Wishful Thinking

Here is a list of all the words that describe my weekend -

Incredible.

Fantastic.

Marvelous.

Stupendous.

Stunning.

Magnificent.

Glorious.

Wonderful.

We went to the Ping Xi Lantern Festival near Taipei

And let me just tell you right now,

the pictures do not do it justice.

We went with Charlene and Kailey,

two of the secretaries from Berhan.

How this works -

People buy lanterns and write their wishes for the year on them.

These wishes could be anything at all

We saw wishes for

losing weight

getting PhDs 

finding husbands...

There's a broad range.

This was our lantern!

And this was my wish...

The guy lighting our lantern for us..

And there it goes!

After a certain time,

they sent off about a hundred lanterns at once

every half our or so.

And just to top off this night of new sights,

we got to see the President of Taiwan!

It was the craziest thing,

he walked right through the crowd

with only a few people surrounding him to help him get through.

The arrow is pointing to a red blob.

That's him.

Just take my word for it :)

There he is on screen!

And here is the giant lantern they had for President Ma to send off -

Writing Taiwan's wish on the enormous lantern -

The yellow lights are lanterns...

the blue lights are cameras...

Does this not look eerily similar to 'Tangled'?

I believe so.

I'll just say it made me very happy to see this.

This lantern was stuck in a tree...

It looked really cool,

but unfortunately it was too dark to see the tree.

One of the lanterns fell on an old wooden shed

and these ladies stepped up and put out the flame with their waterbottles.

Needless to say,

everyone cheered that kind of heroism.

A wish crashing and burning

in the middle of a huge crowd of people...

It did get everyone moving, though...

See, there's the crowd -

We waited for probably an hour to get on the bus,

and then it was an hour long ride to the MRT,

and probably around another hour on the MRT til we got to our hostel.

But I would definitely do it all again.

It was that amazing!

A [Belated] New Start for the [Chinese] New Year

I'm back!

From my short blogging hiatus...

Which really was absolutely necessary because,

as everyone knows,

the end of a semester is a crazy time

and I now know that it is no different

for English teachers in Taiwan.

And besides that,

I would really rather be out doing things

instead of writing about it.

So there is my excuse.

My apologies for the gap in the timeline of my Taiwanese life.

Perhaps I'll fill it in one day.

Or perhaps it will forever remain the stuff of wonder and legend!

I kinda like the sound of that choice...

Anyway.

I'm going to attempt a reform.

A mending of my ways...

And what could be more appropriate to start this improvement with

than the [Chinese] New Year?!

[Of course it has to be the Chinese New Year

because I'm already too late for

the Rest of the World's New Year.]

See, here in Taiwan

Chinese New Year is the time for big winter festivities

and for extended holidays from school and work.

Christmas just doesn't do it for them over here.

So just a few weeks after our week long Christmas vacation,

we had another week long vacation to fill!

You can either call that fantastic luck of bad timing,

I still haven't quite figured it out myself.

At any rate,

we were given

and so of course had to have a few adventures,

the first of which took place in

Kaohsiung!

Kaohsiung

[Said like Gow-shung]

is beautiful.

Here is a little piece of it -

And here it is at night -

I'm sad to say I have little more proof to back up my claim.

So anyway.

We did some pretty neat things in Kaohsiung.

First on the list being the traditional market,

which is only open during the Chinese New Year

and has all sorts of interesting-looking things in it...

Such as...

Lots of Taiwanese people

Giant disgusting bags of mushrooms

Unidentified animal parts...
actually these are just unidentified...

Dried squid

Hanging dried squid

Giant puffer fish
(and a lady who I think has a matching face, but that's just me)

Giant dried fish

A guy wearing extra large peanuts
(he was also handing out free samples)

Taiwanese food
(I don't know what any of that is)

Creepy old guy asking for donations for something or other

DEE-licious Cranberry drink stuff

Kendra and Sara

This guy was hacking up extremely large pieces of chocolate..
When he saw me watching and taking pictures,
he gave me a nice big piece!
So I thought he deserved a spot on my blog.
It was the least I could do!
That chocolate was good, for Taiwan...

We spent our Chinese New Year's Eve

on the campus of a university in Kaohsiung that is right on the ocean.

Possibly the most beautiful campus I've ever seen.

I didn't get very many pictures of the actual campus

simply because I was so distracted by the ocean

and the prospect of getting to the ocean

and then the possibility that we might not get to the ocean

that I didn't really think about taking pictures.

But just imagine red brick buildings dotting a lush green mountainside

all facing this -

Yes, I know.

It's an almost unbelievable image.

And believe you me,

the reality was just as breathtaking.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly here.

This is the British something or other that used to be really important...

I apologize for not having more information than that,
but by the time we hiked up all of those stairs
(or possibly because it was a holiday)
it was closed and we couldn't go inside.
But here it is up close, anyway -

For what it's worth, it looked like it had the potential to be really cool...

Elias and Ashton

Elias, Katie, and Kendra
with Christina in front

That's Katie!

This is Kaohsiung's 85,
They're version of Taipei 101.

We passed this while walking around
looking for something to eat on New Year's Eve.
And there was nothing to be had.
I won't even tell you what we ended up eating for Chinese New Year's Eve
because I am so ashamed and disgusted by it.
If you really want to know,
ask one of the other girls I was with.

Anyway,
on Chinese New Year's Day
we went to
Monkey Mountain!
With Tommy Chen!

Ashton... always monkeyin around...

Where Kendra Kimber touched a monkey!!

Obviously she is not doing so in this picture...

Actually she's only identifying the one she made contact with.

These things were really kinda nasty and also a tad bit scary...

After Monkey Mountain
we went to the Dream Mall, which is HUGE.
It has a ferris wheel on the top of it,
one you can see from across the city.
We didnt' ride the ferris wheel,
but we did do this bungee jumping thing
where they attach you to two poles with bungee cords over a trampoline
and you basically just bounce up and down.
I realize now that it sounds really lame in writing,
but let me assure you it was SO MUCH FUN.
I think I scared the poor kid in charge of the one I was on
because I was laughing and smiling maniacally
literally the entire time I was on the thing.
Also, I must brag a tad bit because I'll probably never have the opportunity again -
I definitely did at least three back flips.
Yeah,
no big deal...
I'm just really proud of it.

The only other really exciting thing that happened in the Dream Mall
was that we found this lovely shirt -

So here's the story.

"Larry's" are the not so attractive white guys who come here

and marry Taiwanese girls

and then stay here for the rest of their lives.

If you cuold see some of them,

this shirt would probably make you giggle quite a bit.

I know that's what happened to us.

Hence the picture.

Sadly we had to leave Kaohsiung "early" the next morning...

This is us leaving -

Not Kaohsiung,
but someplace in Kaohsiung, at least...
It's mostly a symbolic picture, really.

The last stop on our Chinese New Year trip
was Tainan.
We were told that there wasn't much there to see there,
but we were pleasantly surprised.

We saw the most legitimate Tree House in the world -

Just in case you're missing the general idea here,

this is a house that has been overtaken by trees.

They are growing through the walls, the windows, the roof, the doors...

Obviously completely unlivable,

but really cool to see..

Ashton and Alcides

Kendra

And this is the old Dutch fort in Tainan...

So we saw these little kids before this

as we were walking to the fort.

The only reason I remember this

is because when we passed them with their little cameras

their parents said,

"Quick! Foreigners!"

And they immediately turned

and tried to take pictures of us walking by..

Then we saw then again at the fort and they came for closeups...

Those, my friends,

are seashells.

Hundreds of seashells hanging from the wall.

I guess now I know what to do with all of the ones I've been collecting!

Katie, Ashton, Sara, Kendra
at the only restaurant we could find with food we found edible.
Poor Alcides had the hardest time finding a place that would suit us
and also had room for us to sit down...

Ever wondered what the kitchen in an actual Taiwanese restaurant looked like?

A short walk around a park, and we were on our way home.

Of course that was after we almost missed our bus

because the there was so much traffic

that the taxi couldn't get through the mob.

But that's irrelevant.

Happy Year of the Dragon!