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.