Taipei Pt. 2

Hoo it's been a while! Quite a bit has happened since my last post, but this one will be dedicated to finishing up the second half of my trip to Taipei and in the coming days, I will update and talk more about what has been going on since then.

While I was in Taipei 101, I met a Taiwanese girl who was showing a guy from mainland China around. They were curious about where I was from and I found out they were going on the same train line that I was going to take to get to the National Palace Museum. They were happy to show me how the MRT works, because I had no idea how at that point and was more than a little nervous about taking it.

I told them about my plan to go to the Palace Museum on Saturday because admission is free from 5 - 8:00 PM. The girl had to head back to her apartment in Taipei, but the guy was very interested in going with me because he had no idea about the museum deal. He was nice enough to show me how to use the buses in town as well.

I would post pics of the Palace Museum, but sadly, I don't seem to have any but one. ._. It could be because it was raining at the time and I didn't want to get my camera wet while trying to take pictures of the outside. They didn't allow any cameras inside, so that's why there are no pics of the art. Me and Leo (the one from Taipei 101) met a couple more people who were going into the museum at the same time we were, so that was nice. They even got me an audio tour in English! There are lots of gorgeous things in the museum and I would definitely recommend going if anyone is in the Taipei area. But in case you aren't exactly in a situation where you can hop on a plane and trek to this side of the world, I'm sure you can look up some of the exhibits.

Here's a view of the gates outside of the museum, with the museum waaayyy in the back.

They had lots of historical documents, treaties and stuff with Russia and America and Europe. I was rather proud of the fact that I recognized some of the documents from a class that I took at SIUE! But some of the art was stuff I'd never even imagined! They had a boat carved into a tiny peach core! Or some kind of fruit core. They had a magnifying glass they could look through to see the details. There were also rocks carved to look like pork and cabbage. Not to mention all the amazing pottery.

On Sunday I went to find the Taipei Temple and church building because they have an English speaking ward and I wanted to see general conference. It took me a while to actually find the building and it was a pain to find it in the rain, but I got there just in time for lunch, so all was good. :) Unfortunately, at that point, I had forgotten my camera at the first hostel I stayed at, so I had to go back and get it and never had a chance to go back and get a pic of the temple. I'm sure you could look it up on the internet and find much better pictures than anything I could take, though.

Also over the weekend, I went to Fisherman's Wharf on a suggestion from one of my tutoring students. It's basically a harbor resort where they have mini-cruises and a huge strip mall full of food. I think they were having a wedding at the time, because they were cleaning up after a dance and a party room where the happy couple were still taking pictures. The big reason I went to the wharf was so I could see the sky view tower, though. It was called Lover's Tower. (Awww.) Here are a couple of pictures of the Tower's sign and the bottom of the platform as it is rising with passengers. The bottom was covered with lights and pictures. At least they supply you with entertainment while you wait.

Monday was a national holiday, so I went to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial so I could see the parade and the show that they were having. The actual ceremony was at 2:30 and I got there at about 11:30, so I spent some time wandering and exploring the gardens. There were quite a few people already gathering on the steps of the buildings prepping to see the ceremony. I thought about sitting, but then I got bored, so I decided to go to the memorial building and see the giant statue of Chiang Kai Shek. It reminds me a lot of the Abraham Lincoln statue in Washington D.C.

The ceiling of the memorial hall.

These are pretty fancy wastebaskets.

Also inside were a couple of guards who act like the guardsmen at Buckingham Palace in England. They stand really still for an hour and then they have a Changing of the Guard ceremony. I was able to see one of the ceremonies and it was really interesting! I can't say I envy them for standing there on such a hot, humid day, though.

So of course when I got back to the square for the show, I chose the wrong side to sit on. All of exhibitions and actors were going to the other side. But from what I could see, the had martial arts demonstrations, a secret service team demonstrating some of the maneuvers they do, and a bunch of mostly naked men doing yoga. Definitely some of the fine points of Taiwan, I should say, haha.

Here's a view of the gardens around the memorial.

This was in one of the streets by the memorial park. They were preparing for the parade and for people with parachutes to come down. This year was the 100th year anniversary of Taiwan, so they went all out with their parade and aerial shows. They had helicopters and military jets flying over the city. A couple even let out colored smoke. I ran into a couple of guys from England with a Taiwanese guide on the street. They were trying to figure out what time the parades were, so I tailed them for a bit before I wound up at the memorial park.

The security guards all looked so serious.

So that's about all I did on Monday. The rest of my day was filled with more wandering around the city mall and then hunkering down in the train station to finish my student evaluations for the next day. The inside of the trains here are really comfortable and beautiful if you get the express lines. Here's a view from the seat I was in on the way back to Hualien.

Breaks and Turkeys

I know it's been a couple weeks since my last post. Sometimes I can't help it, but I try to make notes so that I can remember the stuff I want to share. At the beginning of last week, we had a gigantic storm, so large that the government actually ordered all schools to cancel for the day. One of the Chinese teachers came upstairs and told us the news. After I heard it, I went right back to sleep. I'm not one to waste such an opportunity. Everyone keeps saying it was a typhoon, but there wasn't enough wind for a typhoon. I went down by the ocean at one point after the worst of the storm had died down, and this is what I found!

This fence was put up because of the construction in the park by the shore. I can't decide if it was the wind or the high waves that did this.

Over the weekend, Steph showed me where the Carrefore store was. It's just a giant grocery store, but while I was there, I saw this aquarium with fish and the glass shelf full of bees.

What really disturbs me about this aquarium is the amount of dead fish that they've left in the tank. How on earth do they expect people to want to buy those fish for food with dead fish in the same water? It's unhealthy! The people who had the shelf of bees were selling lots of honey jars. They convinced me to buy a jar of honey juice mix. I tried a little bit and really liked it, so I said I would buy some after they said they would give me a "special price." Special price my foot. At the end of the day, I walked away with 1000 kwai honey. That's about $35 US! Maybe it doesn't seem to bad for such a big jar, but in a country where most bowls of soup and noodles are 30 kwai, 1000 kwai is nothing to sneeze at!

At least the honey juice is pretty good. That stuff and the chocolate bread I get from the bakeries around here will probably be what gets me through the next couple of months.

This month in the preschool has been holiday month because the holiday season is nearly upon us. So we talk about all the other holidays we can think of. In my classes, we discussed St. Patrick's Day, Thanksgiving, and a bunch of holidays from other countries, like the Japanese Doll Festival and Oktoberfest. These are a couple of pictures of the turkeys we made for our Thanksgiving lessons. We've already done hand turkeys, so I figured we could do something else. The first picture was taken while the turkeys were still works in progress. Not bad considering the artists were 3 years old!

And here's a pic of the artists with their creation. There are actually 20 more students with the other turkey, but it pretty much looks the same as this one.

I've found a couple restaurants with American food. One is called the Country Mother's, which is pretty good, but definitely overpriced. A small pizza was actually one of their less expensice meals. The other restaurant is called Frankie's Dogs and it's actually owned by the father of one of my kids at the preschool. I was riding around trying to find the Country Mother's restaurant when I found Frankie's Dogs by accident. It was raining so I decided to stop and get dinner. The restaurant was decorated for a local sports team celebration, but they had time to feed me. There was a group of curious people at a nearby table who started asking me questions about why I was in Hualien and eventually they invited me to play a card game with them. In was very fun even if I barely understood what they were saying.

So last weekend was also the time for the Taiwanese national holiday. We got Monday off (making this the second 4-day week. I love those!). I went up to Taipei by myself, mostly because I wanted to have a break in the big city and I wanted to do whatever I wanted at my own pace. There's something so liberating about doing something by yourself. But I met a few people while I was there that could show me the ropes of the subway system and tell me the best places to go. If I told you everything about my trip to Taipei in this post, it would take forever. So I'm going to be chopping it up in 2 parts.

I left early Saturday morning, tying my luggage to the back of my bike like Steph did with the big suitcase of the old teachers' stuff a couple months ago. I was able to get on my train and slept on the train, but when I got to Taipei, I realized that I didn't really have a plan. I thought I could look for a brochure with a map of the area, but that was harder to find than I thought, so I fnally ducked into a Starbucks and got on the internet so I could at least find the address for my hostel.

The hostel was really nice and the owner could speak English pretty well, so she was able to recommend a couple places to me. She was the one who told me that the National Palace Museum has free admission on Saturdays from 5 PM - 8PM. I wanted to go to Taipei 101 (which is apparently a shopping mall, but I didn't know it. I always thought it was a big office building like every other skyscraper in America) and luckily the hostel was only a few blocks away.

There it is! In sight!

About ten minutes later and it's getting closer (I think)!

I can't help but think of a trip to Chicago that my family and I took years and years ago. My dad, brother, and I wanted to see the Sear's Tower and we could see it in the distance. We thought we could walk to it, it seemed so close. But after an hour of walking, it never seemed to get any closer. Luckily, I had a lot of beautiful streets to look at during my trek to Taipei 101.

And finally, the entrance to the mall.

I didn't have nearly as much time as I wanted to explore the mall. What I really wanted to do was go to the top of the building, where they had even more stores. It took a little money to go up and the wait for the elevator ride was 20 minutes, but it was totally worth it! That elevator only took about 30 seconds to go up 80 floors! That's crazy!

Here are a couple views from the top of the tower:

The tour guides gave me an English audio tour to listen to while I walked around the top, which was mostly describing the buildings. The building above with the yellow roof is the Sun Yat-sen memorial and the lower picture is of the big fancy-shmancy shopping center of Taipei. Don't let me wander around there by myself too long or I would spend every cent I had.

This is the mascot for Taipei 101 called a Damper Baby. Am I the only one who thinks of Pampers diapers when I hear that?

A model of the high-speed elevator.

And here we see the damper for the building. This is the first time I've heard of it. It's apparently the thing that keeps the building from wobbling every time there's wind. If it weren't for this, I can't imagine what being in the tower would be like during a typhoon! This is the only damper in the world that normal tourists can see.

The top floors also had a coral jewelry store with some pretty impressive displays.

Need I remind you that all of this, except for the clothes, is made of coral?

On that day, the outside observation deck was open. It was windy, but not too cold and I got some impressive pics.

And here we have a typical Chinese take-out box.

Well, that's all there will be for tonight. I'll talk about the rest of my trip in the next post. And here's a pic of me next to some cool looking bronze statues in a park.