Until Next Time, Taiwan

Currently, we are sitting at the Taipei International Airport, awaiting our 3PM flight to Shanghai. From there we will transfer planes and at 11:55PM tonight, we will be off to Frankfurt, Germany! Do you know what that means?

Ray and I have officially flown around the world together.

Just a fun thought I had : )

The last week in Taiwan has been so much fun and a bit unsettling too. Ray put it best when he said: "It makes me happy that I'm sad to be leaving Taiwan. It means I did something right." While we're so excited to see family (and have second Christmas!) leaving a place you called home is never easy.

As we've prepared, we have shared with each other the things we'll miss about Taiwan. Now we share them with you.

1. Our students- there couldn't be a cuter bunch of kids anywhere (except for our nieces and nephews who will only ever be trumped by our own children. We're planning on raising super model, Olympic swimmers, you know).

2. Select Food Items- Things like: fried curry dumplings, banana milk, fresh mango smoothies, rice triangles, and dongua cha are just a few of our favorites that are unique to Taiwan. With some luck, maybe we'll find fried curry dumplings in the states somewhere. We managed to find a brick of dongua cha (a fruit tea~ in English either Wax Gourd, or Wintermelon) so we're excited to try that out soon!

3. Flora and Fauna- Living in a tropical climate has been unbelievably rewarding in terms of the foliage. You can't go anywhere without being floored by the amount of greenery, the size of the greenery, and the vast varieties of it too!

4. People We've Met & Friends We've Made- Taiwan has some of the sweetest people in the world, they've been kind and helpful to us and even with a language barrier sometimes, we've made some lasting memories. Through church too we've met great people and created friendships that we look forward to tending for years to come.

5. Night Markets- Although Ray may beg to differ, they were one of the coolest things Taiwan had to offer. I never got tired of perusing the streets and checking out all the fun and quirky things for sale. 


Inevitably, we also developed a list of things we probably won't be yearning for any time soon...

1. BUGS- From cockroaches, to mosquitoes and biting midges, the bugs have been overwhelming and a rather unwelcome part of Taiwan. Of course as the weather cooled, things got better. The cockroaches especially though were a never ending battle we're happy to see the end of.

2. Humidity- In the summer you melt from it, in the winter you freeze from it. Who knew you could be shivering and shaking when it's only 62 degrees out! That's apparently what a wet cold will do to you though. We made it through alive, but humidity is something we could deal with less of in our lives. : )

3. Traffic- I don't think you ever quite fully adjust to being on a bike with 20 scooters around you, trying to get through an intersection with no stop lights or signs, and a tour bus eeking between you and oncoming traffic.

4. Smells- It scares us how accustomed to the smells of Taiwan we have become. When we first got here they were almost unbearable, now they're tolerable and sometimes even nice. Have we destroyed our noses forever?! Will we ever smell things the same?! We got some solace when we finally tried stinky tofu last week. Although we made it through the smell, it still did not taste good. Phew! We haven't lost all our senses yet!

 

"Stinky Tofu" by Ray
It tastes like eating a deep fried scab.

Ray ends now with some more reflective and mature writing.

It was a few weeks ago while walking to the store at night that I realized: I've grown accustom to this place. I've grown accustom to the old buildings, the abundant green foliage covering the mountains and popping out wherever it it can, the bright neon signs that line storefronts on the roadsides. I've grown accustom to the sound of hundreds of scooters bustling through the streets, the sound of people speaking in a kind of melodic warble all around us and not understanding what they're saying, the sound of children's laughter, and yelling and giggling. I've grown accustom to the smiles of helpful strangers and the "Hellow!"s of passersby; accustom to the feeling of being a foreigner at home in a foreign land, surrounding by everything I don't understand but feeling comfortable nonetheless. And this realization made me wonder; have I grown to love Taiwan? Do I love this place with all of its smells and foods and quarks and confusion? I know I'll miss it and that I'll look back at my time here fondly and often. Yes, Taiwan has truly "touched my heart."

Taipei- 台北

Last weekend we did a whirlwind 48 hour trip to Taipei. It may possibly be our favorite weekend that we have had here in Taiwan!

We went with some friends from Fengyuan and they had booked our train tickets leaving from Taichung at 7AM, which meant we had to be on a train from Changhua at about 6:30AM- it was quite an early morning, but a peaceful bike ride to the train station that early. Hooray for no traffic!

The train ride took about 3.5 hours and when we got to Taipei, we took our first MRT (Taipei Metro) ride to our hostel to drop off our bags and quickly freshen up- for we were off to the Zoo! Ray and I were worried that the zoo would be a waste of time. After all, we don't have kids oggling over the animals and begging us to go. The entrance fee was only $60NT (~$2USD) though, so we figured, what the heck! Turns out, there's something about zoo's that makes everyone turn into a little kid and have the time of their life. Who can say no to monkeys chasing each other through the trees and swinging from branches like you've only seen in Tarzan?

Also, who can say no to your first panda encounter?

I know he's small, but we were being pushed through this huge line of other people trying to take the same photo!

 Right next to the zoo, is the boarding station for the Maokong Gondola. The gondola ride takes you up the mountain surrounding Taipei and provides you with this stunning view of the city. As luck would have it, I'm still pretty much terrified of heights so the whole ride up my palms were sweating like crazy and I had to keep myself from screaming at anyone who dared to move an inch in our gondola. Call me crazy, but that one metal bar attached to a wire holding 7 Americans just doesn't give me oodles of confidence.

Fortunately my group didn't make me go in one of the glass bottom gondolas- I would have died. I also definitely would have been scrapping my return ticket and finding a bus down to the bottom!

When we finished the gondola ride, we boarded the MRT again and headed straight for Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world. It only lost its title of the tallest in 2010 I believe, to Dubai. It really was rather breathtaking walking up to it all lit up like this. The elevator ride to the top (a.k.a the 85th floor) costs $450NT, and there was a 15 minute wait to go- so Ray and I bagged that idea and went for the "been there, seen that" point of view instead. Can't say I regret it either, I had had enough heights for one day really.
 

Following 101, we made one final stop the night market. Night markets may sound like a touristy kind of thing, but they really are part of the Taiwanese way of life. There is one nearly every night and people routinely hit them up for dinner, no special occasion needed. It's like going to the fair- a big party every time! The market in Taipei did not disappoint- only in the sense that we did not budget nearly enough time to explore all of it! We probably only got through 4 streets of the countless ones available. We did however, manage to pick up our new favorite souvenir.

We've noticed in Taiwan a lot of couples wear matching shirts... so we decided we should definitely get in on that action. When in Rome, right? So at the night market we found a fabulous T-shirt shop and managed to scoop up these babies for a steal of a deal. We're cool, you can say it.
 

Ray's says: "I love my wife" and mine says "I love my husband"

End Day 1. Followed by a wonderful nights rest- those beds were the most comfortable thing I've slept on in nearly 4 months. I seriously started planning in my brain how I could get out of the hostel with the pillow.  On Sunday we made it to the Jade Market and spent nearly two hours just enjoying "window" shopping, if you will. I discovered a new found love for coral jewelry and Ray spoiled me by buying me a pair of pink coral, rose shaped earrings. I pretty much love them, and Ray. We got some other goodies too, but I shan't be ruining any surprises here... ;-)

After the Jade Market, we went to the National Palace Museum. I had directions from another blogger on how to get there, but apparently we still looked lost enough that an MRT worker attached himself to us, provided us with English MRT maps, and handed us off to our train conductor with instructions that she was to come get us at the stop we needed. He also gave us a note in Chinese to hand to the bus driver to make sure he took us to the right place. The Taiwanese are so helpful and sweet :) And after being in Changhua for so long, we were amazed at how prevalent English was!

The palace museum was fantastic. It is full of old Chinese artifacts that were brought to Taiwan from China in order to save them from destruction during the Chinese Civil War (1948). Ray loved the history involved, and I enjoyed listening to him retell me the stories as we both admired art, jewelry and tapestries all centuries old. If you're ever in Taipei, it's something you don't want to miss.

We ended the night in probably the best way any night could ever end: MEXICAN FOOD. Oh lanta, it had been 4 months plus since we'd had a burrito, and we knew there had to be a decent place in a big city like Taipei. I did a quick Google search and discovered Macho Taco, a highly recommended Mexican restaurant conveniently located downtown. We were the only ones there when we walked in, but soon the place was busting with white people, it was almost like being in the states :) I was too excited to remember to take a picture of my steak burrito with the works and horchata before, so instead I took a picture of our mess after. Oh it was good.

After our Mexican food we headed to the train station once more, indulged in some Cold Stone ice cream (I love big cities) and made it home in Changhua a little past midnight. Phew! Then it was back to teaching 9AM the next morning.

Taipei was fantastic, we hope we get a chance to go back again because we know there is lots more we'd like to see.

Professional Pea Holder

You heard me. And that is exactly what Ray is: a professional pea holder. Okay, maybe the real title is professional chopsticker, chopstick user, chopstickite? Who knows? But our roommate told us if you could hold three stacked peas in your chopsticks you were professional.

Ray promptly succeeded. I'm... still workin' on it.

We had a very busy week full of adventures where we finally began branching out of our routine. For starters, we tried a new restaurant: Mos Burgers. We were already dying for some American type food, and everyone had been raving about this place. So armed with some general area directions, we took off on our bikes after school one night and eventually found this beauty:

The burger that is. Thanks though ;)

Also this week, our new friends from church took us out to dinner and showed us around the University that is a couple blocks from our apartment complex. The next day they took us to the top of the mountain, Pakuashan, where the largest Buddha statue in Taiwan sits. It was nice and breezy up there, which felt fantastic, and also meant we had views all the way to Taichung. This according to my students is a rare day indeed.

"Praaaaaissse to Buddha!" (insert musical notes here) - Name that movie! And no, it is not Mulan.

The statue was way cool, and the temple behind it was gorgeous. But perhaps the most exciting part was discovering the gigantic koi pond behind the temple full of enormous koi fish. We spent a good 15-20 minutes just ogling at the size of these guys and the beauty of the pond.

We took this from the second floor of the temple looking down. My dad built a koi pond in every house I ever lived in growing up. They were always beautiful, but it wasn't until this moment that I realized what a koi pond could really become.

Seriously, look at the size of these things! We even saw one jump clean out of the water- no less than two feet in the air, I swear.

I lied, perhaps the most exciting part was Ray's new found toy in the temple:

Apparently the higher you lift this weapon, the more blessings you will receive. Neither of us could lift it off the ground even a quarter of an inch... "That's it! Dishonor! Dishonor on your whole family!" Okay, yes, this time it is Mulan.

After a rest from walking around the grounds for a few hours, our friends then took us to Changhua's Night Market. Again, a menagerie of crowded stores and stalls, overflowing with foods, drinks and clothes. This time though there was also an assault on our noses by none other than... Stinky Tofu. We had heard so much about it, but nothing could have prepared us for the at first subtle, then slowly thickening grotesque smell. I'll be completely honest with you, we can't compare the smell to anything else other than sewage. Ray thought some child had messed his pants when we caught our first whiff. Maybe after a few months we'll be brave enough to try it. For now though, our eyes still water when we just think of the smell. That goal is going to take some mental stamina and gag reflex training. Instead, we settled for some delicious, fresh coconut milk, Taiwanese BBQ chicken (amazing!) and the best fried squid we have ever tasted.