Day 8

Day 8

I'm writing this the morning of day 9 because I was too tired last night to write. At any rate, yesterday was a pretty amazing day...that's sounding like a broken record, I guess. I got on the Taiwan High Speed Rail at 8:50 am and was 200 miles away in Kaohsiung City by 10:23 am. That was by far the fastest ground transportation I've ever been on. Anyway, Ricky picked me up at the train station and started out right away showing me around the town.

I was impressed from the beginning with how many fewer cars there

were. Granted, it was the middle of the morning, so most people were at work. However, I could already tell that it

was a little bit more peaceful of a city, yet it's still a city. One thing I have been struck by throughout this whole trip is the

fact that even in T

aipei where there are an insane amount of people, the streets are pretty clean. They make a major effort to keep things clean around here. Ricky and I were talking about this a little bit yesterday as well. The people here take pride in their country and want to preserve it. I think that's great.

Well, yesterday we drove around the port area, and we climbed a lot of stairs (hehehe). The first stop was to a

former British consulate's residence high on a hill that has a shrine built next to it. We were unable to go inside the residence (I guess I'll have to save that for next time), so I got a few pictures of the harbor from behind the shrine before we moved on. Ricky explained to me that he had been in the Navy in his younger years, so he showed me where he worked, and

I took a picture or two there. Our next stop was the Martyr's Shrine before descending into town to eat lunch with Ricky's parents.

After lunch we went to Lotus Park where I got some really cool pictures of the dragon and tigers. I didn't feel like climbing the towers because the better pictures were down below. We walked around the lake a little bit and got some pictures of turtles sunning themselves, another shrine, etc. before we went to take a ferry to Cilin island. On the island, I got a picture of the bay and

then we hiked up to what we thought was going to be the lighthouse on the hill, but it was actually the former living quarters for the army stationed there. We walked back down the hill and up again to the lighthouse to find out that it had just closed for the day, so we walked back down the hill and meandered back to the ferry.

Ricky drove me around the city at night so I could see the many really cool buildings including an 85 story building (Taipei 101 is 89 stories) and one of the biggest malls I've ever seen (nope, didn't go into it--too much walking already). Finally we made our way to a quaint little restaurant where we waited for an hour to eat dinner, and boy did we eat...wow...I was

really stuffed. After that Ricky dropped me of at my hotel, which he had paid for. I am very impressed with this hotel. It is much nicer than the one I stayed at in Taipei, but I think it may be a little bit less (not sure since I didn't pay for it). Have I mentioned that I have some ama

zing friends?

So far, after 8 days here in Taipei, I have had absolutely no regrets about making the trip. I do realize just how confusing it must be for our students coming to the U.S. at first. My non-existent Chinese means basically that everything I hear around me is noise (and lots of it). I once in awhile hear an English phrase or conversation between two people or a group of people, and my senses become aware that people are actually communicating. Definitely before I come back here again need to learn enough Chinese to at least understand more so that I don't fee quite so lost in the conversations. That is one of my goals for the remainder of this school year and into the next is to learn some basic Chinese so that I can thank Ricky's parents more properly and so that I can say more than hello, thank you, and good bye.