Saying goodbye to Taiwan....

Thursday was our last full day in Taiwan so we packed it all in…once again ha ha. We got up super early to head to the temple and do baptisms. The temple president had to round up random people to help out because they only do baptisms once a week on Saturdays. It was so sweet of them to all show up and give us the opportunity (one of the men helping out is from Gunnison, Utah). They were also really excited to have us there and they were bummed that they hadn’t known earlier. Otherwise they would have taken us out and showed us around.

After doing the baptisms, they had us go to their church office building for an interview. They decided to do a piece on us for the church news over here in Taiwan! Then they set up an appointment with the sister missionaries for them to give us a tour. It was so generous of them.

After the temple we went to the Taipei Zoo! It was a complete blast…they had lots of cool animals…waaay better than the Hogle Zoo. Davit was supposed to meet us there at the zoo, but we never found him. We were way sad. We stayed at the zoo for about three hours then headed out to Taipei 101. 101 is the second tallest building in the entire world (a building in Dubai is the tallest). It’s really cool because it’s the only tall building in all of Taipei so it really stands out. We were going to go up to the top but supposedly the view for the night was really bad d/t the weather and we didn’t want to spend the money on it if we couldn’t see anything.

Christina, Christina, Sophia, Hayley & I headed back to the area around our hostel to get some dinner. We ate at a Taiwanese restaurant and had some delicious food! I had some coconut curry and the other girls had this delicious curry casserole! (sounds weird but it was really good). After dinner we decided to stop back at our hostel to drop some stuff off. When we walked up Davit was sitting there on a scooter! We were SO happy to see him! We had been looking for him all day and we felt bad that he skipped class and drove 4 hours to come see us. I guess he showed up late to the zoo (at around 3) and sat and waited for us for two hours! He even paid to go inside and walked around trying to find us. He finally left when the zoo closed and missed us by like 10 minutes. Then he spent two hours trying to find our hostel and then waited at our hostel for 3 hours till we showed up! I couldn't believe it! We felt so so so bad. Most cultures would have given up and left after searching for an hour but Davit searched and waited for like 8 hours. I really love that guy.

We all went out on the town shopping and playing around. Then we wanted to find some good dessert for our last night. Davit asked this random guy if he knew of anyone places so the guy escorted us to his friends place like four blocks away. It was amazing. Some of the best dessert I’ve ever had. The guy was kind of weird though. He was very touchy and kept hugging me and rubbing my head. Davit said he just kept saying beautiful American girls over and over again lol. At this same place this little high school girl just walked up to us and started talking in English (the Taiwanese love practicing their English). We met her and all of her friends. They were so cute.

After dessert Davit, Christina, Mike, and I watched a movie then we had to say goodbye to Davit for real. He was so sad to leave and left me the sweetest message this morning saying goodbye. I would love to go to Indonesia someday and visit him.

Today we got up early and packed up to head out. We all did some presentations for the trip (yes we actually have to do some work here) then our drivers picked us up. We had kind of a cool experience with this driver. At one point he slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road at one of the Beetlenut shops. Beetlenuts are from a tree here and they’re addictive, stain your teeth, and cause oral cancer. There are little shops throughout every city where girls dressed in scandalous clothing sell them. We immediately got kind of annoyed and upset that he would stop at one of these places on the job, especially with a bunch of girls……..but then he came out with a huge bag of water bottles, one for each of us. This is exactly what I love about Taiwan sooo much. I'm always constantly suprised by these people. Naturally being in a foreign country most of us are somewhat skeptical of the people and always assume the worst…..but every single time, the Taiwanese people prove us wrong by doing some act of kindness or generosity. Ugh I'm going to miss them.

We made is to the aiport safely and we’re currently waiting for our wonderful 14 hour flight. It’s really hard saying goodbye to Taiwan. I have fallen completely in love with this place, especially the people. In a sense it really has become home to me and will always be a special place to me. I will take the things that I have learned and the things that I have experienced on this trip with me for the rest of my life.

If going solely by time, I’ll be home in one hour ha ha. It’s 3pm here and we arrive in the states at 4pm (because of the crazy time difference). We leave and arrive at 4pm on Friday lol. See you soon!

Finding fun in Taipei

Soooo we probably shouldn’t have gone to HK right before Taipei…because it completely puts Taipei to shame ha ha The city is just like Tainan except there’s one huge building jutting up into the sky…Taipei 101. But that’s about it. We have two full days here and only about 3 things on our to do list, so we’ve had a hard time coming up with things to take up our time. Matt wasn’t exaggerating when he said he was bored to death….

This morning we slept in for a bit. Sophia and I went to breakfast. When we stopped at a shop a man came up to me and tapped my shoulder and asked if I spoke English! When I said yes he beamed! Lol He said that he saw white skin and HAD to ask us. He’s kind of in the same boat as Matt, he’s been here for a bit and he has NOTHING to do and he never sees anyone that speaks English so he’s desperate. I can’t even imagine being here by myself. It would be so hard. We don’t even notice it because we’re surrounded by the other girls and we get to speak English all the time but being alone would be miserable. We hung out with him for a bit and took it easy.

We then met up with the other girls to go to the temple. The temple wasn’t the prettiest but it was still fun and a great experience. It’s really small and has a weird design. It's kinda funny though cuz it’s set right next to a gas station....so when you first walk up to it, this is all you see lol.

We wanted to do baptisms but they only do them on Saturdays. They’re going to try and call the temple president to see if they can set up a special session for us tomorrow. While at the temple we met a member. She was absolutely adorable. She was at the temple praying for an opportunity to help someone. Then we showed up! It was really touching because she’s been a member for a while and for the past 9 years she’s been praying every day that her husband would get baptized. He just finally agreed! So they will be sealed in 2 months. After the temple the woman took us to get this famous Taiwanese dish. I can’t remember the name but it was spicy noodles with pig intestine and oysters…it sounds gross but it was soo good! Then she got us Taipei’s famous fry bread with bean milk from a 60 year old shop. The milk kind of tasted like crap…but the bread was good. We then went to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial. Chiang Kai-Shek was an important political and military leader here in Taiwan. People either hate him or love him. His memorial was beautiful and they have the “changing of the guard” like they do in Arlington in D.C. It was pretty much the same thing but the one in D.C. is way more uniform and professional.
We then went home to take a nap (I only got like 3 hours of sleep last night) and when we got there Matt left a note saying that he had switched hostels (he wanted one that was closer downtown) but that he was going to meet up with us that night to hang out. It’s just funny that he’s a party guy from So Cal but he wants to hang out with a bunch of young mormon girls ha ha It’s really nice of him. Mike was home too (Harvard guy) so I hung out with him for a bit.

For dinner we all went out to “The Modern Toilet”. Ha ha It’s a restaurant that is restroom themed. The tables are bathtubs and all of the food is served in toilets. Their special is curry in a toilet (so it looks like diarrhea). The ice cream is served in squatters. It was so much fun! I got the curry and it was actually super good! The last picture is of the sink in the bathroom lol

After dinner, Kris, Katelyn, Tara, & Rainy went home and the rest of us went out on the town. We just shopped around and explored to find stuff to do. We met lots of fun new random people…..and found fun shirts with funny translations. They crack me up!We met these two Australian exchange students that hate it here..lol so they hung out with us for while. We found this American restaurant and thought it was pretty funny. It's called "Cola Forest".

This is the ugliest backpack in the entire world....the little red heart has little elmos and aliens from toy story....asians are so random!Now we’re in for the night waiting for Matt to show up. We’re going out to a bar with him and Mike! (supposedly there are non-alcoholic drinks there….)

P.S. Mom & Dad: You never look at e-mails or facebook so I'll just tell you on here. I fly in on Friday at 7:15pm so you can pick me up then. I'll call you when I fly into LA to straighten out all the details...but just so you know....

Taipei....

Today we got up at 5 am to head out from HK…. and we got to our hostel in Taipei at 4pm! It was a crazy day full of adventures trying to get where we needed to. It feels SO good to be back in Taiwan. It’s weird how much this place feels like home only after 5 days of leaving it. It was so refreshing to come back to the Taiwanese people. I absolutely love them. There is a night and day difference between them and the Chinese. Everytime we had a question here the person would either sit and try and figure it out or take us to someone who would figure it out for us. One guy literally escorted us 3 streets down from his restaurant to our bus stop! Then when we got on the bus we had TONS of luggage and the random people on the bus sat and held it for us! ha ha And i love the funny translations...this is from on of the restaurants I ate at....Buuuut it’s also weird being back to the language barrier. We thought more people would speak English in Taipei…but it’s definitely not the case. We got so used to speaking English in Hong Kong that we’re not as careful about how we talk…and NO ONE understands us and we don’t understand them ha ha

We’re also back to being celebrities. Literally the second after we stepped off the bus a huge group of boys started snapping pictures of us. Then on another bus Chrisitina and I were sitting in the very back next to these two boys and they started videotaping us and our conversation ha ha It was so awkward. We didn’t know whether to acknowledge them or ignore them.

We got dropped off right at our hostel! It was so lucky. Our hostel is a lot of fun. Kind of like the one in Hualien but quite a bit smaller. And we have a guy in our room again…ha ha Right as we got there i met this way cool guy. His name is Bernie (well his english name). He’s from the Netherlands but he currently lives in Singapore (he’s asian). He’s a really nice guy and he’s just here visiting friends for about a month.

I talked and hung out with him for a bit then everyone took naps and recuperated. I absolutely love hostels. The people here are so much fun. I went to put my stuff away in my locker and I met this kid name Matt. He was super friendly and COMPLETELY desperate for Americans ha ha He has been here in Taipei for about 4 days and has only met one person that speaks English. He said he literally ran a white man down today so he could figure things out…but the man was German.... kind of depressing. He was so relieved to find us there. He's been bored the pst 4 days and has nothing to do so I invited him to go out with us so we all went out to the Snake Night Market.

We headed out on the town and kind of got lost but eventually found a night market. We started walking around but there were NO snakes to be found anywhere. Finally an old man came up to us and asked if he could escort us to the actual snake market. So he did! He walked us like three blocks down to get it. The Snake Market is a night market that features snakes. There are snakes all over in cages and they kill it right in front of you and cook it. We all ordered one BBQ snake and shared it. It was surprisingly really delicious! Tastes like chicken but has a rougher texture. Then we walked around some more and watched the snake charmers.

After this all of the girls went home so Sophia and I stayed out with Matt. Normally we have to be out in threes but Kris was super chill tonight and let Matt count as one of us! Ha ha So we just explored around the area and the night market. It was a blast and I loved getting to know Matt. He has a pretty fun story. He just graduated from SDSU in engineering. The past two years he did an internship for a company designing highways. But he absolutely hated it. He said he would go to work with his stomach in knots because he hated it so bad. So…he randomly decided to just quit and sell everything he has…well not everything. But he sold his two cars, his apartment, and some of his big belongings and decided to go on an adventure. Today is day 4 of it lol. He’s on his way to the Philippines but his layover is here in Taiwan. So he’s touring around for a bit, then off to the Philippines for two months, then to Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia! How fun is that? He was really fun to hang out with. He’s not a member but he was super respectful of us. He always holds back his swearing and all of it. He has a minor in religion so he loves learning about our Mormon culture.

We got back around 11 and met up with his friend that is staying at the hostel (he’s actually staying in our room). This guy is a 26 year old med student at Harvard! Lol He’s here in Taipei to study Mandarin because he wants to work in California with the asian population. He’s a really fun guy too…but he definitely doesn’t hold back. He cusses every other word and looooves telling us all his drinking stories ha ha This all is just so much fun to me. I love meeting these random people and making friends with them. The people really are what makes this trip what it is.