I'm still alive!!

Well, I'm surprised I haven't gotten concerned emails from anyone... hahaha. I meant to post last week about our week long trip, but we are SOOOOO BUSY I haven't had time to even breathe! We have field trips all the time, students always wanting to hang out with us, not to mention we still have class and homework! We literally only have like one day where there hasn't been anything scheduled yet. After I finish all my homework this weekend I will hopefully have time to update! Sundays my birthday, and I'll definitely have to post about how that goes... we've had an interesting time just planning what we will do!!

Here's a quick list of things I've been up to:

1. Today I went on a field trip to an AMAZING Christian organization... I think if I spoke more Chinese I would definitely come back here someday and volunteer. As it is I still want to come back someday.

2. Taiwan Storyland: an interactive museum of what Taiwan was like in the 1960's, VERY fun!

3. Spicy hotpots for dinner... YUM!

4. Getting ready for a halloween party and my birthday!

5. Buying lots of new clothes!

6. Killing a HUGE spider in my room late at night!

7. Launching a lantern off a mountain and making friends with a gecko

8. Having my picture taken all the time by random strangers and being told I'm beautiful... I'm beginning to think I really might be Audrey Hepburn :P

9. Watching the sunrise over the mountainside, and watching it set over the ocean... GORGEOUS.

10. Taking in every last thing I can before I have to LEAVE!

Magical Hotsprings, A Feast, Animals, and Toilets!

These last two days have been JAMPACKED! I think I've taken like a thousand pictures! My cheeks hurt this morning from smiling so much the night before, we have been having the most wonderful time! So now that I have some downtime I'm gonna share it with all of you!

Here we go!

Yesterday one of the students, Joanna, took us to hot springs in her home town, Beito. The town is SO beautiful, we spent a lot of time wandering around and checking out all of the parks before we got up to the hot springs. It was a small public hot spring in the middle of the city! I would have taken pictures, but we were not allowed. There were 5 pools, all different temperatures. 4 went from warm- SUPER FREAKING HOT! and the 5 one is ICE cold. You are supposed to hop from the least hot to the cold, then wamer, back to cold, warmer, back to cold, and the hottest to improve your circulation. Most people sit for quite a while in each pool, but we were so excited (and ADD) that we probably spent the least amount of time in each one. People loved to stare at us because we were the only white people and the only people wearing bikinis! At least we looked good, thanks to 8 minute Abs and Buns!! That's the workout Kayla, Carly and I have been doing via Youtube in our rooms!

Some silly statues in Beito, we took lots of pictures imitating their faces too!


After the hot springs Joannas dad was kind enough to pick us all up in his van and drive us up Yangmingshan mountain to have a traditional taiwanese meal that he treat us to. There were 8 of us total, and we got 10 dishes. We at whole fish, white asparagus, honeydew, fried shrimp and pineapple, chicken, green veggies, HUGE mushroom, ginger soup with sweet potato which was REALLY good, meat soup, rice, rolls, and one last dish I don't recall! It truly was a FEAST and it was super kind of him to pay for it all! It was also POURING down rain, so we were very grateful to be inside. It was WONDERFUL to ride in a car as well, because we have not ridden in a car since we came back from the airport a month ago!!

Our dinner! The plates just kept coming!! Those little yellow things with white stuff on top are the shrimp and pineapple, they were SO GOOD!

Our hosts, Joanna and "Baba", that's dad in Chinese and it's what we all just ended up calling him!

After lunch we went back down the mountain to Starbucks where we waited until her dad came back again and drove us to Zen 35, a restuarant on Yangmingshan that overlooks ALL of Taipei. It was SO beatiful!! We had all planned on meeting our entire group there and having dinner but most of us were SO full from lunch that we either didn't have anything, or we just got drinks. I got a cosmopolitan that was very good! My first mixed drink that was all my own, pretty fun! The restaurant was so cozy, it was mostly all glass windows, so we could see the rain, but we were nice and dry cuddling on comfy couches. We gave each other massages, took fun pictures, had drinks, and taught the Taiwanese students many things about American culture. Just being there to see the view was enough though, it was INCREDIBLE, we took a lot of pictures!

Carly and I under my umbrella, look at that view!!

Joanna and Christy teaching each other new games

Abby, Jean, and Joanna with their drinks!

Then today Kayla and I woke up early so that we could leave at 9 to go to the zoo! More people were supposed to come, but they were all too tired so from OSU it was just Kayla and I, but we met Clark (the PR rep for the school who helps us all with a lot and loves hanging out with the students, he's so nice!), as well as Vianna and her sister Sandra (Vianna is in my small group for one of our classes!). The zoo is HUMONGOUS... we spent 4 hours there, and there are still at least 20 animals we didn't see. My legs were SO tired, it was such a work out, but everything was amazing, and beautiful!

Sandra, Vianna, and I right after getting in the zoo!!

Baby Monkey! There were so many of these monkeys, it was like one huge monkey family on this island, but he was the cutest!


A GIANT Beetle in the Insectarium!

GORGEOUS butterflies... I could've stayed in there all day and taken pictures of them. As it is I took a TON in like 10 minutes!

The zoo map! It's so BIG! We went to the bright orange area on the right, the brown, red, and light blue at the top, but that's all we could do in 4 HOURS! But that means I'll just have to make ANOTHER trip! :)

After the zoo Clark took us to a restaurant we had heard about from previous OSU students here called the Modern Toilet. Yup, toilet. All of the seats are toilets, the tables are either sinks or bathtubs, and you use toilet paper for napkins! It was SO fun, and we ate SO much, check it out!
My dinner!! Thai coconut curry with chicken, it was so delicious!
So delicious, I cleaned up my toilet!

Our HUGE desserts!! We didn't know that they would be THIS BIG!! They came in little eastern style toilets!

Clark and his finished dessert... it took us like 45 minutes to work through them, and still none of us finished!

All in all, I am thoroughly EXHAUSTED from the last two days, but they were some of the most AMAZING days that I have had here so far, so many wonderful memories! We leave tomorrow morning at 7:30am for a week long tour of the island... it's going to be so awesome, but I won't be able to contact anyone during that time so I will take lots of pictures to share when I get back!!

Durian Day!!

So we finally did it! Shauna took us to this little market a few minutes from the school, and at one of the fruit stalls they had durian. For those of who don't know, durian is a tropical fruit grown in this area that is known for it's pungent STENCH. Seriously, it smells like rotting flesh. It smells so strongly that it's generally not allowed in shops, restuarants, or public transportation. Shauna and I have been wanting to try it since we got here though, and we persuaded a few other strong souls to join us.

There it is at the fruit market, in one big spiny pile! And look below, they're HUGE!!

These fruits are so huge and heavy its considered dangerous to be in the area where they're growing. They are not hand-picked, but are left to grow on the trees until they are so ripe that they FALL, into HUGE nets under many trees that catches them! So you are guaranteed one RIPE smelly fruit when you buy it!

Will it be good...

Or bad? Because it certainly doesn't smell too good!

After everyone took some pictures with it as a whole fruit, we cut into it!! We were sure to do this in a nice OPEN area outside without anyone really around, and a trash can nearby. We wanted a trash can nearby so people could throw up if they felt sick from the taste, and so that we could toss it and run after trying it!

So I've been trying for DAYS to get the video up that we took of us eating it, but it's not working. What we did was just split the fruit open, and inside are like 4 big meaty pods of fruit with a big pit. It smelled foul when we split it, but we grabbed our forks and bravely dug into the fruit! In the end we decided it tasted like a sour banana custard. Not as bad as we had imagined. Not something I would voluntarily eat it again.... unless my only choice was between this and stinky tofu; I would take this over stinky tofu ANY day!

I other news... I had my first big exam here 2 weeks ago for one of my HDFS classes, and I got a 92%!! Woohoo! This is really good news because we heard that the scores were not really up to par as far as what our professor had expected!

We're getting busier and busier ALL the time. This week we have 2 field trips and a big lunch for classes, then this weekend we plan on going to the Zoo, Maokong tea plantation, Taiwan Storyland (a museum), and to get massages. THEN we leave for a week long trip to the other end of the island! So I will definitely have to get plenty of rest!

STARBUCKS!

(Starbucks in Danshue)

Another thing you can't escape in this country, or in the WORLD for that matter, is starbucks! So far we have for the most part avoided supporting this chain from thousands of miles away, but when we found out one of our new friends worked there, of COURSE we're going to visit her! It's just like being at home!

(L-R Sadie, Dee, Carly, and I waiting for Kayla so we can get started on our adventure!)
It took us two buses, 40 minutes, and a lot of trust in the chinese that Abby had written for us to show the bus drivers before we finally made it! We were definitely glad we did!
TADA!! Abby at work!
Kayla and I enjoying our coffee! I got mine made into a new mug I got that is Taipei themed, I love it because it has pictures of places we've gone already or are going to go soon! It was REALLY good because it was the first freshly made cup of coffee I've had since I've been here!

While we were at Starbucks we met a woman and her husband who were from the States! They were in Taiwan for 6 months adopting their THIRD little boy from the country! There sons were 2 1/2, 1 1/2, and 6 months! Talk about a handful, but they were so excited to be back again adding to their family! We asked her where she liked to visit when she was here and she gave us a few places. I was glad we'd already visited a lot of the places she had mentioned, because it meant we weren't missing out on anything while we've been here, and she gave us a couple new places we DEFINITELY want to get to!

We were able to wait until Abby had time to take her lunch break, and she had dinner with us at a really good restaurant just across the street from where she works. I had Salmon, fish eggs, shrimp, some REALLY good miso soup, and some sweet little dessert. Afterwards we got on the MRT to help Dee find her way around safely so she could meet her mom at the airport. Then we stopped in Ximen to do a little bit of shopping before we went home. We found a little craft fair that was going on and bought some handmade jewelery from the vendors there!

After we got home Shauna was hanging out with Daisy and Jennifer making flowers out of straws! Shauna had been given a few flowers by a graduate student, and she fisgured out how to make them so she taught us all last night!

Daisy focusing intently on cutting out the petals for her flower

Some of the bouquet that Shauna had made! Ours didn't look quite as good since we had just started, but we know that we will all soon be obsessed with making these!

No More typhooning!!

So after a long weekend of having to stay in because of the typhoon, we all got out and did as much as we could! As a result, we were all VERY tired, and a few of us got colds... not fun, but I know I'm at least feeling a lot better today!

On Wednesday we spent the afternoon with our Culture class at the National Palace Museum. This isn't the national palace of Taiwan, but it's a replica of the National Palace in China, and during the Sino-Japanese war the Emperor there was afraid of having all the great works of art, and beautiful possessions destroyed so he had a place built in Taiwan to hold it all! The museum holds over 650,000 pieces of artwork, and is the biggest collection of Chinese art in the WORLD! Needless to say, we did NOT see it all!

This is the outside of the Museum, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures of what we saw :( Google: "White Cabbage National Palace Museum" though and you can see one of there most valulable pieces. It was all made of ONE piece of jade with leaves and small crickets to represent fertility on it.

Abby and I in front of one of the dragons guarding all the art!

(L-R Kayla, Me, and Carly!)

There was a beautiful orchid down where we were waiting for everyone else, so we took lots of pictures in front of it!!

(L-R Annabelle, Me, Ariel)

The HUGE koi eating in the pond. There was a BEAUTIFUL little garden right next to the museum. Huge black swans!

A Gate at the Garden

After the museum, we went out to the Shilin Night market again and had dinner. Lots of the students came with us and they kept buying food off the carts for us to try!

This is a very nice woman making my dinner at her cart. It was a VERY spicy Thai chopped salad. With Papaya, peppers, peanuts, lime, tomatoes, and fish sauce! REALLY good, but my lips were on fire after a few bites!

This is Sabrina and I having dessert! She's eating some kind of pudding with Jellies, and I am eating Soy Milk Ice with Mangos! The mangos were very sweet, and really good! in between dinner and dessert I tried, fried shrimp with pineapple (it also had some kind of frosting and sprinkles on it), Cranberry Juice (which was REALLY good, I drank a huge cup!), Some pork skewered with green onion (too hot to really enjoy), a VERY cheesy baked potato (again, VERY hot, but good!), and some sort of tea with Jellies in it. The students are all so generous, and SUCH good hosts! They love taking us places and watching our faces as we try new things!

The next night we all went to this little town called, Danshue. It's along a waterfront, and there's lots of little tourisy shops to find good gifts at, and fun places to see. It reminds me a lot of Lincoln City back home! I took this video of a little man playing some traditional chinese instrument. We wanted to take pictures with him, which he was eager to let us do, and he gave us his instrument to play when we took them, but we didn't sound nearly as good.

We ate dinner at this restuarant that had more traditional chinese food. I ate pig intestines, tofu, bamboo, sweet and sour pork (which reminded me of home!), hollow green vegetables (sort of like spinach), shrimp, and these "Taiwanese fries"! They are little sardines that are fried in batter. They taste like fishy fries... I couldn't decided whether I liked them or not, lol.

There are silly little claw machines like the ones we have in the US EVERYWHERE here. There are entire places that are just these little machines, and most of them have creepy toys like this one!