Travels

I haven't blogged in the last little while because everything is going pretty well. Teaching is so much easier this semester, and it's nice to have a friend who is a part of the community to show me around and teach me Chinese (even though I'm a bad student).

Joanne has taken Erin and me to unique places around Taiwan, like the the Toilet restaurant, which had delicious food. I thought it was funny to order the curry, just to see what it would look like in the toilet bowl...as if I didn't know. ^_^

The Science Museum in Taichung, which had an entire building (with three floors!) for people to try out different science contraptions to test theories. This is us in the optical illusion room ^_^ Finally! Once I'm tall!!!

And a few weeks ago, Joanne, Erin and I went to Kenting, the beach, and Alishan, the mountain area here in Central Taiwan.
It was absolutely gorgeous, and fun. I think I'm going to post mostly photos here because just words wouldn't be adequate.

Alishan

The trainride to Alishan was more scenic than necessary. But it was beautiful, fields of yellow flowers and the old countryside, going up the green mountain from tropical to temperate plants. The train ride was 4 hours, the bus ride back was 2.

Alishan National Park, in the clouds.Some of the trees in Alishan were breathtaking, looking almost fake.So, besides the hiking, the main reason why people travel to Alishan is to see the sunrise. There had only been one morning since Chinese New Years where it was too cloudy to see the spectacular vision...guess what day that was... ^_^ Yup. But it was a beautiful view regardless.

Kenting
One of the beautiful sunsets in Kenting.
We stayed at the Ohana Inn, run by a guy from Oahu...however, we never met him, just his wife. They also gave surfing lessons. We weren't in Kenting long enough to do everything we wanted, but I plan on going back. We were the only guests at the hostel, so even though it was built for 10 people, were were the only three there for both nights.
The beach was just amazing. It wasn't the hottest time of the year to go, but it still was warm, even in early February, the temperature at about 22/23 degrees C.
At one time, Kenting was underwater, the rocks were once coral or lava.I really like to climb things, so poor Joanne and Erin had to humor me while I tried to climb everything I could. We spent a good portion of the day in Kenting National Park, hiking around.

We went to two caves, they were a little small-ish, but were a lot of fun. We scared ourselves by trying to not think about zombies while going through dark crevices...A giant maple tree, thought to be over 400 years old, gutted by a infection of fungus. However, the tree is still alive and fruitful.I thought this was just a cool picture. I swear that one tree is trying to strangle out the other one...I took so many photos, everything in Alishan and Kenting was beautiful, it's hard to pick which ones are the best.

Right now, Feng Yuan is going through an unusual heat spell. It is really nice though, and it's hard to teach in class when all you want to do is play outside. ^_^