School is starting.

These past couple of days I have spent them with my host family and seeing my friend Ivy. School is starting on Monday and I feel sad that I have to leave my host family and leave Taipei. Sadly Zhong li, where my college is, seems so boring compared to Taipei.
Here are some pictures of stores I have gone to riding the MRT train. I think it is funny all these things you would buy in America. You would not believe how many stores carry things China makes to export to America but get stuck in Taiwan. I had a good time look at all these things.

All the things say on the bottom "make in China" but all the instructions are in English because they were meant to be sent to America.

More glass things.

 They wanted like 4,000 American dollars for these two Terracotta Soldiers. I don't know if they were real but they felt real when I touched them.

Why are they trying to sell this huge computer monitor??

 Old computer things. It was laughable that they still had this stuff. Like a micro card reader for Windows 95. And memory expansions that were only like 500 kbs of memory.

 I though this dinosaur carrying an egg looked pretty awesome.

So many things to look at @.@

 Nut crackers with American flags

 I am renting this apartment for around $200 dollars a month.

 I think it is pretty nice and so cheap by American standards. It is about an 8 minute walk to get to school so it is not too bad. I just have to be careful not to get hit by a car/scooter on the way to school.

I need to buy some sheets and pillows for my bed. I am happy with my new home. I am a bit nervous to start living on my own. But I know I can do it.

Hanging out with my friend, Ivy : D

 Today I went to hang out with a friend I made online while I was in America. I had to take the MRT train to the "technology building station". I was so nervous I have never taken a train by myself before. But I was going to get over my fears and get on the train. It was a 10 minute car ride to DongHu station. There my host father showed me how to buy a ticket and read the MRT line map. I was going to take the "brown line" heading toward Taipei zoo for 14 stops. It was going to be a 35 minute train ride. So I bought the ticket and got a small coin that said "one ride coin" and past through the gate upstairs to the platform.
When I got on the train I was surprised by how little people there were on board. I then started to look around and notice that this train car is filled with women. I though,"oh no!!! I got on the train car that is only for women". I knew in Japan they had train cars for women. But in the next stop men got on the train car also so I relaxed.
Even though when I got on there was only maybe 9 people on my car about half way to my stop there must have been 40 people crammed into this train. It was so weird being so close to everyone. I finally heard the announcements for my stop. I am so glad almost everything in Taipei is writing in English under the Chinese. Even the announcements are in English. I had to push my way through a wall of people saying "bu hao yi si" till I got out of the train. I followed everyone down the stairs and put my coin inside the gate which opened and let me through. I walked to the front entrance of the station and waited for my friend Ivy to come.
I waited for a little while and then I saw Ivy. Today was very hot in Taipei and she went to change her jacket.

We walked through the campus of National Taiwan University. It was a beautiful campus. I liked how there weren't any scooters driving around.










There was a big event today at the school. They had like a Anime convention there and so many people were cosplaying. They looked like professional costumes too. There were people taking pictures with expensive cameras. We decided not to go to the convention we kept walking till we got back into the city. It was fun walking through the city I am so use to driving everywhere this was a new feeling.

We walked for a big till we got to this old looking buildings where people use to live. Now people do art in these houses. I think the temple with this tree looked beautiful. After looking at these buildings we walked around and go a little lost but found the MRT station. Ivy and me tryed
to find out where we should go next.







Ivy and me. Some how with all our walking we ended up in the red line. So we decided to take a 40 minuitte train ride to Tamsui the last stop on the red line. I bough a train card with 100NTD pre-paid in it and we were off. It was a long train and we had to stand through most of it because there were so many people on the train. I enjoyed talking to Ivy which made the train ride better.

When we got out of the train stations there were soooo many people. We walked around till Ivy turned around and said, "I am lost". haha. We asked a parking person where the river was and we walked to it. There were so many small shops selling everything you could think of.

 I really like Taiwanese sausage. I have eaten a lot of it in the South of Taiwan and have gotten use to the taste.

 Soooo many people. We went to Tamsui the most busiest day every! They have shops with Turkish men in them selling ice cream. But they make it a show by when they go to give you the ice cream he tosses it to his other hand and keeps tricking you while you try to snatch the ice cream from his hand.

This was some kind of egg snack. It tasted so good!! I want to eat more!! It only cost 35 NTD so it was super cheap.










When we were done looking at the sun setting we walked around more and I saw this random Christmas tree. It was getting late so everywhere else that we wanted to go was closing.















This is Ivy and me as the sun is going down. Everyone else was taking pictures of it. I don't blame them it was such a beautiful sight.











That is a small Island that you can take a ferry too. You can see the top of the mountain and the beautiful sky as the sun sets.

 The sun disappearing. It was so beautiful. I want to go again to see it.

We walked up a hill trying to get into some building that was built by the Spanish when they first landed in Taiwan but it was closed.












And of course food!! We ate at a hot pot restaurant. It was pretty good food. Very cheap for all the food we got. When we got done we took the "red line" all the way down and connected with the "blue line" to Grand Taipei station. Here, I borrowed Ivy's phone and called my mother to pick me up when I got to DongHu. Ivy and me said our goodbyes as she took the "brown line" to Taipei Zoo and I took the line going the other way. I had a great day with Ivy she was so nice and I hope I can hang out with her another day soon.
 

South of Taiwan Part 2

 Today the whole family went to Kaohsiung(this is how they spell it) we went to the mountains to see monkeys and a beautiful park. I really like Kaohsiung it is such a nice city I would not mind living here at all.

 Here we were just getting inside the city. Like with everywhere else in Taiwan there was a traffic jam. I love how you can see the blue sky. In Taipei it is permanently cloudy.

 This was the entrance to the metro. It is new and looked really pretty. You can see the little red lanterns on the trees for Chinese New Years.

More big buildings. A lot more were just being built so this city is very new and modern.

 We drove all through the city to get to the entrance of the mountain. This was a small temple where people can come to pray.

Here are two monkeys. They were everywhere running around. You could pet them if you are so brave. I am scared of these monkeys. I just tyred to avoid them as much as possible. When I sat down to eat a snack they come toward me I got scared and ran away.

 This is another temple at the start of the mountain trail. They were playing Chinese worshiping music.

 A baby monkey climbing on the sign. The 5 nos for peace. haha I think signs in Taiwan are funny to read if they are in English. The sign told us not to attack or hit the monkeys, not to feed them, not to bring our dogs or pets to the mountains, and not to look the monkeys in the eyes.

 This is a picture halfway up the mountain. It looks so beautiful. Almost like the movie Jurassic Park according to my host dad.

Climb, climb and climb some more. We did not even make it to the top. We took a rest on the stairs and then headed back down again.

 We then headed to the park. Here they had massage therapist giving massages. All the massage therapist are blind.

 Pretty lake

 Pretty flower

 I though this was cute. The Chinese character for love and the word love in English inside of it.

 I really like this picture

More funny signs in English. This one it says no releasing any animals like babies.

 This one says no worshiping here. I guess to many people came to pray and now it is not allowed.

This one says no pole dancing. My host mother said girls would come and pole dance on the light poles for money.

This was my lunch. Fried rice and fish soup. It was soooo good. The best fried rice I have ever had.

A video of the Parrots flying around and one landing on a girl by accident : o.

South of Taiwan Part 1

Last night we got back from the South of Taiwan. We got back at around 2 am in the morning. It was so much fun. South of Taiwan is so different from the North of Taiwan. I loved the city of Gaosiong! I could see my self living there. It is so pretty and modern with so much space. It is so cool how everything changes in Taiwan from city to city nothing is the same. It is so much to travel and see the differences.

We left at 1pm and half way to Daping we stoped at a rest stop. Rest stops in America are rather small and only have a bathroom and vending machines. In Taiwan it is a full center with restaurants, arcades and stores. Many people were traveling so it was full of people everywhere.

I got this hot dog looking thing at the rest stop. It is a sausage with a bun made out of rice. It was really tasty and ate it all very quickly. The drive was very long. About 6 hours. It is pretty amazing how you can drive from one tip of Taiwan to the other tip in 6 hours. The traffic was heavy when we would pass big cities but soon we hit the country side and everything turned flat with lots of rice paddies and corn farms.

 We stayed in Jerry's mothers house. It is a huge house with three stories with many bedrooms and bathrooms. It is like a mansion. There were about 12 people living in this house while I was there. It was fun being part of such a big family. Eating together was the most fun.

This was my first meal I ate in The South of Taiwan. It was very good but very different from what I have eaten in America. Like I said before eating together is so much fun hearing everyone talk and laugh. Even though I could not understand much I can feel the warm positive energy coming from everyone voices and smiles.

After eating about three times more then I should have eaten I went to sleep. I could hear fire works going off at night so it was hard to sleep. The next morning we went to buy fire works at a small store. Daping is much more rural then Taipei. At least this town has a dedicated scooter lane. There are more people on bicycle here then in other cities.

 There were these huge type of fire works and many that shoot off into the sky.

After buying the fire works we went to a brewery and saw a lot of alcohol. These jugs have alcohol in them. In traditional Taiwanese culture when you have a baby girl you but alcohol into a jug and bury it and when she gets married you dig it up and share the alcohol with everyone at the wedding.

These are different types of cigarettes that Taiwan has. They were very old and had colorful advertisement.

We stopped at a bakery and I got this cake and pudding pearl milk. It was all so tasty! I love food here.

My host family likes to play food games with me. They give me weird food to try and won't tell me what it is till I try it. This was some egg they had. It looked so creepy and I didn't really want to try it... but I didn't want to be rude.

I put it into my mouth and it was really soft the outside jelly part was spicy and when you tasty the center creamy part it was bitter but it almost tasted eatable. My host mother really likes it. You use this egg as medicine.

This was some kind of rice thing with pork inside of it. It is like a Tamale but it is made with rice instead of corn. I didn't like the taste of the rice so I could not eat it.

FIREWORKS!!! These sparklers where huge and powerful. We also shot off fire rockets into the sky. So loud and bright! This first day was so much fun! I will post most about my trip to the South of Taiwan later.