered and went to grab some food. A restaurant done the road was supposed to have Mexican food and I wanted something spicy to eat so we all went. I ordered nachos because they did not have any bean burritos or anything, and we all laughed when my food came. It was nacho cheese doritos with mozzarella melted all over it! It was fun to eat because I haven't had real cheese in forever, but it was hilarious what their idea of nachos was!! We walked around the small night market for a while, got some fresh juice and then headed to bed.
Day 5: Travel to Tainan
We woke up in the morning to the wonderful blue skies we wanted the day before and boarded the bus for our 3 hour journey to Tainan. I tried to sleep as much as I could because I was not getting good sleep because of how much I was coughing at night. We arrived to the Tainan campus early so we sat in on a lecture made by a guest speaker on plastic surgery, there were some pretty graphic pictures so we were all pretty entertained! We had boxed lunches (there were more veggies in the meat ones than in the vegetarian ones... weird) and met our "guardian angels." Our angels were the students from TUT that we were paired up with for the weekends activities. My angel was Lisa. She was so nice, and shy at first, but she really opened up! We had a great time and it was nice that Hayley's angel, Candy, was friends with Lisa, so the 4 of us were able to hang out all weekend!We took a tour of the campus, which I think is much prettier than FJU in Taipei. There is more space (even though it is smaller) and more grass and trees. It reminded me of a mini OSU (which is probably why I liked it so much!) We ate dinner together (more Mexican food that Candy really liked, that was not really Mexican food :)! ) We then went to a little lesson on how to do some traditional folk dancing. It turned into aerobics class somehow, but I did not mind because I have felt like I really needed the work out! Then the night was over and we all went to separate places to sleep 6 were in a hotel, 6 in the on campus hostel, 3 of us had the opportunity to do a homestay. I of course volunteered for the homestay. I felt bad that I was sick but I really wanted to go, it turned out that Hayley and Carly (who also volunteered) and I were all able to stay with the same host family so it made it much less nervous! We stayed with Professor Wong who we called Ma Ma Wong (Ma Ma means mother in Chinese) her husband Ba Ba (father) Kou (pronounced Koo- they have different last names because the women in the Taiwanese culture do not take their husbands last names, it only becomes hyphenated) and then their 2 children Kevin and Toby (Toby is a girl). They were such a great family to stay with! The first night the two kids took us to a night market and we were able to try so many traditional Taiwanese treats! It was great. We went back to their gigantic house and got a tour. We have always been told that homes here in Taiwan are smaller compared to American standards. Which is true, but the Wong-Kou family must have been very wealthy because they lived in a 5 story house. Kevin had his own floor!! They had 2 cars, an older BMW and a new fully loaded Kia suv/van, 3 nice mopeds, 2 french bulldogs, 4 pretty birds and 1 gigantic crazy looking fish. I asked Kevin what Ba Ba did and he said that he owned a business that made fish food. It sure must have been doing well. The first floor was for Ba Ba's business (where his sisters worked) the second was Kevins floor which was basically and apartment without a kitchen, then Toby & Grandpa's rooms on the 3rd floor, Ba Ba and Ma Ma with the kitchen (that they didn't use) on floor 4, and Toby's baby grand piano in her music room on the 5th floor. She is amazing on the piano, she played for us and we were practically drooling. She has her own CDs and has down background music for famous artists on the piano, chinese flute, and one other instrument. We were so impressed. All 3 of us girls chose to stay in the same room since the bed was a california king (Kevin's study room with all his school books and desk, for some reason needed a big bed) and we all slept together.
Day 6: Tainan
We woke up and got ready to head back to the school. Toby drove us to pick up breakfast and then we all met our angels intime for our cooking lesson at 9am. We spent the next 3 hours making vegetarian dumplings (just our group which Shauna joined) and soup! It was yummy, but weird/creepy because the vegetarian substitute looked, smelled, and tasted a lot like ham, but we were assured so so so many times that it was not ham! But now I can make dumplings, and will definitely make them when I get home for everyone!! We toured the cosmetology department and got a lesson on traditional Chinese facial massage, which was interesting, and would have felt a lot better if someone else was practicing on me, not me practicing on myself. We went with our angels to rent a movie and watch it in the media section of their library which was neat and then we headed out to another night market where we were going to have our dinner. I got some juice and we all went around and sampled food until we were full. I bought a couple of things, but time seemed to run out so fast. Ba Ba picked us up and we headed back to our weekend home. On the way all 3 of us girls were oohing and aahing and the cute puppies in a pet shop, so Ba Ba, being the great weekend Dad that he is, drove us to a pet shop that his friend owns and took us inside. There were so many cute puppies and I found the one that I want!! (After I move out of DG of course!) We made it home and then went to sleep.
Day 7: Tainan - The last day of the trip!
We woke up and got all of our stuff packed up. The girls tried to let me sleep in as late as possible because I was still sick and none of us were getting as much sleep as we needed. We packed up all of our stuff and sadly said goodbye to Ma Ma and Toby. Ba Ba and Kevin took us out to breakfast before we headed back to the school. It was cute because Kevin would translate a lot for Ba Ba, even though I could understand and communicate somethings, I only know so much. But Ba Ba turned out to be impressed by the fact that I can use chopsticks and I use them the correct way. (It was funny because it turned out that Kevin uses them incorrectly!) I seem to get that comment a lot, I didn't think that I would. We said our goodbyes to Ba Ba and met up with our angels and began a little tour around the Confusious Temple in Tainan which was very pretty and then to the Taiwanese literary museum. We then went to a market to walk around and eat lunch at. I didn't eat lunch because the group of students that I was with kept having me sample foods! But I can't complain about that. After the time there we took a brief stop at the beach, that had tan sand, collected some more shells took more pictures and then headed off to the fast train station. It was sad to say good bye because we felt like we knew our angels so well. And my angel must have known me well because she got me a planner as a goodbye gift!! It is even plain so that I can craft it up however I want! It is so nice. And it is not dated so I can wait to use it until my planner for this year is over.
It was crazy how quickly we made it home on the fast train. It seemed weird that it took us 3 days to get to the southern part of Taiwan, and then only an hour and a half to get home. It was so weird. Jean met us at the train station and it was so great to see a familiar face! We all felt to glad to be able to be "home." We got back into our rooms and unpacked while telling Jean of our adventures.
I tried to rest as much as possible today because I felt awful when I woke up! I took a hot steamy shower and then went back to sleep before class at 12:40. I was only in class for an hour and then I came back to my room to go to sleep, I slept from 1:30 until our group meeting at 4. I felt better afterward, and feel better now too. I really needed the rest. I think that my cold is on its last leg because I am coughing a lot of stuff out and blowing my nose a bunch. I am hoping to be better by tomorrow evening!! Because more fun is going to begin!! The half way point of my trip with the group has passed, we are going to try to make sure we see and do everything on our lists!!
*Side note* I cut my hair the Sunday before we left on the group trip... it was a little shorter than I had asked for, but it still looks all right.
Saturday we had a field trip to go and visit two centers for preschool children. They were supposedly welfare centers, but the parents had to pay a lot of money for their children to go there, so I was very confused. They were fun though. Carly, Dee, and I had a great time playing in one of the ball pits at the first center (later we were referenced in an unhappy email from our professor as acting like children instead of honored visitors - which was weird because everyone else was playing - but I wouldn't take it back because it was a great time!) The day was hard to get through because we were all even more tired! Plus we had the Taiwanese students to walk around with, and it takes a lot of effort to make conversation with people you don't know all day long. But they were tired too, so it did not seem to be a huge deal (except to our professor - who claimed that we all should have been more attentive and respectful - but she fell asleep during the presentation at the second center when she was sitting in the front row - weird!)
Today (Wednesday) I volunteered to be a part of a panel (3 of us from OSU) for a class on campus. It was such a neat experience. The class is called the cross cultural something or other about medicine so I thought that the questions were going to be about differences in medical treatment etc. but they were all about our experiences in Taiwan and what to expect from America and Americans. It was really neat and fun. The students seemed to enjoy it all. After we were done with our small presentation the students had one for us (which we did not know). They were split into 4 groups and each was supposed to bring us something that represented Taiwan to them. We got 2 breakfast and 2 dessert samples! I was really happy because both of the breakfasts had soymilk! The 3 of us (Shauna, Carly, and I) pretended like we had not had the treats before, even though we had. It makes the students and faculty here more excited if they think that we are trying something for the very first time from them! We also got more gifts from the students and faculty in the class. After the food and candy was packed away we were each given an FJU t shirt (sized XL :( ) and a little coin pouch. The students also wrote out Chinese names out in beautiful calligraphy! I love mine! They even fixed it up so that I can hang it up! I have been wanting on very badly. For dinner we went out to hot pots with some more of our Taiwanese friends! It was a lot of fun! I spent the rest of the night reading my textbook and laughing with the girls. It was a good day!
Tomorrow I am going to watch Dee get a tattoo! That I got to help design! I feel so artsy! Friday we are throwing a Halloween party, Saturday we have a field trip, then Sunday is Hayley's 21st birthday!! We are going to have a great weekend!
