Oh boy! A lot has
happened and unfortunately I failed to take my camera to any of it…but I shall try to give a
brief synopsis of the past couple weeks.
Moon Festival-The Moon Festival was a couple of weeks ago
and the week leading up to it I was showered with moon cakes and pineapple cakes
and pomelos. I’d never even heard of
pomelos before but they are traditionally eaten around the moon festival here,
and are quite delicious I might add.
Part of the beauty of working at two schools was being given twice the
amount of food! Also, Teacher’s Day was
that week too, so there were just a lot of treats…mmm…I could go for a
pineapple cake right now!
Waterfalls!!-We went to a few different waterfalls and they
were incredible! They were all in Jiao Xi, which is in the north of Yilan
County, but so is Yilan City so it wasn’t far at all. One of the waterfalls had a pool at the
bottom, which we could go in and go under the waterfall even, if that’s what
you’re into. I was super cold so in
retrospect I realize I didn’t appreciate that as much as I should have, but the
beauty of it is I can go back! Hooray! Another of the waterfalls was a rather
strenuous hike away (at least for me it was strenuous) but completely worth it
(although there were moments on the way there when I had my doubts!). They were just so tall and we could get so
close and the foliage nearby was so lush and green and there wasn’t really anyone else around…ah, so
peaceful.
Double Ten Day-October 10th was the 101st
National Day here in Taiwan and we not only got a holiday off school but also
got invited to a fancy big reception in Taipei that was put on by the Minister
of Foreign Affairs. It was fun and I
fulfilled a lifelong dream of going to a social event where people walk around
with trays. As it turns out, that’s not
as great as I thought it would be since you have to find a person every time
you want to get rid of a dish or glass.
But President Ma was there which was cool. I wasn’t bold enough to try to talk to him
but several of the ETAs did. Also, that
morning before we went to the reception some of us went to the top of Taipei 101, which is the 2nd tallest building in the world I think. It also has the fastest elevator in the world
(goes up 89 floors in 39 seconds! Or something like that. It’s very fast.) which made me rather motion
sick…but all in all going to the top was a positive experience.
Host Families-On Friday we had our host family night which
(among other things) involved the ETAs singing A Whole New World in English and
Pengyou (a Chinese song, pengyou means friend) in Chinese to everyone and then
getting randomly assigned to host families.
It was pretty fun and my family seems really great!
Taroko Gorge-This is beautiful. You should probably just google it since I don't have pictures and I don't have a lot to say about it besides that it's really impressive. We took the train there and it was only about 2 hours on the local train (it makes all the stops) and one hour by the other train. It's a big park too so I will definitely have to go back since we didn't see much of it really.
Computer-On Monday I finally got a computer on my desk at
one of my schools! Not that I
desperately needed one, but it’s certainly nice to have it, even if it moves at
a glacial pace…which it does. But it was
supposed to come back from getting fixed the first week of school so it has
been long anticipated.
Well, I guess that’s about all that’s coming to mind
immediately, so I'll stop here!
