Taiwan Day 12

This morning I headed to Taipei Main Station to meet up with Melissa, who I have not seen since I graduated from high school. Luckily, she's in Xinzhu for the summer so she came to Taipei today to hang out with me! :) We took the MRT to the Sun Yat-sen station because we were trying to find a famous dumpling restaurant. We walked around outside in the hot hot sun for at least half an hour through all these alleys and stuff, but 我们找不到 :( So we asked people for directions and ended up walking in a gigantic circle, and ended up where we started and still couldn't find it...then I saw some really small yellow sign on the corner, and I was like. WAIT, there it is! And...it was closed. Bwaaaaaaah. 为什么。。。很辛苦。So I guess if anyone is ever in the area, please eat at 王家 and tell me if it's any good :P Instead, we found a Vietnamese restaurant, which was exciting cause it's the first Vietnamese restaurant I've tried in Taiwan.

Came back to my apartment for a bit, and then it started thunderstorming like crazy...but we didn't just want to sit at home so we decided to go to Longshan Temple. Despite the torrential rainfall, there were still tons of people at the temple praying and offering food.

Melissa later tells me, "the news said that the lightning occurred 700 times in the northern area during the storm." Oooops.

We got away from the rain for a bit shopping in the underground mall (one of many) then went back to the apartment to play Kemps. I would like to casually mention that Matt and I were the best team and were very sneaky and won :P

Went to the Sichuan restaurant near our house for dinner, and took this cute picture.

Short post because I'm a day behind so I have homework because school started and I'm tired :( 

对不起。。。

Taiwan Day 11

Connor and Charlotte both decided to go on (separate) long bike trips today. So I decided to spend a nice relaxing day inside instead :P Planned to go see the National Palace Museum instead! Before meeting up with Arran, Daniel and I got lunch together, which cost me a whole 23元 which is like 75 cents. Charlotte showed me a place you can get 鲜肉包 for 13元 each, and then Daniel and I went to the Vegetarian Paradise again, where I only spent 10元 because I had already had the 鲜肉包. 

Also, the woman who works at the Vegetarian Paradise is an angel. Whenever she speaks it is just so soooothing! And when she saw that I barely got any food, she was like, "妹妹！太少了, 太少了!" which is just so nice and cute. Daniel and I are planning on eating there frequently in attempts to become her friend. 

Met up with Arran at 台北车站 and traveled to the museum. We didn't plan it, but apparently Saturdays are free admission for students, and extended hours, so it worked out perfectly. The one downside of free admission, and it being the weekend, was the museum was ridiculously crowded. 

I would not be surprised if there were thousands of people in the museum at a time, because it is gigantic. Plus there are different buildings, we only went to the main one.

Since it is a museum, I obviously couldn't take any pictures, but the museum is just as amazing as people say. One of my favorite galleries was the Painting and Calligraphy gallery. It was extremely extensive, and I got very very excited, because the guide map had a picture of Guo Xi's Early Spring, which is one of the most famous pieces of calligraphy EVER and I have mentioned it in at least three of my art history papers. 

I have analyzed the crap out of this painting

So I ran through literally every room in that exhibit looking for this painting, but I could not find it. Eventually we asked a museum worker and they said THEY DIDN'T HAVE IT. Apparently they just have the picture and caption in the map guide "for reference only" and we had to "refer to actual exhibit items." Why would they do that. That is horrible. Remember when I was talking about my dreams almost coming true and being taken away (in reference to the wishing pot on the mountain in Jiufen)? YEAH THIS IS IT. 

After I recovered from this tragedy, I enjoyed the rest of the museum, despite the enormous crowds. The other galleries I liked were "Compassion and Wisdom: Religious Sculptural Arts" because it had lots of Guanyin and Bodhisattva sculptures which I also learned a lot about, and "Rare Books and Documents" because...books. <3

One of my favorite pieces was this one:

The most expensive bok choy you will ever see

This is a piece of jade that was carved into a piece of bok choy. It is so famous because the original piece of jade was very unfit in terms of carving jewelry or whatever else people make out of jade and had all these imperfections and stuff. But then the artist looked at it and was able to hide all the imperfections in the folds and make the weird coloring of the jade make sense, by carving this veggie. So it's really famous cause it's all transforming something ugly into a beautiful work of art. I think I just like it because I really like bok choy and I'm glad it's getting the fame it deserves.

Blogger won't let me rotate these pictures >:( But anyways, I got these posters at the gift shop, but then when taking them out later, I ripped them. Bwaaaaah :(

Afterwards, we went to see the adjacent gardens, which were really pretty. 

 

Checking out the giant goose

The highlight though, was the GIANT KOI POND! There were so many Koi! And they were gigantic. Some were probably like 30 pounds. They were also such fatties. Because people feed them all the time near the bridge, every time someone walked near, even if they didn't have food, they would swarm together and you could see them gulping towards you with their huge greedy fishy mouths.

Look at how big they are in comparison to the people! But then of course I wanted to feed them XD And the fish food was only 10元 :P I was so amused! They literally would splash all on top of each other to get to the food. They were so aggressive. And then they followed me as I walked down the bridge.

Fish whisperer!!

The pond itself was really cool too, even minus the fishies.

 

Afterwards, we met up with Eric, Logan, and some of Eric's Taiwanese friends, and went to the Nanya night market off the Banqiao station. The night market was really nice, I think because it was mostly locals. And the girls knew all of the good food places to go to!

They even got us to try stinky tofu, ahhhh. It really isn't that stinky once it's cooked! And it's actually kinda good... D:

Had a lot of other food, including fresh watermelon juice, beef stew, and this mango shaved ice.

I also got some really yummy dumplings, but because I messed up while ordering, I got super spicy sauce on them, and couldn't eat them. Entirely my fault, but still sad :(((((

Also got a new phone case, and Daniel haggled the price down for me, wahaha! I'm surprised anyone still sells cases for the 3GS :P

And...it's pink.

So I 非常 enjoyed my day of limited physical activity. And it turns out Connor's bike trip was over 6 hours, so I am not even slightly upset that I did not go, because I would have actually not survived. But I also only saw Charlotte and Connor for like 10 seconds the entire day. Womp.

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.