Taipei (museums)

so we wake up for a fun day of museum-ing and it's pouring. thankfully i come prepared with my water shoes, but a number of auburnites did not. nonetheless, we started heading towards our first museum of the day: the chiang-kai shek memorial which strongly resembles the lincoln memorial. chiang kai shek was a very famous five star general and president of taiwan. not sure about all his military accomplishments as i could not read the chinese character descriptions, but tin-man told us he was very famous for all the treasures he brought over from china when china transitioned into a communist country. china still has some stuff, but taiwan now has all the best and most expensive things :). and all these things can be viewed at the museum we went to later in the day. but while we were at the chiang-kai shek memorial we did witness the changing of the guard which was very impressive... i have a video to go along :).

we walked outside (into the rain again) and there was an nba demonstration/set-up outside... not sure why, but they had a lot of video game platforms and life-size replicas of some of the nba players' hands and feet. dwight howard apparently wears a size 18 shoe!! crazy...

but after a few hours at our first museum we were pretty famished, so we stopped along our subway route to get dumplings for lunch... quite delish. and there were a few cute shops we stopped and looked in as well.

our next musuem of the day was the palace museum. now i've been hearing a lot about this museum from various family members and friends, and yes it is just as amazing as it has been described. sorry no pictures were allowed inside :( some of my favorites would have to be the curio box, the ridiculously intricately carved walnut shell + olive stones, and the 17 layered concentric ivory ball. it was amazing just how much chiang-kai shek managed to smuggle over too. three stories of rooms filled with priceless valuables... he must have taken boat upon boat loads. so many things are so fragile though, i wonder if anything was broken along the way.

once again we've gone several hours without food so we need foods again. of course it's still pouring outside, and we're heading to the riverside market... outdoors. all of the drying our shoes just did was for nothing jaja. another thing is that we had been having a lot of trouble finding an atm that would accept our cards... they're really picky here. but we finally found one that would accept all our cards when we got to the riverside, so now we could all have monies :). so we start walking along the river with all the shops, and matt is dead set on finding a whole animal on a stick to eat... something he had been told he had to do by one of the food network shows. well we find squid on a stick, and matt is thrilled. it was certainly a spectacle. i decided to go with quail eggs on a stick instead (taste just like chicken eggs but so much cuter in size)... as swell as some fried squid balls and some of sarah's fried shrimp wraps. only 10 and 20 NT each! so dinner was less than $1! amazing.

the way back to the hotel was probably the most eventful though. everyone was exhausted... even tin-man fell asleep on the subway. so i woke him up at our stop, but when he asked me if i was sure i double checked and the next thing i know he and sarah jayne are outside the subway and the rest of us are getting the doors closed on us. jajaja! so we get off at the next station and wait to see if he's coming to us... nope. so we find our way back to where he was purely by color association. oh my goodness it was funny.

when we finally got back to the hotel all of our feet are soaked and soggy. poor arissa had worn moccasins so not only were her shoes and feet soaked, but her feet had been discolored yellow too. now she was officially asian ;)

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...

Week 1 :: Shu-Te University

so we have now successfully completed our first week here at STU. oh my goodness what a week. i'll just do the logical thing and start from the beginning.

of course on monday we had our opening ceremony like i mentioned before. we and a number of other students gathered in a small auditorium and watched a powerpoint about the program we will be participating in and about the college in general. we also got to watch some of the videos the students here made for us. so cute! maybe we will make them one before we leave... and again as a i mentioned before we also had our first class monday: pottery. i made a little bowl/vase with flower appliques on it... hopefully it turns out ok :/ later that night we hung out with friends at the 711 (not so much a gas station here... kind of the thing to do) and tried some sort of sweet potato fries. sooooo good!

tuesday was our first day of studio. ironically enough the focus is on 'disaster relief.' good thing i didn't choose that group for jerrod's studio :). we're divided into groups of 6 or 7... one american student per group. i'm sure you can imagine the communication issues. but we're all really lucky to be with such an accepting and patient group of students, so we're all moving along just fine. each group is given a specific direction to research in and design around; my groups' focus is clothing, so we divided up the research to have done for presentations on friday... all in english!! eeek!! i felt really bad for them when tin-man said that (just a quick spoiler, but they all presented famously!!)
it also happened to be matt's birthday! shin pulled me aside in studio and showed me that she had gotten him a mini cake! so sweet! we were trying to figure out a good way to surprise him... we got the teachers in on it and everything. we ended up getting some of his group members to tell him that they needed to go to the library to get him out of the room, and when he came back we had turned out the lights, lit the birthday candle, and everyone sang happy birthday to him (in english and in chinese of course).
later in the evening we took our first tai chi class!! so fun... the first part was learning the relaxing motions, and the second part was practical applications of the motions we had just learned. i can definitely disarm an attacker now!! ...provided they come at me in the ways i've learned to defend against ;) after that we all headed over to the 7 to celebrate matt's birthday with some sparklers and fireworks!!

wednesday was a free day!! we had to pay our dorm fees in the morning, but that was our only obligation. we did participate in a craft class as well though... it was some sort of organization/job fair so there were a lot of booths set up and activities as well. we wove these flower pendants out of plastic ribbon. pretty cute. i decided to use mine as a hair clip instead. not a very busy day. nice and calm. i got to use the time to do some research on the effects floods have on clothing for our studio.

thursday was pretty busy. we have classes from 9 until 5. we have glass shop in the morning and metal shop in the evening. our professor for glass is world renowned for his work. so beautiful!! so much detail it's crazy! we got to make something more basic though: shallow bowls (great for soap :) he tought us how to cut the glass to match up to the dimensions of the clay bowl used for the mold. we arranged small glass flower pieces on top of the glass plate to be fused together in the kiln. super fun!
metal shop was a slightly different story... we had to cut out a design from a small metal plate using a hack saw. it took forever!! i think i won the prize for breaking the most blades too... must have been close to 15 or 20. clearly i don't have the patience for chiseling away tiny bits of metal at a time. (ps cole i made you something and if you don't jump for joy when i give it to you, i may have to strangle you... no pressure ;)
oh but the day still wasn't over. in between class i met up with my group to go over what he had collected as research for our presentation for friday. i had made the layout the previous night, but we still had a long way to go. it probably wouldn't have taken so long if i didn't have to tweak the layout, but i had to do a lot of reorganizing... not to mention most of the english :/ not complaining, i was just really tired. my group was really great and helpful though! going to bed was wonderful.

so now we're finally up to today! friday! breakfast was amazing as usual... 'chee sa dan ping' (cheese egg cake... basically egg and cheese wrapped in a thin seasoned crepe) and 'do jiang' (soy milk! morning fav! ...so much better here!!), and of course i got a steamed bun to go as well. definitely one of my favorit novelties here. don't think i'd ever had steamed bread before, but it is soooo good! the variety i got today looked a bit like a cinnamon roll, but it was a light chocolate instead. the flavor is very subtle, but delicious! i'll have to take pictures!
we had mandarin class at 10... we learned how to shop more efficiently. we learned numbers, how to write our names in chinese, and a few other things too... but clearly the first is most important ;). during mandarin class we also got our glass bowl/plates out of the kiln!! i think they may have cooled a little too quickly because there were some small cracks around the flowers, but oh well.
by the time studio finally arrived we were all feeling pretty anxious. i wasn't really sure how much my group had prepared since we didn't really have time to go over and rehearse the presentation, but they blew me away! they kept saying how nervous they were, but i think they said more than any other group did! and they sounded so good too! i was so proud of them... i wish my chinese sounded as good as their english... as a class we do all need to work on projecting our voices. no one was very loud... things to work on.
afterwards kenny finally got his mohawk... or should i say asian fauxhawk. a girl from the cosmotology school used him for 'practice,' but it was the best boy haircut i've ever seen. they would never give that much time or detail to a haircut in the states. she was so fast and yet so precise... and best of all it was fo freeeee!! me next!!

and now we just got back from a belly dancing class that started at 10. we were invited by a very flamboyant gay boy :) ...most flamboyant i've seen here yet. he's adorable. it was fun... interesting. i'll definitely get good sleep tonight...

Day 3 :: Kaohsiung (Dream Mall)

so on our third day here in taiwan (sunday) and our last day before class started, some of our taiwanese friends told us that a group wanted to head to the 'department store' and asked if we would like to come. wasn't sure exactly which department store but it sounded fun enough so we all agreed to meet at the four trees around 10:30 in the morning. come to find out we're going to one of the largest malls in the world (with the ferris wheel on top!). so we call the taxis and head out to the train station where we catch a lift to downtown kaohsiung. adam's girlfriend meets up with us along the way, too. so we reach our stop and leave the subway and take a bus from there... very complicated to get to the mall it seems, but we finally reach our destination: "Dream Mall" :)

the place is huge!! never have i seen so many stories for one mall! it was a little ridiculous. but as usually, everything in the place is ADORABLE, and we're all googoo eyed looking at EVERYTHING. we all felt really bad for our friends having to put up with us, but they seemed to think it was funny and enjoy themselves just the same.

we all definitely spent A LOT! well... at least in nt dollars... the person who spent the most still only spent about $125 or so... that was including lots of gifts for people, some clothes, and two pairs of shoes! we had enough points from our total spending to get two free watches!! which we gave to our friends for so graciously putting up with our shopping. not everything is inexpensive though... name brands can be ridiculously expensive! but i did manage to get a number of presents for people! no you can't see them ;) , but just know they're super cute and super awesome!!

so after about 12 hours of walking/shopping we were beat ...crazy i know! but there were 8 of us that had to stick together at all times... tin-man's rules... plus, we don't really have cell phone access as easily. i don't even remember being in too many shops though. i mainly remember going up and down multiple escalators and spending time up in Happy 100. yes, we rode the ferris wheel :)

the ferris wheel was HUGE. it traveled pretty slowly too... took about 15 minutes to make a full rotation, but the view was wonderful! we also discovered another fun activity... running in the water inside a huge ball of air. jajaja!! it was the funniest looking thing! it was clearly an activity for children, but we didn't really care. if i didn't have a dang dress on i would have done it too, but arissa did it and looked hilarious! the taiwanese guys running the 'ride' must have thought we were just crazy americans, but it was definitely one of the funniest things i saw that day.

when we finally got back it was a little before 11. i was pooped. didn't even take a shower that night, and in the morning it was the first time that i woke up by my alarm ...and still felt tired. good sign that my body is adjusting, but since we had to get up and go to our opening ceremony it was not the best of timing.

so monday was our first day of class too! pottery! super fun ...we weren't that great at it tho. super slow. but more about that later this week. i'll post what we do for the first week on friday or something. i don't need to be posting every day ;) so get excited!! there's gonna be a lot to tell :)

Day 2 :: Kaohsiung

so day two was equally adorable here in taiwan. after waking up around 5:15am for the second time to make mass amounts of tinkle (i don't know where it comes from! i must retain so much during the day) i headed down to check my email finally and get some breakfast.... lots and lots of breakfast! the hotel breakfast was an amazing buffet of steamed bread (so good), croissants, banana bread, rice soup (also yummy... had it on the plane too), yogurt drinks, fruit!, boiled eggs, soy milk, grapefruit tea (delicious!) and all kinds of other fancy taiwanese fixins that i can't remember. i just ate it. and it was good.

so after i was sufficiently stuffed so i wouldn't be hungry for the rest of the day (it's amazing how much you DON'T get hungry here with all the heat/humidity!) i made my way to my room to pack up. while packing, however, i received unexpected visits by arissa and christine. they had some exciting news. apparently they had found a way to the roof top and were very excited to share their adventure. so i quickly finished packing and we three made our way up the roof top. such rebels. it was a pretty spectacular view, as you can see, even if it was a bit cloudy (which was definitely great news for us as it wasn't nearly as hot as it could have been). now that we officially felt adventurous we made our way down to the lobby and awaited our bus.

the bus ride to shu-te university was short and sweet. along the way we even got to see a traditional burial site. someone asked if we could go visit, but apparently it is not acceptable to visit a grave site unless you are family. it's considered disrespectful.

our welcome committee upon arrival was definitely a bit overwhelming. we all were getting butterflies in our stomachs, and apparently the taiwanese students were too. most of us turn out to be on about the same playing field when it comes to our respective english/chinese vocabularies. one girl in my group, however, (shin) knows a good bit of english. makes translating a lot easier. i'm surprised at how much chinese i retained, though, and i'm learning more and more as i go. hopefully i'll be able to carry on conversations by the time i leave!

after presenting me with a very pretty paint brush for writing chinese characters (i feel like it has a special name and i wish i knew it...) we made our way down the hill to the dorms. they're a bit humid during the day when the ac is off, but right now it feels nice. we only stayed long enough to drop off my bags and then made our way out to have a brief tour of the campus before meeting in the classroom for a short introduction. and of course a group picture followed.

next we went to the cafeteria for lunch. i was most certainly not hungry still, but i was very much thirsty so i purchased a milk bubble tea (i've been wanting to try them for so long!) for only $1! and that was one of the more expensive things too! it was delicious! sorry i forgot to take pictures, but with all the commotion i guess i just forgot :(

later all the american students took taxis while the taiwanese students rode their scooters (we're not allowed, but after seeing how people drive here i'm not complaining!) to the supermarket to get supplies/necessities. the supermarket was like a combination of wal-mart, home depot, office depot, and any other random stores you could fit in there. they had EVERYTHING!!! definitely didn't need gum or peanut butter mom ;) i got a couple things, but i wanted sooo much! everything is so adorable!!! i did get this little sunshine flower bobble though... couldn't resist. when the light shines on it it sways back and forth. it makes me happy.

towards the end of our shopping spree i started phasing into zombie mode again. still a little off on my day/night schedule at the time, though i think i may be about right now. so after we heading back and said goodnight to all our new friends i finally unpacked and took a shower. bed quickly ensued following the shower and now here i am in the morning again!

Day 1 Complete!

good morning from kaohsiung, taiwan!!! it's FINALLY day two here, seeing as day one was a full 48 hours from morning to actual BED... never felt so good to sleep in a bed. after sitting on a plane for about 20 hours + the lay over times, we lost one whole day. never saw thursday may 13, 2010. weird feeling. it was amazing when we finally stepped outside and breathed in fresh air again. granted, it was more like breathing in a sauna, but nonetheless it was fresh air we hadn't had in quite some time.

so our first flight out of atlanta to san francisco was pretty lame. delta has gotten super stingy. we all had mini screens set into the headrest in front of us, but every movie was 6 bucks!free, but you all know how much i loooooove tv. i skimmed through the channels for a bit before napping for round 1. the flight out of san fran did have movies playing, however the screen (not plural) was pretty dinky. so no movies for me :( so sad. oh well. i slept most of the time anyways. the final flight was the best though. by the time we got in the air from taipei we were already landing maybe 20 minutes later. it was like it never even happened jaja!

so now we were finally at our destination in kaohsiung about 24 hours later. merely stepping off the plain gave you the full sauna effect. and amazingly, it hasn't made me sweaty and/or itchy!! it's the second largest city in taiwan with one of the worlds largest shopping malls... complete with ferris wheel jajaja! but the most ridiculous thing is how many scooters there are! they are EVERYWHERE!! there have to be thousands even millions of them! everyone is driving around on them, fully covered, wearing face masks to protect them from all the fumes. it's pretty smoggy, but they do have a ton of green spaces in hopes of offsetting the pollution. i just can't believe they can stand the heat with all their clothes on! protecting your skin and trying to keep you skin tone light is one thing, but there's a limit when it comes to comfort! i couldn't do it.

we hit the ground running though after we dropped our luggage in the hotel we stayed in for the night (we leave for the university around 9 this morning). our first stop was lunch. tin-man got us a huuuuuge spread of food to try from, and EVERYTHING was delicious! you can see in the pictures how hungry we all were too. from there we just walked and walked and walked. it didn't seem like we had been walking that long or that far on the way FROM the hotel, but by the time we were walking back it seemed like we would never reach our destination! i felt near delirium from the lack of sleep and obvious jet lag. but it was super fun anyways!

we walked along the river and went to a couple museums that were super cute. everyone and everything here is sooooo adorable!!! we've already had what seemed to be a group of middle school girls come up giggling and ask for pictures with us. too cute!! oh and i became mayor of kaohsiung for a minute in the interactive portion of the museum :)

of course i've already made some incredible purchases!! got a new battery for my watch for only 100 nt or apx $3 (yes mom it wasn't working after all... never really thought to check until my phone wasn't working so well jaja). i've gotten some milk tea (amazing!!) and strawberry milk tea as well (my dinner since it was too tired to even be hungry). and of course the most amazing purchase of all was my helmet!!! it's definitely intended for scooters, but i plan to use it for stylishly riding my bike!! and one day if i do get a scooter in the states i'll be prepared... jayson you're totally gonna be jealous. soooo much cooler than your scooter helmet! it's the face of hello kitty. adorable. as you can see in the picture. we (or should i say tin-man's wife) haggled with the woman selling in for about 1o minutes trying to get her to drop the price... not like it was expensive to start with (only 320 nt/$10!!), but it was super fun just haggling with her!

we also went to the night market for a bit! all kinds of neat stuff, but sadly i'm either too tall and/or too busty for all their clothes. oh well. maybe they'll have a 'big and tall' store somewhere jajaja! i really wasn't even that interested in shopping by the time we got there though... at this point we were all just zombie walking from one booth to the next.

when we finally got back to the hotel i took my second shower for the day. it's not so much that you get sweaty here, but i definitely felt sticky. a cool shower definitely felt relaxing. hit the sack by 9 o'clock, and here i am at 6:30 am posting what we've done. it was a long 48 hour day, and now it's time for breakfast!!