Taipei (101)

the day after our group presentations we woke up early and headed down to the four trees to await our taxi to the bus station. now this wasn't just any other bus. this was the luxury bus, complete with massage capable reclining chair and a tv per person with headphones and controller for our movie viewing and video game playing pleasure. in a word, it was awesome. my one complaint was that the massage controls stopped working after a while... i must have reached my max :( i definitely played some adorable kirby game and an old school dbz fighting game. i thought of some fellas who would be enviouos... you know who you are ;) this luxury bus also happened to be my first squatting experience. definitely a bit more challenging while bumping around on a moving bus, but i still managed to conquer this challenge with flying colors... that did not get on my pants ;)

after about 5 hours of five star travelling (sans the few minor complaints), we reached our desination in taipei, the capital of taiwan. first we dropped our luggage off in the hotel and got some lunch. amanda and arissa finally crumbled and got some mcdonalds... don't think i'll ever get THAT desperate... unless we find the alleged "rice burger" jaja. the boys and i got something slightly more upscale: a four course meal of lamb (for me) and all the trimmings for only about 150NT (about $5)!! it was amazing!!

next we headed to taipei 101 (the 2nd tallest building in the world as a matter of fact... 2nd only to another building in dubai). the bottom 5 or so levels are devoted to higher end stores... kind of like a taiwanese saks 5th avenue. but before we even got the chance to walk in the doors we got distracted by some tent booths set up outside with what looked like some free giveaways! i of course was interested. it appeared to us that all we had to do was sign some sheet and we got a free hat and shirt. no problem right? well we got our stuff, but then we're all being directed to this stage with a bunch of asians on ellipticals. we had apparently signed up. so tin-man becomes temporary bag-lady as we all mount our machines and start stepping. thankfully the girl next to me spoke english and told me that we had to reach 1000 steps and 1000NT would be donated to a charity raising funds to buy braille books for blind orphans. so we're all sweating away our lunch when a camera man and a guy with a mic come up to me and tell me that if a can answer some simple questions they will increase the NT i contribute to 5000!! they asked me what the even was for and who was sponsoring it... once again i'm glad the girl next to me spoke english and told me these things so i didn't look like an idiot. so i raised 5000NT for children!

we finally go inside and get our tickets to go to the top of taipei 101, but there's a HUGE line so we decide to go look around for a bit while it dies down. we find a super cute toy store and spend a few bucks on pointless trinkets, but their coin operated toy dispensers were so cool! and now i have a few more presents for people :) the other stores made me feel poor, so no shopping in them. after about an hour and a half of window shopping we went upstaris to get in line. it was not shorter. it was longer. AND christine lost her ticket! the worker at the end of the line said it would be about an hour from that point! i was prepared to just leave and lose the money, but htankfully they exaggerate times here just like in the states. we were in line for only 15 minutes. what a liar. but i totally heard some asians on the observation deck with american accents, and it turned out the boy was from chattanooga!! hixson actually... crazy! we got to see the big bee-hive looking ball the keeps the building from swaying too much in the wind. pretty freaky. apparently it's controlled by computers... sure hope they don't crash!! after about an hour/hour and a half we headed down. p.s this elevater went about 6okm/min... my ears popped at least 5 times. ridiculous crazy!

so at this point we meet up with christine (she'd been sketching), and we trek back to the hotel. oh but the night wasn't over yet. we had gotten something for dinner in the mall, and arissa decided to get sushi to go. now her stomach hadn't been doing so well lately (we have a few theories on that ;), and sushi may not have been the best idea. around her last few bites she thought she was going to puke. no more than a few seconds later she rushes to the bathroom, and amanda and i are sitting on our beds confused about whether we are hearing the faucet running. no. it's arissa. jajaja!! ohhhhhh funny. what a day...