Typhooning... :(

The typhoon is making it's way back around and is in full swing. We already had to cancel plans today to go to the zoo and hiking at a tea plantation, and now tomorrow we have to stay in all day if the area calls a state of emergency. This means that there won't even be anywhere to go because everything is closed and it will be incredibly windy and rainy again. BAH. But we are safe and sound, so don't worry! I guess with all this time in we'll be able to write letters and get homework done.

*Edit*
Well, the typhoon has arrived today, and it is more than just incredibly windy. There are 200 mph winds on the coast (which is 125 miles from here), and apparently this is a "super typhoon" equivalent to a category 5 hurricane. The government has cancelled all work and school for today and most likely tomorrow. We are not allowed to go outside for ANYTHING! Although, we should be safe because between us and the coastline are many mountains, protecting us as though we were in a huge bowl. We are also on high ground, in a very secure building. So don't worry about us, but pray for all the people that live along the coastline here.

Strangers

Often times in while traveling here in smaller groups we don't have the resource of a FuJen student with us. This means that we become very reliant on strangers (whether they be employees or passerbys) to help us out and tonight was definitely proof of that! Christy, Camille, and I went to the grocery to have dinner (it's a HUGE store with a food court in the basement) and go shopping. We wandered around looking at the restaurants until Christy chose one that we all thought looked appealing.

Well, as luck would have it she chose the only restaurant whose menu had ZERO english AND no pictures! This is a very rare occurence here (majority of menus have pictures), and we were not quite sure what to do. We decided to sit down anyways thinking maybe we could just point to something and get what we get! Well God was amazing, and MIRACULOUSLY this little woman comes up to us and says, "Excuse me, do you want help ordering your food?" In PERFECT english! She said she noticed we were americans because she heard us speaking english as we walked by! It turns out she is a native here who has been living in the states since she was in college and she was just back with her daughter to visit family. We were SO grateful that she was outgoing enough to approach and help us! So she helped us order and said that if we had any more questions she was sitting just across the way and we could come to here. After we ate we were sure to go over and thank her! That's when we found out she was from Louisiana, and had just spent two weeks in San Fran. her daughter was 4 years old and SUPER cute! Her attitude is just a complete testament to how wonderful ALL the people are here. Everyone has an incredibly hospitable attitude. They will do everything that is in their power to help us out (even if they can't totally understand us!). I've gotten used to being very careful about what I ask for or say I want because people will just run out and get it for us! I'm glad that I chose to study abroad in such a wonderful country!

Ballots and Moon Cakes!

Today I went online and got a ballot to vote in the upcoming election!! (I sent in for one to be mailed to me before I left, but I'm not entirely sure I wrote my address correctly so I got this in case it never arrives!) I'm VERY excited to vote for the first time! How cool to be voting for the first time in such an important election, AND doing it overseas!





In other news... we had our weekly culture class today and the FuJen students taught us how to make mooncakes and meatballs!


These are all of our ingredients laid out beforehand! The purple blob is red bean paste that we put inside the moon cake! The wooden things are molds that you mush the cake into the BANG it really hard on the counter to get the cake back out! It made a terrific noise when like 20 of us were doing it at once!
Daisy and I with our groups finished moon cakes! They tasted a lot like poptarts... hahaha.

These are our meatballs! They were made of pork, mushrooms, and shrimp then rolled in rice. We steamed them in a huge pot, and they tasted so good!! I think the rice on the outside made them look like little hedghogs!

These are 3 of the members of my group! From L-R is Doris, Abby (pronounce "Ay-bee), and Daniel (he was finishing up the last of our meatballs, thus the lumpy cheeks)!

Daniel entertained us all as we ate by creating balloon animals! He does it for a part time job in restaurants, and is very good! I took a video, but I took it vertically, and I'm not quite sure how to turn the video the other way! Oh well... he made us a rabbit, a dog, and some flowers! I've heard rumor that he's a magician as well so it looks like our group is going to have to watch our backs in case he tries to fool us!

My Fujen Address

Now that I've given several of you my school adress... that's apparently NOT the one to use. If you have happened to have already sent me something it "should" get here, but if not, use this address!

Hayley Chetlain (OSU)
Fu Jen Catholic University
Department of Child and Family Studies
510 Chung Cheng Road
Hsinchuang, Taipei County 24205
Taiwan, ROC

Some girls have sent out letters, and it's taken about a week to get to people. Packages would probably take two weeks. I'm hoping to buy cute stationery and write letters this weekend, so if you want a letter from Taiwan leave me your address!

Saturday Adventure!

Yesterday we were out ALL day long! We traveled to a little town called "Yingge" (or Inga in English), that's known for all the things it makes with ceramics, and then we went to the huge ceramics museum there!

So the day began with a 30 minute bus ride to Taipei Main Station, and from there we took a 30 minute train ride to the town.

Taipei Main Station... every few minutes all the little lines on this would flip to show new times and trains arriving!
View from the train...

(L-R) Dee, Kayla, and Carly in the mall!
We went to a nice mall in the town with a lot of expensive items that were beautiful to look at, but none of us could afford! Luckily we got to meet these 2 cute little dogs there which made MY day that's for sure!!


Then we walked up this street to the smaller (more affordable) market! I got to practice asking how much things cost again, and use my numbers to discover prices! I also talked to a lady about my Chacos, she LOVED them and wanted to know if I got them in Taiwan. Sadly, I didn't.

Decorations along the road

The teaset I bought from the woman who liked my shoes so much, she knocked off 50 NTD since I'm a nice american...lol.

After that we went to the museum where they had lots of different sculptures made with ceramics, many toilets, and neat teapots!

This is one of my favorite sculptures that I saw, I love all the movement you can see in this stationery piece of ceramic!

A little teapot family of sleepy monkeys! That's definitely how I felt by the end of the day!

Night Market!

Welcome to the Night Market! This is the HUGE area where we ate dinner before going to the main part of the market. I hade some "Shao Lung Bow" or little dumplings with beef and gravy. We also had some blended fruit drinks, I had a watermelon one first which was SUPER good, but then I went back and got a dragonfruit one too that was amazing!

Look at the carrots in this picture, they're HUGE!!

This is a giant pot of ZenZhu, or tapioca pearls, I didn't get any at the night market, but believe me, I've had plenty since I've been here!

After we ate we began our walk to all the little shops! It was so fun to see everything, there were SO many people (think of the crowds at Disneyland), and throughout the night more and more stands started popping up in the middle of the streets! Most of the things we saw for sale were clothes, jewelery, lots of handbags (of which I bought 2!), and some STRANGE foods! The funny thing was you could walk into a stall and all these strange medicinal looking foods would be being sold right next to these nice handbags! It was pretty funny, and VERY hard not to buy everything in sight, because when you think of things in terms of USD it's VERY cheap for us to buy things here!

After we'd been shopping for a long time, we needed a snack! So we bought some little waffles at this stand because they looked so fun! Look at all the shapes they come in, an elephant, a pig, rooster, bird, gun, and a MOTORCYCLE!

The other night the Chinese students on our culture class threw us a party to welcome us to the school! They taught us new games, Chinese tongue twisters, and demonstrated some of their more traditional chinese skills! Below is a video of Sam displaying his karate skills with his willing volunteer, Kayla!

She is holding a pair of chopsticks between her teeth, and there is a lit candle on the end that he is trying to blow out with his kick!

This basically sums up our first full week here! We are all having SO much fun, there is just so much to do it's hard to share it with everyone! We were very glad when the typhoon ended so we could run around outside again and explore the city; I can't wait to travel outside of Taipei and see what the rest of the country is like!

Typhoon

So the typhoon is headed here and will probably hit tonight, but we are safe as long as we stay inside, and it really shouldn't hit us strongly at all, it's mostly on the coastline which is why we cancelled our trip! So it's made everything super windy and rainy... I videotaped the weather outside of our hostel so you could all see it!


ok, so no video because apparently there is some error in updating it, hopefully that will be fixed soon!

Nihauo! (That is hello in Chinese!)

I think I'm finally beginning to adjust, because I wasn't nearly as tired today as I was yesterday when we were travelling. Today we went to breakfast that was super yummy, then we travelled to the Lungshan Temple which I have a couple videos of below, then we went to Taipei 101 for some chic shopping and lunch. Now we're all back here at the hotel having some fun while we try to stay awake as long as we can!









Outside of Lungshan:

Inside of Lungshan:

Taipei 101

And just for fun, yesterday we saw our first Mcdonalds! Now we've discovered you can't escape the golden arches no matter where you are in the world!

Firsts...

After a good night's sleep on a rock hard bed, and now an exhausting day of traveling I am going to share some of the "firsts" of this trip!

First....

Time I stayed up 24 hours straight!

Time I went to Japan!

Encounter with an eastern style toilet, boy that throws you for a loop. (Just FYI I haven't actually used one yet, just taken the silly picture below, after we all took pictures with it we decided we could wait to use the loo)

Time speaking Chinese! I've only learned a few words, and so far it's really weird.

time I had seaweed and rice for breakfast! I at these funny little "sushi sandwiches" (that's just what I'm calling them) for breakfast today. One had some kind of fish in the middle with veggies, another one had egg and veggies, and another one was like ham and cheese! They were very good, I might just have to get them again!

time becoming a "metro rider"! We traveled to downtown Taipei and bought these metro cards! You pay any amount and then you swipe them on the sensors at the subway stations and when you get off the bus. The girl on the right is Liann, she is our Host Professors TA and is helping us get around and plan a lot of trips. She has a fun sticker on her card, they sell them everywhere and we didn't know what they were for until we saw her card and now we really want to get some!

time I drank Calpis... yeah it sounds gross, but it's really not! I should have taken a picture, but I didn't :( I will next time I have it because it was so good! It's this white, watery drink, that's very crisp and sweet. It's almost like a fresca sort of thing, but no carbonation. I ordered it after hearing about how good it was from another asian student, Joanne.

I'm sure there were like a billion other "firsts" today, but those are the only ones I can gather right now off the top of my head. Today was so long! We wandered around forever and ever it felt like. First we had a tour of the campus, then we went downtown to get metro cards, then to this major mall, then to this huge costco like store, and then Camille (she went to Southridge and graduated the class before me! Crazy coincidence, she recognized Isaac when she saw him at the airport!) and I finally escaped and managed to get back home on the bus!

We've seen, heard, and done a lot of new things and we're worn out, but it's so fun! Tonight we will probably wander around the night market for a while. We were supposed to have an early morning tomorrow to go to Hualien for three days, but the trip has been cancelled because a major typhoon is about to hit the coast! So that's a bummer... but now we have a little bit more downtime and some freedom to explore. I'm hoping to go to Taipei 101 and IKEA tomorrow!

I made it!!

I have been awake for 27 hours... but the flight went really well, we made it here safe, and now we are going ot BED! Tomorrow we take a tour of the campus, get shown around town, how to use the post office and other such things we will need to know. I'll write more tomorrow night, but for now it's off to bed to get much needed sleep!

There are SO MANY scooters in Taiwan!!

T-minus 10 minutes....

My plane in PDX is boarding in 10 minutes!! Pray for me, here I go!