Taiwan Day 7

Today will make a week since we've been in Taiwan! And to celebrate that, we started off our day with another exciting day of orientation. Just kidding. Although there was a point during the talk where we heard something about the poisonous starches that have been infiltrating the unscrupulous Taiwanese market and how that hasn't deterred the Taiwanese from buying bubble tea. And we were like wait. Waht. But then we moved on and I guess it's not going to deter us either, huhuhu.

Afterwards, we were really intent on finding the waffle place on campus, despite the fact that none of us knew where it was, or even what the word for waffle is in Chinese. So we ended up asking someone for directions, only to discover that we literally did not possess any vocab to describe a waffle. We were just like, "It's shaped like this! *makes motion with hands* and is sweet! And...you eat it for breakfast in America!" Not effective. Until finally Connor just drew a picture that looked like this on his phone and the girl we asked for direction finally understood.

Art transcends all language

Success tastes like waffles

 

My new friend that I fed parts of my waffle to

Went back to our apartment for a bit, where Daniel became smitten with my seal, probably because it is the cutest stuffed animal in the world.

Love at first sight

 

Then we decided to check out the top of our building, which had really good views of Taipei, since the building is 12 stories tall. 

Then after a week here Charlotte, Daniel, and I decided that we should finally get phones. Howeveeer...in Taiwan, you can only buy SIM cards if you are 20 years old. I thought being too young for things would be over when I turned 18, but nooo. So we split up and Connor came with me to buy the SIM card for me, and Charlotte and Daniel went off because they needed actual phones. The first store we walked into, the two salespeople looked at me and instantly started speaking Chinese very quickly. Until they very quickly realized that I was indeed a 外国人 (foreigner). Got the SIM card activated eventually for pretty cheap. And got my first text in Chinese :D

Now I don't feel like a 外国人 haha

So we then tried to find Daniel and Charlotte, by looking into the nearest electronics store. We went in and were like "请问，你门看到两个外国人吗？一个男生和一个女生。。。他们是我们的朋友，他们要买手机可是我们找不到。。。" (Excuse me, have you seen two foreigners? A boy and a girl...they're our friends and were looking to buy phones, but we can't find them). Which I thought was pretty eloquent, but as usual, the difficult part was understanding what they were saying back to us. Eventually figured out they knew who we were talking about, but he kept saying something we couldn't understand, until I was like "Aha! Pleco! (Chinese character recognition app on my phone)" and the guy was like Oh! and pulled out his phone translator, and we eventually figured out they had gone to withdraw more money. So we waited for them and then they came in like two minutes later. Pleco saves the day again <3 

Afterwards, decided to try going to Yehliu again, and we actually got to the bus station on time, yay! Played Mafia on the bus on the way there since it was about a 1.5 hour trip, which was very emotional. Charlotte and I got more bubble tea once we got off the bus. 怎么说 addiction...?

The park was VERY VERY cool. Lots of ridiculously shaped rocks, and paths in super green and foresty areas with trees and stuff. Also as you walked down the paths, swarms of butterflies would like fly across your path, which Charlotte would describe as magical, and I would describe as gross. Some people think butterflies are pretty because of their wings, but in reality, they still have gross little bug bodies, so they are not fooling me :P

These are just some of my favorite photos, but they still can't really show how cool this place really was! I'm glad we finally got to go.

The last photo is of the famous Queen's Head, or 女王頭, named because the silhouette looks like the side of Marie Antoinette's head. AND IT DOES! Nature 很有意思把！