Taiwan Day 10

Today we found out our class schedules and bought our textbooks. We all take three classes - two group classes and one individual class.

These are the textbooks for my two group classes, and they're 400-level based on ICLP standards, which means that I placed an entire level higher than I thought I could, yaaaaaay. Thank you 中文桌子 for improving my oral speaking skills, which ICLP cares about a lot more than written I think. Which is good, because my written skills are noooot great. Eric, Charlotte, and Daniel all have the same books, even if none of us are in the same classes, so at least we can all study/suffer together! :D ICLP is known to be absurdly difficult though, so I don't know if skipping a level bodes well for me....

Anyways, another exciting thing today, was Eric's 19th birthday! So he planned a trip to Jiufen so we could all go 玩。This started off well when he called me in the morning and goes "My SIM card ran out of money so I can't text or ca- *phone goes dead*" Womp womp. It was a sad sad moment. Thanks to modern technology, we figured it out through Facebook, and were eventually on our way.

Happily on the train to Jiufen

 Once we got there, we took a really bumpy bus up part of the mountain, with these tiny little narrow roads and sharp turns with buses coming down the opposite direction. Safety! Then we got to the top and saw this innocuous sign.

Can I just say though: what is with all these places in Taiwan trying to disguise themselves as fun things? Yehliu Geopark was kind of legit because it did have all those rocks and nature things. But it was still a lot of upwards movement :P. And then "Nangang District Hiking Trail" aka Elephant Mountain aka one of the Four Beasts Mountains of Taiwan?! And now for this Gold Ecological Park. This is not a park. It is a mountain. Remember when I said no more mountains?!?! 

Horrible.

Saw the steps and was like....

But it was Eric's birthday so I had 没有办法 Q______Q

Already sitting down before we even start. Typical.

Cool views at the top, as usual.

This is where you could throw coins into that little bowl to make all your wishes come true. I think only Alyssa was successful. A lot of us got coins in the bowl but then they bounced out. So I guess that means we'll almost have our dreams realized only to have them be taken away at the last second? :'(

Went back down the mountain and did shopping in Jiufen!

Jiufen is pretty touristy, so it was packed, especially because most of the shops are in these alleyways. Lots of cool things to look at though, and we eventually got to this cool temple.

Logan's school, Centre College, is really big on study abroad. So apparently they have a contest of who can take the best picture in the place they're studying abroad with them spelling on the school's name.

Obviously getting 1st place

At night, the lanterns turn on, and thus Jiufen was apparently partially inspiration for the movie Spirited Away.

At the end of the day, got bubble tea at our favorite place. So Char, Logan, and I went one entire day without it. Haha.

Taiwan Day 9

So today was a little bit absurd. We decided to go to Elephant Mountain, which sounds very fun and cute. Now I know to be wary of anything with the word mountain in it. Although Connor tried to argue afterwards that it was a "hiking trail." LIES. Anything that goes at a 75 degree upwards incline for 20 minutes is NOT A HIKING TRAIL. And it was actually more than 20 minutes. It was supposed to be a 15 minute hike for people in shape, and 25 for those who aren't. So basically that means it took me like half an hour?

Got up the first flight of stairs and was already like, "I have made a horrible mistake." And then of course there were spiders the sizes of your hands (no exaggeration) just chilling on the trees that lined the stairs. I am not about this life. 

The death of athleticism

This is a screenshot of a video Eric took of me wherein I reached the top step of the mountain and promptly laid down and did not move. The transcript goes something like:

Eric: Hey Cindy, how're you doing?
Me: *indistinguishable noise*

Eric: You tired?

Me: *indistinguishable noise*

And later...

Me: *ominous whisper* never again....*mentally shakes fist at sky*

And I was actually too tired once I got to the top to even take pictures, WHICH NEVER HAPPENS because I take literally like 50 pictures a day. So Eric sent me a good sequence of pictures that shows the setting sun over Taipei, which are all really really cool! Probably would've enjoyed it much more if I were not dying.

And here is a picture of all of us at the top. I am clearly still dead since I peeled myself off the ground just for this photo.

Chilled on top of these huge rocks and watched the sunset.

#intentionallyblurry #itsartsy

We had a really good dinner though, so I was appeased :3 Ramen for the gazillionth time. I think my entire diet is noodles and bubble tea? Although actually I think I didn't have any bubble tea today! AHHH. It's a miracle. 

And then we finally tried the really cute red bean cake place by our apartment, which was so good! Pretty sure they are freshly made. So yummy mmmm.

Connor would be in this picture...but he was done with his by the time I took out my camera
 -__-

So I guess the moral of today is: food heals all wounds.

But I'm serious. No more mountains.

Taiwan Day 8

Because Charlotte and Connor are tired of me, they ran off somewhere this morning and I didn't see them again until nighttime. Got over it pretty quickly though, and decided I should probably make some new friends. My new friends and I decided to try out the Vegetarian Buddha Paradise which was pretty decent.

Just kidding. None of these people are new, haha.

Highlight of the lunch: Logan didn't know what a lychee was, and was very confused about how to eat it.

Spent the rest of the day adventuring with these two goons. I can't figure out which pair of roommates hates/loves each other more, Logan and Eric, or these two, haha.

A day filled with incessant sass

We decided to go to 西门 and saw some cool temples, buildings, and a lot lot lot of shops.

This temple was sandwiched between two modern buildings, which yet again is making me realize how on point our second-year textbook was, since we had a whole chapter about 保留-ing 有中国特色的建筑 and other things that had to do with modern/traditional architecture haha. Shawn and Daniel and I also tried to speak in Chinese to each other throughout the day, which was really good for me since their Chinese is so 地道 :P 

I needed a new pair of earbuds, which was 非常 convenient since Ximen has an entire electronics section. Shawn was able to get me a discount because he looks/speaks like a native, bwahah. Another great thing about hanging out with people's whose Chinese is much better than mine.

My beautiful new 便宜 headphones

Found some stores entirely dedicated to fruit, which I guess just goes to show how much more Taiwanese 重视 their fruit, probably because it is so delicious here.

Fruit for days

Then we went to one of the many underground malls, and came across Eslite, which is apparently a high-end bookstore, so of course we had to go in. I didn't really see how it was any different from normal bookstores. Maybe more expensive? But still had a lot of stuff, including manga and Chinese translations of English magazines.

Daniel bought this really intense Chinese book which is apparently some kind of classic piece of literature, that he can not only read in Chinese (in traditional characters too...) but has also memorized?! Yeah he is very 厉害... 

Explored more of this mysterious underground mall...

Do I look like Shawn? hehe

Not coming soon enough :P

Decided to check out Taipei 101, which I have up until now thought was the same thing as Taipower. Taipei 101 used to be the tallest building in the world. Taipower is an energy source. I don't know how I mixed those two up... -__-

So the inside of this building is ridiculous. Apparently the higher up you go, the more high-end the stores are. Where we entered, which was maybe the third or fourth floor, there were stores like Chanel, Rolex, Hermes, CK, etc. So clearly none of us were trying to buy anything on the higher floors. What are they even selling up there?! Probably cars or something. 

Instead, we bought something we could afford - ice cream!! There was a buy one get one free deal, so we ended up getting way more than is healthy to eat.

Explored the mall some more then went home. I took a nap then had dinner with Khan. The place we went to was really good, but made me glad that I'm not vegetarian or have any food allergies. We both ordered a vegetarian noodle dish that most definitely had meat in it. Good thing neither of us are vegetarian (Khan just can't eat pork) so we were like meh whatever and ate it anyways.

Afterwards we got more bubble tea, but this one is a really famous shop in Taipei, but the bubble tea actually had a coffee-ish flavor so I'm not sure how I feel about it. I slowly feel myself turning into a bubble tea snob...

The most famous face in Gongguan

Connor and Charlotte finally came home and brought Logan and Eric to hang out a bit so I guess they actually like me. 哈哈

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！