February 1st Gretchen and I finished work at 4pm, the whole day was hard because everyone was looking forward to vacation, especially me!! At 10pm that night we met up with Franny, our co-worker and the mastermind behind our little weekend trip. We took a cab to the Yingge train station and took a short commuter train ride to another train station, where we had tickets for the midnight train to Kaohsuing - which resulted in a very bad night of sleep. Arrived in Kaohsuing at 6am and got on a 7am train for Taitung, our first official stop. We got there about 9am on Saturday and someone from the hotel met us and drove us out. We stayed at the "East Sun Spa Spring Garden Hotel," beautiful views, feet biting fish, and decent food was found there. In the afternoon we attempted a bit of a walk that turned into a very long walk to find this Natural Education Center. I guess the nearby areas are wildlife reserves and protected because they have so many different species of animals and different ecosystems, it was very interesting and fun, they even had an english video for us to watch, I've never heard so many scientific names in one sitting before!
Sunday morning Franny had arranged some of the hotel people to take us around Taitung, we were going to go bicycling but the weather was to dreary. In the car she asked us if we wanted to buy some fruit, no clue what kind of fruit, but I love fruit in general so I said ok. Eventually I figured out it was my most favorite fruit in the world!! It's native to Taiwan and doesn't really have an English name, although most call it "Buddha's head" because it looks like the hat thing he wears - anyways, it's SO GOOD!! I bought a basketfull (literally) and a special hybrid with it and pineapple, yummy!
After the fruit buying we went to a park and walked around, more beauty to see, then to XiaoYiLiu, which is related to YiLiu - a place in Northern Taiwan. Both of these locations have very interesting rock formations near the sea. From tectonic plates, limestone, salt water and erosion all coming into play to make these beautiful stones. It was very interesting because you were allowed to climb all over the place (a dream for me!) and it was right next to the Pacific Ocean. So I throughly enjoyed my large rock jungle gym and my 4th visit to an ocean.
At 1pm we were on a train from Taitung to Hualien - our original destination and popular city because it is right next to Toroko Gorge. We arrived there at 5pm, got to our luxurious hotel and after enjoying a Chinese Kung Fu movie on TV, went to a night market area in search of food.
Monday morning was the day! We got up early, packed our stuff and were in a van to Taroko Gorge. According to most travel books on Taiwan, Taroko is the must see hot spot. It has marble-walled canyons (which we saw), lush vegitation (which we didn't see so much since it's winter), and cliffs so giant-sized they block out the sky (which we definately saw). Two main attractions we saw were: Hsiangte Temple, named after a Buddhist monk who prayed for the safety of the workmen who were building the main highway, but I guess because of natural disasters it has been rebuilt three times; Tunnels of Nine Turns, which is one of the most senic parts of the main highway and the best place to see marble deposits in the gorge, it's been closed off to cars because of many accidents and is now a 30-40 minute walk. We spent all morning at the gorge, the van would drive us to cool spots and let us out for pictures, then drive us around a bit more, worked out well.
At 2pm we got on our final train (Sidebar: I'm pretty sure the last time I was on any sort of train was 1998 in Europe) to head back to Taipei, arrived at 5pm back in the drizzly weather and huge crowds. With my basket of fruit and other items I did not want to attempt the subway in rush hour/holiday traffic, so we took a cab back, took over an hour and I started to feel a bit carsick but it was worth it.
Mom and Dad are visit Grandma this weekend and asked me for a way to show her pictures without internet, so I created a video slideshow for them and I'm putting it up here (hopefully) for anyone who wants to see. Between Gretchen and myself we took over 200 pictures, so to narrow the shots down was hard, and it's still like 6 minutes long and moves pretty fast, but you get a glimpse into Taiwan :D
And I now realized that I could have been loading it while I was typing this insanely long blog, so I shall sit here waiting.....
In other news, I will return to work on Tuesday. It's weird having been gone so long, but a much needed break. There's only 2 or 3 weeks left in this semester. I don't think there's much difference between semesters except that my K1Gorillas will become K2Gorillas and there will be new students for some and some kids changing classes, general stuff, but nothing specific. I'm hoping for less art classes. Although I did talk to my supervisor about the toddlers having Art only twice a week and story time the other 3 days, she was okay with that (YES!)
Since we were home on Monday I've been pretty lazy the rest of the week. Wednesday, Gretchen and I headed into the city to go to Ikea to buy a rug for the living room, these hardwood floors are ice cold! I then took her to my favorite bookstore, Eslite, it's 4 floors, it pretty much beats out Barnes and Nobles back home! I bought three new (and probably not needed) books....my name is Marisa and I have a reading addiction. My collection here in Taiwan is up to...*counts her book collection*...25, give or take a few that I brought with me and some manga. I just finished a book last night (or in reality at 4am this morning) that took place in Japan, #9Dream, very weird and I didn't know till the end that that was a John Lennon song...made it even weirder. Now I'm working on Snow White and the Seven Samurai by Tom Holt, a comedic writer. I'm already half way through it but that's because I started it awhile ago an then stopped to read some others, it's amusing.
After the bookstore, Gretchen and I departed and I met up with Angela (former rotary exchange student who lived in Wayne last year) and had dinner with her family, which included: her, mom, dad, 2 sisters, 3 cousins, 2 aunts with husbands and one uncle. Her mom's side of the family. Dinner was in the hotel one of the aunts was staying at, there's some pics at the end of the video.
Speaking of the video...it's loaded! So I don't have to keep thinking of things to write about :D
Bye bye
1 comment:
Your video is really cute! I like all your Gorge pictures, I hadn't seen those before. And the rock formations by the ocean are awesome! Hope we'll get to see something like that! Looks like you've been having a nice break! I'm sure you'll be bummed when it's over, but then in a month you'll have another break, more awesome one, with me!!!!!!!
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