yilan

Week 6

Party people! This week was much better than Week 5. Week 6 overall is still pretty boring, but my weekly post is more for me to keep track of my progress and my mother who wants to know every detail of what I’m doing at all times. I also had the Two Day Trip over the weekend which was a blast! Made lots of friends and memories but you’ll see all that if you just read. WOop woOP

Sunday- I felt slightly better after posting my How am I doing (Week 5 post) but not as good as I thought I would. Not as many people reached out as I expected, and I hurt some people in the process. In many ways it was a cry for attention more than for help, but I wasn’t quite sure how else to do it. I’d been reaching out and felt like I wasn’t being received. So I used this platform. It is something that is accessible to all, but takes time and effort to go on the site and read. I thought that only the people that care would read it, and they’d see how I was really feeling. The people that don’t care, would just go about their day. This is somewhat what happened. Sunday night, Maddie came to my room and we talked everything out. She told me that she (and apparently other people?) read the blog too. I’m not really sure why I was surprised, because I sent the link to everyone a few weeks back. I guess I just wondered why you would want to read the daily life of someone you don’t like. idk idk. Anyways Maddie told me nothing she did was malicious, and she wishes I’d came to her privately so that we could’ve talked it out. Our bridge hasn’t been burned and she wants to help me in my quest for friends! I apologized for hurting her feelings, as that wasn’t my intention, I’m just speaking my truth. Sometimes my truth involves being scared to have a face to face conversation about ~feelings~ as I am a person that doesn’t like ~feelings~. I was also made aware that I can come off as aggressive (I think a better word is blunt) which might be part of what is making my friend quest so difficult, but that’s really just the basis of my whole personality and not really anything I plan or even want to change. I think that one is kind of take it or leave it. Oh! I was also told that apparently part of my exclusion is because I am late everywhere which makes people think I don’t care. While that’s fair because I AM late everywhere, I run on CPT so even when I try my hardest to be on time, I am late. I could literally leave an hour earlier than I need to and still somehow be late because the world is against me. I’d like to make it clear to everyone that I do care about the program and CIEE, it’s just that Black culture in America is polychronic and it just be like that. I thought asian cultures were polychronic too but apparently not. Anyways, this talk was the highlight of my Sunday. I got some feedback and communicated in a positive manner. Woop! Shoutout to Maddie because she came to me in a calm manner to tell me how she felt and wanted to know how she could help me. (Also please recall Maddie’s part in the uber situation) That’s some good communication. GOALS

Monday- No class on Mondays, but I teach an English language corner at the NCCU affiliated high school. Now I left, on time, fairly early even, but the bus I was supposed to take never came. I didn’t want to be late, so I looked up the high school again on google maps. It said that it was only a 15 min walk which is fairly strange considering the bus ride is usually like 7 mins, but I just went with it. Mind you it’s super gross outside. It’s lightly raining but also like 68 degrees and I had my heavy jacket on so I was sweaTING. After a smooth 600 m I arrived at what google said was my destination. However it wasn’t what I was looking for. It’s actually the affiliated elementary school instead of the affiliated high school. I take a lap around the block just to double check and make sure I was in the wrong place. I was. So I google the high school’s name in Chinese and found it on google maps. Guess what? It was an additional 23 min walk. It was also all uphill. Eventually I got there, but not before seeing one of my students walk by me and we kind of both awkwardly put our heads down and kept walking. Right before walking into the school, I saw another one of my students. There only would’ve been 15 mins left in the class anyways so I assumed the just let the students go home. I get into the school and this was, in fact, the case. They still let me sign my attendance sheet (so I could get my transportation reimbursement even though I walked the whole friggin’way. I waited the 15 minutes because Maddie and I were going to go to 公館 （gongguan) to grab dinner and do some work. Thus bus ride is about 30-40 mins depending on traffic. We walked around for a really long time because we couldn’t decide where we wanted to go so I just pointed to a little restaurant on the street and that’s where we went. The food was good, it was just fish, rice, and an array of veggies as many Taiwanese meals are. We looked for a cafe for a while but lots of them were pricey (compared to the rest of Taiwanese things but in general still fairly cheap) so we settled on Starbucks. They didn’t have chai and nothing else was worth paying a bunch of money for so I just got some water. It took me forever to figure out how to connect to the wifi because it’s different here, but eventually I figured it out and didn’t even get that much actual work done in the 1.5 hours that we were there. It’s fine. I went home and watched GOT until an ungodly hour. (I’m trying to rewatch the entire series before the new season premiere)

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday- I really ain’t do nothing but go to class eat food, and watch Games of Thrones. At this point I’m fairly addicted to GOT and I’m going to sleepat 4-5 am and waking up at like 1-2 pm. Except for Thursday where I really struggled to wake up at 9 am. I also went to the gym on a Tuesday and Thursday if that is of any interest whatsoever.

Friday- I went on a mini hike! I decided that I need to get out of my dark room and see more of Taiwan. I still woke up pretty late (Around 12) but I didn’t have to be anywhere until 5:35 so I decided to hike up one of the mountains near campus. There are several, including the one that I live on. I went up to Zhinan temple. It’s about 30 mins. away from my dorm and a 20 min walk away from the where the actual trail begins. It wasn’t really difficult as far as hiking goes because it’s paved the entire way and there’s even some benches on the flatter parts of the trail. The most difficult part is that most of the climb is purely stairs. It’s a lot of stairs for 20 mins straight and can be a little difficult for those who haven’t been to the gym in awhile… or ever. When I got to the top, an older chinese couple started talking to me, and I was answering. There were surprised at how well I spoke, and honestly I was surprised myself. I was having a whole conversation with native speakers without any especially long pauses to try and translate in my head. It was coming natural. When the couple went on their way I kind of just sat on the stairs of the temple and took in the view. It was cloudy, but I could still see a great skyline and most if not all of Muzha. (木柵）(The suburb that my school is in.) I was really proud of myself for the conversation I’d just had. While it was simple, it was still the first time I’d ever experienced speaking fluently, so it was something of which I could be proud. After reflecting on my conversation I still sat on the stairs of the temple and began to go through my social media. I was tired from the hike and didn’t have anywhere else to pass the time, so temple stairs were just fine for the time being. I thought about getting some tea because the temple offers it for free. However, they only use cups that were brought in as donations and I also just theard that the tea was gross so I took a pass on that one.

After a little while I decided to make the trek back down the mountain. I just went to my room, cleaned up a little bit and the took a shower. Since I was already bored and was making a point of being on time (since my chronic lateness is so matic here) I left 20 minutes early. I get to the meet up spot early so I wait until 5:35 to text anybody. I texted the ambassador that invited and he told me that he had class but everyone else would be there soon. Finally 10 mins. later I see one of the ambassadors that was also going to dinner. We talk while everyone else trickles in. FINALLY, at 5:55 the last person gets there and we go to dinner. I’d realized that I’d been duped. The ambassador that invited me to come 10 minutes early probably did so so that I’d end up getting there on time. Now don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t really be mad because I did deserve it. However it was irritating that I sat there for 30 mins. doing nothing. I also had nothing else to do which is another reason I wasn’t even mad. We went to dinner about 2 blocks away and I had some grilled fish! It was a nice change up because there’s so much red meat in Taiwan. Whenever I happen to find anywhere with fish, it’s usually fried and even though I haven’t even been here that long I am starting to hear my liver groan. We ate, we talked, we left to go to Mahjong. We were running a little late so some people started to run but I was not that pressed so I just picked up to a quick walk. We got to our Mahjong room and everyone was already in there and some people had already started to play!

Now for my Americans reading this, the mahjong that we usually think of is the matching game that we can play online or on our phones. This is not the same thing. This is traditional Chinese Mahjong （麻將） that I’m talking about. It looks like this:

Image result for traditional mahjong

It’s not difficult to play and is a lot of fun. I think I’m gonna ask my mom for a set. They’re a little pricey but they last forever and the whole family can play. While the whole event was fun and were trying to have a competition, there was a problem. We didn’t really have a consistent winner at our table that we could send to the “Mahjong Championship.” Not really because people were tied in their number of wins or there was suspicion of cheating, BUT RATHER, it was the chair. The chair kept winning. We probably play somewhere between 7-9 games of Mahjong. For every, single one of these games, whoever was sitting in this chair won. There were 3-4 people that sat in the chair. We shuffled. We moved the tile around. I even switched other variables including the tile pushers, but no! The chair was either magical or cheating somehow I literally have no clue, but it was creepy. Anyways, the chair was the winner at our table, I got to share the prize (a desert soup) with another CIEE student. I didn’t really like the soup anyways so I ate a little but just to try it but not much after that. I had a great time at Mahjong but I was mad that I never won because I happened to be at the table with the magical chair. Yes, I could’ve moved but I wanted to be there when the chair finally lost. But the chair never lost. I did. I took several L’s that night. After Mahjong I just went back to my dorm, and guess what I did? Yes I watched GOT to yet another ungodly hour even though I had to be somewhere at 7:30 am.

Saturday- As a result of staying up until the ungodly hour I had a hard time getting up in the morning. I think I got like 3 or 4 hrs of sleep. As a result I was like 15 mins late getting to the bus for the International Youth trip. However, they called me while I was walking there and I told them I was on my way so they waited for me. They rock. Anyways I get on the bus with my super bulky bag, sit in the only free seat next to who I’d soon learn to be a Japanese exchange student then we were on our way to Yilan! The bus ride is 1-2 hrs. I have transportation induced narcolepsy and was also just exhausted so I slept almost the whole way. The primary reason I didn’t sleep the “entire” way is because we were having bus karaoke. One of these songs included the native singing of “Finlandia.” Finlandia is a very famous, very traditional and very long song that is recognized as the unofficial Finnish national anthem. While I was amuse because they guy that was singing it was very invested, I was also very tired and would have loved to sleep in peace. Our first stop was the 林美石磐 trail (mu mei shi pan) It was nice. Lots of green which is the usual in Taiwan. There were some streams and a nice waterfall. Overall it was a nice little trail. It was fairly short, but nice nonetheless.

After the trail we went to Yilan’s very own National Center for Traditional Arts. As implied by the title it’s basically a huge DIY museum for Taiwanese traditional arts. There’s a bunch of stuff to see, do, and buy here, but our International Youth group had prepared for us to do the Indigo Blue Dye activity. This is basically dyeing a cloth, but traditionally from the dye created by indigo leaves. WARNING: This dye smells like fish. Not terrible for me but I loooove fish and seafood and even the smell, but some people were not happy to say the least. I made a cloth, which I will use as a bandana/extremely small tapestry. The process is very similar to ti-dying. First, you get your cloth and choose the design you want. I chose a star design with a few little bullseyes on the outside for a little bit of extra flavour. For the star design, there’s a special way of folding , then you use popsicle sticks and rubber bands to place the design. You just need rubber bands for the bullseye. After you’re done designing you got to the dyeing area where you will be constructed to soak your cloth in a solution to prepare it for dyeing. Mine only sat in the for about 3 minutes. After that, you’re ready to dye. Throw on your apron and your gloves and get to the dying pots.

Once you get to the pots, you spend about five minutes submerging your cloth in the dye and massaging it paying special attention to to displace any popsicle sticks or rubber bands. After the nice massage, the cloth should be blue and green. Mostly green since this is only the first round. You are then instructed to proceed over to the sinks so you can wash out the cloth. Again, you’re massaging you cloth, but this time under water and there might be some scrubbing involved. Over at the sinks, the objective is to wash out the cloth until there’s no more green. Boom. No more green. You go back to the pots and repeat this process two more times. When all the green is finally out, one of the nice ladies working the will but your creation in the spinner to dry it out. Then you can go over to a little table with scissors so you can take off all the rubber bands and popsicle sticks to see your creation! Mine turned out pretty dang nifty in my opinion, but I ti-dye all the time so I’d be disappointed if it was looking rachet.

After Blue Dye we got a chance to walk around the center and do whatever while the other groups dyed. I went off on my own because I’m too impatient to wait for other people so I trekked around, stopped in the Chinese medicine store to see if I could ask some questions because ya know research and all that jazz, but it was pretty crowded and the nobody spoke English so I just moved on. I was walking around trying to find another DIY because that’s my jam but apparently you have to sign up for everything in advance but we didn’t do that so no DIY for me. The only thing you didn’t have to sign up in advance for was the stone work, but all you really did was polish a piece of black jade. It started at about 300 NT$ ($10 USD) for a small rock and you can make it into a necklace or something else, but I knew I wasn’t going to wear a bulky rock everyday and I didn’t want to pay to polish a small rock that I wasn’t going to wear. The cool thing about black jade though, is that it is green under a flashlight! (Again, when would i ever be under a flashlight? I wasn’t going to spend money on this, but it was cool.) There was a play being performed on the stage in the middle of the center. I didn’t really know what was going on because I went mid-way through but the amount of makeup that everyone (including men) as well as the extremely dramatic actors were funny so I enjoyed it for the short time I watched. After a little while it was time to go, so myself as well as the other people in my group that were also watching the play made our way to the front gate. I stopped for some soft serve ice cream because I saw other people around the grounds eating it. The first little stand I stopped at only had milk flavor. Now I don’t even really drink milk like that, so why in the world would would I not only eat something that is milk/cream based but the flavor is purely milk! No thanks man. Thankfully, about 3 feet away was a little shop and they had peanut flavored soft serve! I am absolutely a fan of peanut butter soft serve but I wasn’t too sure about peanut, but I took a chance. It was actually really tasty and not as creamy as peanut butter but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

We left the center, went to our hotel, spent a little while there. Then it was night market time! I had Yilan night market’s famous scallion pancake which is literally just fried dough with scallions in it but it was yummy. I also had so chicken wings, and fresh watermelon juice because I am a simple lady. By the time we got back it was Saturday night which means partay! I’ not going to go into the details because it was a relatively wild night but it was the first night that I was able to drink with friends in a long time and we were dancing in that tiny hotel room. I had a really great time and am thankful for that experience, especially since don’t know the next time it’s going to happen. After our mini-party had died down I went on a little walk outside with one of my American friends and one of my new Taiwanese friends that was apart of International Youth. We weren’t out for that long but we were just talking, laughing and I was messing with this super weird guy from tinder. It was a good time.

Fast Forward to the next morning, a day night of only 3-4 hours of sleep but I didn’t want to hold anybody up again so I got my booty up, got dressed because I’d showered the night before and went to the lobby for breakfast. It was McDonald’s 😦 I ate it though cuz ya girl was not tryna starve. It was just a chicken sandwich and I paid for it later but it did its job when it was supposed to. We had a decently long bus ride to our first destination of the day- the rice farm! The farm’s owner brought us all in, gave us this really long speech on what I think was the history but it was really early in the morning, I was tired, and he was just talking a lot so I am not going to lie and say I paid attention. Anyways after a long talk inside then a long talk outside, we got to doing! We got a feel of what it was like to carry the rice plants (technically a really farmer would’ve been carrying 3 times the weight but we are students, not farmers.) Then like 4 different people tried to fire up the rice wagon and all brutally failed, even the manly men that thought they could do it even though the previous person could not. The farmer did it and made it look easy. He asked for volunteers to hop on the rice wagon so I did! Then some of my amigos hopped on as well and we rode about 50 feet away at a slower rate than the people walking. It was fun though! We were in a little grassy area so the farmer showed us how to walk and plant the rice seeds then we made our way to ….. mud. I really don’t what I was expecting, but I utterly hate mud and only have about 2 minutes to mentally prepare for 1/3 of my legs to be completely submerged in it. Just walking over there was dangerous. I think I almost slipped like 3 times. Anyways I pulled my pant legs all the way up and got to work!

When we finished the farmer washed our legs off with a power washer which was unexpectedly painful but it did the job. We then started to put some already harvested rice in what seems to be a drainer? I’m not quite sure, but you got to spin a thingy and it was fun. After that we started to make the rice noodles that we were going to eat. We put the rice in the grinder/noodle maker , pushed the little lever and out came noodles into the boiling water! When they were ready we at them with some premade savory soup and then some cold sweet soup! There were super tasty.

After our soup, we had a catered lunch that wasn’t that great but ya girl was hungry so I ate it. We then went to a beer factory that wasn’t really interesting at all and I just sat and chilled on my phone until we left. After that we went to the beach because it stopped raining but the beach was rocky, it was still cold, and I was super tired so I sat in the little cafe that overlooked the beach, ordered a pizza to share with a friend and once again lollygagged on my phone. When it was finally time to go I was excited because again, I was tired. We finally got home around 7 and by this time y’all should know what I did when I got back. If you don’t I watched GOT. That’s is my life as of right now.

Monday- I wake up at some outrageously late hour and then just started watching GOT again. I’m in Season 4 or 5 so getting close to the end. I don’t have class on Monday, but I did have teaching which I completely forgot about. They called me and asked me if I forgot and I told the that I surely did. They just moved my kids to a different class and I felt bad because I missed last week because I was late, missed this week because I forgot and was missing the next week because I’d be on vacation. Wow, I’m the worst. Anyways, I just continued on my little GOT binge for the rest of the day.

Tuesday- I went to my Chinese class in the morning. It was good as usual. I got to speak conversationally, talk about things that I enjoyed talking about and practice the things that I have trouble with. After that I actually didn’t have my usual Lit class, so I went back to my room took a shower and a little nap. After my nap, I decided to pack! I was leaving later that night for Bali and I didn’t want to be packing last minute. It actually took a long time to pack because I had to pack up all my toiletries and stuff like that but I’ll put packing details in my Bali post. Anyways when I was done, I didn’t really have time to go down to the main street and look for/buy a selfie stick like I wanted to so I put on my travel clothes, grabbed some quick dumplings and bubble tea and headed for the bus to take me to the airport!

I’ll detail getting to the airport in my Bali post too, but while Saturday/ Sunday was technically the conclusion of Week 6 and Monday/Tuesday are Week 7, most of Week 7 is going to be the fun Bali stuff which is going to be split into 2 posts. A actual Bali guide on how I packed, got to/from the airport,what I did, where I stayed, how I got around, and all that fun travel stuff. The other post is just going to be my thoughts/opinions and some extra details of my excursions. Sorry this post took so long to come out but GOT took over my life and I’m finally caught up so the blog is definitely going to be the focus now. Can’t wait for you guys to see what I put out in the next few weeks. 🙂

Week 2

Hello Hello Hello! Week 2 is over and it’s time for me to tell you about it.

Yay! So, at the end of last week, Sunday to be specific, all of the students from the other Taipei program, Intensive Chinese Language+ Culture (ICLC), arrived. The biggest difference between these programs is that the CBPE program includes actually NCCU courses so we are enrolled at the university like any other exchange student. The ICLC students are enrolled through CIEE because they’re only taking Chinese classes and once a week Art in China class offered by a professor that used to work in CIEE.

At first, Danielle and I (my roommate and only other CBPE student) were nervous for the other students to come, but it’s been really nice. We were nervous because we had all of our ambassador’s attention to ourselves. So, when the ICLC students and the ambassadors/our new friends’ actual “buddies” (each student gets 2 ambassadors to be their buddies) they would drop us and go be friends with the new people. Luckily this wasn’t the case. There’s something like 25 ambassadors for only 9 CIEE students. We have come to realize that there is enough love for everybody.

On Sunday and Monday (24th and 25th), when they first got here, there orientation was very similar to the CBPE program orientation. Since Danielle and I had already done the orientation packet and power points, we opted into ICLC meals, but we left when they were doing other stuff. We’ve been finding some other cafes and cool spots to hang out in while we’re on lower campus waiting to do something.

NCCU classes started this week. Classes work a little different here when compared to Pitt or most American schools. For a 3-credit class, instead of having it 3 times a week for 50 mins, I have a 3-hr. class once a week. As a result of this I don’t have classes on Monday or Friday. I am truly living my best life. That’s not even the best part. Yes, it is, but there’s another good part. (2 of them actually) Firstly, the only class that I have on Tuesday is my Chinese class, and for some reason of which I do not know, Chinese classes weren’t staring until the next week. Woohoo! The other good part is that for some reason NCCU decided to have the first week of school at the exact same time as a major holiday. Thursday was Taiwanese Memorial Day and Friday was a deferred holiday. So yes reader, you guessed it. I only had class on Wednesday for my first week of school. It was my Social Media and the Digital Narrative class. The gist of the class is just to look at how social media has affected different aspects of society. It’s more work than I was hoping for, but again. This semester is about self-care, and C’s get degrees! (Only when you’re abroad and can only get transfer credit. If your GPA transfers back to your home school, you should work very hard.)

So, before this week started, I made some goals. I wanted to start going to the gym every day and speak as much Chinese as possible. Since I have so much free time this semester, I have really made a point out of trying to develop healthy habits. I floss my teeth every day. I’m drinking lots of water. (Yet, somehow, I’m still always dehydrated) I’m not over/under eating. I’m reaching out to people more often. These are things that I have struggled with doing in the past, mostly because I didn’t prioritize them and didn’t have time to focus on things that weren’t priorities. Now they are my priorities and I feel great! I went to the gym on Mon-Wed which is every day that we were on campus. I tried to speak as much Chinese as I could, but since it’s been awhile since my last class, not too many coherent sentences were coming out. I put a hold on that goal until I started Chinese classes and could beef up on my skills. Other than these fun things, I watched some Netflix & Hulu, planned my trip to BALI -more on this in the future, and just doing other boring planning stuff for things in my life. I like to plan. I’m a planner even though nothing actually ever goes to plan. I’m a good adapter too hehe.

Tuesday night, we went to 通化夜市 or the Tonghua Night Market. Taiwan has lots of night markets. They’re kind of like a bunch of small shops that sell food, bags, clothes, souvenirs, and other small things. There are also a lot of carnival games and prizes at the night markets. I feel bad for parents because I know the kids that go want to play everything. All of the food was very unique to Asian cultures. While most of everything was Taiwanese or Chinese, there was the occasional Japanese or Malaysian booth. One of the dishes I tried was 臭豆腐 or stinky tofu. As one can draw from the title, it’s tofu and it expels a pungent odor. It’s extremely popular in Taiwan so I ate it for the sake of trying. Surprise Surprise! It was nasty. We are told to say that if we don’t like something, to say we’re not used to it. （不习惯）Usually I’d love to be polite and I said I was going to look at all the differences in culture with the perspective of the Taiwanese, but y’all this stuff smells so bad and it tastes almost as bad. That’s all I’ll say on the subject but just know Brittany is not a fan of stinky tofu. Other than stinky tofu I was prodded to try some other things such as pork intestines/pork lung. While I’m sure they’re just as tasty as can be, I have to draw the line somewhere and I shouldn’t be eating pork anyways so those were a no for me.

On Wednesday, after my class, I met up with some of the ambassadors (we all had late classes) and took the bus to to Welcome Dinner. The food was pretty good, we played 3 truths and a lie, and one of the ambassadors- Ian danced for us! It was a good time. After dinner, we departed to begin our 3-day excursion. The CIEE Taipei center planned this to coincide with the holiday so everyone could go, and no classes would be missed. Here is the schedule of our trip:

The CIEE center rented a coach bus (smaller and nicer than American ones) to take us to all of our locations during the excursion. After about an hour-long bus ride, we arrived in 较细 Jiaoxi and checked into our hotels. Since there were about 30 people on the trip, we had to split into two different hotels that were about a 5-minute walk from each other. Jiaoxi is famous for the hot springs and skin eating fish. Now I’m not talking about Piranhas, I’m talking about the small little fish that were all the rage in America a few years ago. Several nail salons offered a new service where customers could pay to get a pedicure from fish that would simply eat the dead skin off of your feet. Now I haven’t heard anything about that in years, so I’m assuming the FDA was like “naw” and must’ve made it really hard to be able to have that at American salons, but they’re everywhere in Jiaoxi! It’s a lot different though because the fish tanks are as big as a carnival tent and a bunch of people all have their feet in at the same time. As most things in Taiwan, it was pretty cheap to get it done. (I can’t remember the exact price but less around $5 USD) We were only in Jiaoxi that evening so I didn’t have time to do it, but if I’m being honest, I probably wouldn’t have done it anyways. When I do things in everyday life, I try to live by “WWJD.” “What would Joy do?” If you didn’t already know, Joy is my mother and if I wouldn’t want to tell her about something I did while I was here, especially if it could affect my health, I probably shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. I’m pretty sure my mommy would deem an unregulated fish tank full of dead skin a no no, so I just passed on that.

The other thing that Jiaoxis is famous for is their hot springs. Here I was thinking that these hot springs were going to be like the springs that run off of the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica, but no. They’re just ginormous bathtubs in whatever hotel you decide to stay in. While I probably should’ve taken one of the huge baths- as I was extremely sore from the gym and having the experience itself wouldn’t hurt, I was too tired and went to sleep before I could, and we left too early in the morning (Around 9) for me to take a relaxing bath. Why was I so tired you ask? Well friends, as soon as everyone had settled in their hotel rooms, we decided to go out on the town and walk around Jiaoxi. After enough walking, we went to 7-11 and got some beer and a small (really small) bottle of vodka to share! We went back to the nicer hotel and somehow squeeze 30 people in the decently sized room. They had a loft! We played a bunch of simple drinking games and mafia (one of my faves.) I actually got too tired to actually drink more than one beer, and my roommate and I left around 12:30. Some people were apparently up until 3 am but I would’ve been dead so again, a no for me.

The next morning, we had a weird breakfast in a shack in the parking lot next to our hotel, then headed out for the Yilan Cake Factory. Yilan is very famous for their Yilan Ox tongue cookies. They’re just super thin very long cookies that can be made of just cheese and dough (what we made) or other ingredients that the factory makes and sells, in their cookies.

Making my cookies. Any anger that I may have had, I got out by smashing this dough.

After getting our cookies, we headed left out for lunch. I think we had a little extra time on our hands so made a stop and spent some time visiting the 妈祖 temple in 南天. (Mazu and Nantian) There was a boat yard, so we walked around that a bit then went to take a look at the temple. I love temples because I believe that Chinese Religion is very interesting (I’m taking a class about it this semester) and the art in the temples is simply breathtaking. Every single thing in these temples was handmade or hand carved and any picture from any camera could not do the amount of detail justice. Many temples are very similar, but I never get tired of the art.

After we left 南天 we made our way to Taroko Gorge. A gorge is basically a canyon with a river running through it. It was so beautiful. Mostly unbothered nature at its finest. We were more toward the bottom so the cliffs we SO tall. It makes definitely humbled me when it comes to how small I am in comparison to the rest of the world. (BUT BEST BELEIVE IMMA MAKE MY MARK/ A DIFFERENCE SOME WAY SOME HOW) Somewhat scary, but absolutely an experience I enjoyed and would do again.

We left the gorge and made our way to 花莲. (Hualian) Once again we were in the hotel for a very short amount of time, but we arrived much earlier. We were on our own for dinner this night, but there was a night market and 很有名的小笼包 (very famous steamed buns) a few blocks away. It was raining cats and dogs so Ta’ Morra (an ICLC student with CIEE) and I got very tired and lowkey just wanted to get something quick and not outside. She ended up getting noodles, but I didn’t want those, so I got those super tasty steamed buns and some dumplings to go with it. The rain lightened up and the ambassadors that we were with wanted to go back to the night market so that’s what we did. We walked around and ate, and window shopped like any person at a night market would. As we were about to leave, I wanted to stop at a mini seafood place with raw and fresh oysters and clams. (my absolute FAVORITE) At first, I was just waiting in line just to ask the cashier guy how much everything was and while we were waiting there were 2 guys on the grill. Both of them were tatted up and one was kind of cute ngl. We tried to ask them how much everything was (in Chinese) but then they just pointed to the guy we were already waiting to talk to. This really isn’t relevant to the story or the weekend at all but the not cute guy on the grill was holding a blowtorch to one of the giant oysters. He was working on the oyster the entire like 7 mins that we were standing there so props to those guys for putting in the work but also, I want to taste blowtorched oyster. I feel like it’s a delicacy. Back to the story- a few minutes after we asked the guys, the cute one passes me an oyster bigger than my head with salsa on it. At first, I was panicking because 1. I didn’t know if it was free and didn’t want to have to pay for it when I didn’t order it 2. I didn’t know how spicy the salsa was, so I really could’ve died. From the body language that I was getting from the guy and the ambassadors I just assumed it was free, so I SLURPED the heck out of that oysters. It had to take it in two slurps because it was so big. The salsa was slightly spicy but definitely tolerable. Right after I finished the oyster, the cashier guy told me the prices (I don’t remember how much the clams were, but the giant oysters were 200 NT$ each which is fair. I was full from my buns, dumplings, and other night market food the ambassadors bought that I tried, so I took a pass on staying out for longer just to spend a rack and be glutinous. However, that oyster was shapoppin’ and mark my words. I WILL be back.

During this whole day I was also in a lot of pain because my muscles hate me and even if I stretch before and after a hard workout, they fill up with lactic acid and are hard as rocks (in a bad way.) So, when I got back, I decided to take a bath before I took a shower to get these babies to soak. I had another long day ahead of me the next day and I didn’t want it to be as bad. After my bath and shower (you can’t get clean if you just sit in dirt), I hit the hay.

The next day I actually don’t remember at all what we had for breakfast, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say food. We started the day’s adventures with the Sugar refinery. The most interesting thing about it was the general scene and the ice cream. We only spent about an hour there. Then we went to the Wetlands. It was basically a bunch of grass and water. It was land that was wet. Not too much going on but it’s so refreshing to see all the green and breathe such fresh air. Those mosquitoes were ruthless. I work jeans and they bit me through my pants. Be careful out here in these skreets. After the wetlands we had lunch at a very mediocre restaurant then made our way to the beach.

The beach was a rock beach, but you weren’t allowed to take rocks from the beach, or you could get fined. Me being me, I hear the word “fined” and run the other direction, so I didn’t take any rocks home, but I did buy a coconut. They had guys near the parking lot with carts full of coconuts. I love real coconut water and cannot drink and of that stuff in the boxes of America, so I was so happy when I bought mine. I named him Larry and we really enjoyed our time together while we still had it. We took lots of pictures at the beach then finally started our 2.5 hr. journey back to NCCU.

For some reason my leg muscles were fine on this day but I’m pretty sure I slept on my back and shoulder wrong the night before and they were still sore so again, I was in a lot of pain. I finally gave in a took some strong Advil from a friend so that I could make it to NCCU and buy some tiger balm before my body gave up on me. We had a meal box on the bus on were just chilling when we got back. On Saturday, I was so tired that I went and got lunch around 12 then went back to my room and actually stayed there for the rest of the day/night. It was my recovery day. I feel like I was slightly more productive on Sunday but not enough so that I can actually remember what I did. Anyways, this is the conclusion of Week 2. It was long and tiring but I had a great time!