Hetal's Visit!

Yes, that’s right.  My good friend and fellow ESL major from Northwestern visited me for a couple of days at the beginning of November when she was passing through Taipei on her way to teach in India.  It was so much fun to have her here and to show her around.  We also did plenty of exploring of some spots that were new to both of us.  I learned that I’m not the best tour guide there ever was, and if you want to know what the plan is…you will probably be disappointed because there probably isn’t one.

I met her at the Taipei train station (where the airport bus dropped her off, but that’s a whole other story in itself) at the bright an early hour of around 8 am on that Saturday morning.  After our joyful reunion we spent a significant amount of time roaming underground through the train station, bus station, MRT and an underground mall that was connected to it all, trying to find lockers for Hetal to store her luggage, find a place to get wireless internet, find some food and figure out what we were going to do that day.  We didn’t really pick a priority out of our list of things to do so we spent a significant amount of time running about not really getting anything accomplished and I even asked a local man who kindly tried to help us because he thought we were lost, “What do you think we should do today?”  He was very kind but not a whole lot of help in the matter.  Finally though we found the lockers, food, and internet and after a quick phone call to my friend Sarah to help us out with directions, we were on our way to ride a gondola up a mountain to where there were a lot of teahouses.

Well, we made it to the place to ride the gondola and promptly got our tickets and boarded our gondola.  Our fellow passengers in our car were an elderly couple from Hong Kong and their friend.  Somehow the wife ended up sitting between Hetal and me and they were all quite chatty.  I probably would have been more so if after about 10 minutes I hadn’t begun to feel so ill.  Not only was I going backwards, but it was also a pretty windy day so the car was swaying all over the place.  After about 10 more minutes we could finally get out as we had reached the final stop.  However at this point I still felt weak and faint and Hetal’s long hours of traveling and jetlag were catching up with her so after going about 30 steps up the mountain in search of a teahouse, we turned around with the idea that there had to be teahouses that we could get to by going downhill and we finally found a place that not only had oolong tea, but also waffles which is exactly what I was craving (but let’s be real, when am I not craving waffles?).  Anyway though, the view was absolutely breathtaking.  Then we headed back to the bus station and did a little shopping along the way, picked up Hetal’s bags (once we eventually found the lockers) and made our way back to Luodong.

The next day we decided to venture to Suao, a nearby town, and check out the habour and a beach which I had heard were pretty cool.  We decided to take the train to Suao and then take the city bus to the harbour.  The fact that I haven’t taken the city bus anywhere yet didn’t really seem to be important to the plan at the time.  The friendly conductor asked if we were going to Suao and the whole train ride was going quite well until we found out that Suao had two train stations and I didn’t know which one we wanted to get off at.  We hopped off at the first one to check the platform out to see if we could find any answers before the train took off again and sure enough as we scurried about the platform looking for who knows what, the conductor motioned for us to get back on the train so we frantically ran into the nearest car.  Apparently that first station isn’t really by anything much.  In our new car there was a couple and an older lady (traveling together, but I can’t remember the relationship between them) who struck up a conversation so we covered the basics about where we’re from, how long we’ve been here, what we're doing here…it turns out the wife went to one of the elementary schools that I teach at! They live in Taipei now but her mother lives in Suao and they were going to visit her.  Once we all got off the train, they asked what we were doing and I told them of our plans to take the bus to Nanfangao (the harbour) and they told me where the bus stop was (since I was completely clueless).  So Hetal and I thanked them and went towards the bus stop…but our hesitant steps must not have gone unnoticed because the older lady showed up behind us and ended up walking us all the way to the bus stop and told us when the bus we wanted came to raise our hand so it will stop.  They were so helpful and kind! 

The harbor was super cool.  There were just a lot of neat looking boats and people working on them.  There was also a fish market that this random old man told us we should buy fish from and he showed us his purchases and seemed pretty insistent, so we walked through the market to appease him, not that we were planning to buy any fish.  I had also heard that there was really pretty beach around there somewhere so we kept wandering about and then I saw a sign that I read, “Chinese-character-I-don’t-know-Chinese-character-I-don’t-know 20m”.  I pointed out that something cool must be 20m up that road because the sign looked interesting (as in, it was painted kind of cool, since I couldn’t actually read the words on it) so we ventured that way.  It turns out that the unknown characters and 20m were the name of a restaurant (which was significantly more than 20m away from the sign) but the restaurant also happened to be on the beautiful beach so it all worked out anyway.

One of the boats in the harbour

The way back into Suao we had to take the bus again and since I wasn’t 100% sure about anything I decided to ask the bus driver if it was the correct bus to get to the train station.  He gave it some thought, checked which station we wanted and then announced that it was! So we began the ride and as we neared our stop (it was the same route as how we got there so we knew we’d be the third stop again) I heard a voice from the front of the bus shout (in Chinese naturally), “Train station friends! We’re almost at your stop!”  Yes, that bus driver was certainly looking out for us.  I kind of wanted to duck down in my seat because every single other passenger was looking at us (how did they know we were the "train station friends"?) but instead we went up to the front of the bus and the driver began to give me directions on how to walk to the train station from the bus stop.  At the same time, the man in the front seat began to give Hetal directions as well.  But it’s a good thing I already knew because I’m not sure I would have understood the directions…plus the bus driver gave me two options of how to get there which generally just confuses me.

That night we did some shopping and eating at the Luodong Night Market, which is always a treat.  One thing I noticed about the time that Hetal was visiting was that I ended up speaking a whole lot more Chinese than I usually do.  Probably most of this was due to the fact that since we didn’t plan things out, I usually had to ask a lot of questions to figure out what was going on, but my Chinese got quite a workout!  Another thing I noticed (more than I already have) is how incredibly helpful people are!  We got so much assistance with people going out of their way to make sure we ended up in the right spot.  It was incredible.

This is how we got around

Monday and Tuesday were mostly spent at my school and then we went to see some local sights each day.  Monday we went to some waterfalls (where my camera completely broke and I haven’t even been able to get the pictures that were already on it off it yet…but I’m working on that.  So these pictures on here are courtesy of Hetal's facebook) and then she also got to meet most of the other ETAs and Tuesday we stuck around Luodong and ended the evening at the night market again and on Wednesday morning we went to the airport where she took off for India to continue her adventures and I made my way back to Yilan to continue mine! 

Us at the waterfall

Hetal, me, and Grace (my LET)

Us and one of my first grade classes-what adorable children I teach!!
(notice the two girls making a heart in the middle of the picture)

Tainan: The Continuing Story

Well, to continue where I left off...

The next morning I filled myself on taro buns (which I adore) at the hotel breakfast and then we piled back onto the bus to go to an elementary school that was big into energy efficiency, or something like that.  We had lunch there too and I found out that food in Tainan (by now I knew that we were in Tainan County for sure) is known for being sweet.  And sure enough, everything was sweet (and cold).  The vegetables, the meat, the other mixed dishes…it was alright, but I couldn’t really get into it.

This is a view of rice paddys from the school.  It was super beautiful.  I'm afraid the picture doesn't do it justice.

After that we toured The Magic School of Green Technology, which is a university.  I asked why it was called magic and they said it was just an adjective.  Well, I know that, but I wanted to know why that was picked over some other adjective, but I never did find out.

Anyway, then we went to a clothing factory that became really eco-friendly after they had had a fire a few years ago.  The ironic thing was that I smelled burning rubber the whole time we were there, but that could have been coming from any of the neighboring buildings I suppose.  It seemed to me that we were there a really long time.  Then I thought we were finally going to leave but we just went outside to walk around their “Happy Farm” which was a little farm on the company’s property.  I don’t really know who tends to it, but I do know that it was getting dark and I was famished. 

These bears were positioned around the company building and the smiling bear brought
me some joy at a very hungry low-point

We finally left and went to a restaurant and the first dish they brought out was fried rice, which was delicious.  After that the next several dishes were seafood and I didn’t have any but everyone started asking about if I was a vegetarian so I just said that I didn’t eat seafood, but after that every dish that came they’d be like, “Can she eat it?”  Well, I felt kind of bad so the next dish that came out I just went ahead and grabbed a piece of.  It looked rubbery so I figured it’d just be squid or something I could choke down.  Well, I couldn’t chew it at all because of it’s rubberyness and it tasted incredibly sour and just not a flavour I wanted in my mouth so I just swallowed the piece whole.  It didn’t really seem like the squid I’ve had before and I made the mistake of asking what it was.  “The inside of a pig.”  Oh…

Somehow I found myself putting on a huge smile and saying something like, “Oh! I’ve never tried this before! Mmmm.”  Then I promptly drank some tea and began to eat fish to get the taste out of my mouth (which just tells you how much I didn’t like the intestines!).

By the time we got to our new hotel in Tainan city it was too late to see any of the city, which was unfortunate because I’ve heard it’s a really cool place.  In fact, I know several people who say it’s their favourite city in Taiwan.  But I used the massage chair in the hotel gym and also found a bowl of bananas there, which I helped myself to.

This hotel had cereal at their breakfast so I was all over that on Saturday morning.  It was amazing.  Our only stops for that day were some kind of museum, which seemed to have everything in it.  There was a natural history part, and a part about inventions and history of that nature, a part with a bunch of old guns and tools, a part with lots of plants and grains, a part with information about aquatic animals and I think some other sections but I don’t remember what they were.  It was pretty interesting to look at, although I didn’t always know what I was looking at.

Next we went to see a water buffalo.  At least that’s what I thought.  Then they said it was the water buffalo’s house, but he had died this summer (it wasn’t the same water buffalo as the Togo village though, I checked).  Anyway, to me this place just looked like a little farm.  It was nice though.  Actually, it was my favourite place we visited on the trip because there were two swings hanging from a tree branch that I got to swing on!

Part of the farm

I was loving the swing

This is the old man who told us about everything.  Apparently the water buffalo lived in that little building right behind him (it looked really nice inside for a water buffalo though).  I believe this man lives on the farm

After this we just had to stop for lunch and then begin the long ride home.  They were saying there were two options for the soup and we had to pick right then so they knew what to order once we got to the restaurant.  I asked what the options were and they said, “fish ball…” and before I heard the rest I thought, “Oh I’ll get the other one” (I can’t get into fish ball soup, or actually fish ball anything, though I’ve tried) but then I heard the rest of the sentence: “…or blood soup.”  Well, fish ball it is.  But then I found out they were also getting some kind of rice thing too so I opted to just eat that and skip the soup entirely.  That was definitely a good decision.

The bus ride home was fairly uneventful.  It took about 5 hours or so and the last two and a half we had karaoke.  Some people were pretty into it and every now and then from the back of the bus I would hear, “Charissa! English song! English song!” Each time I just kind of gave a nervous chuckle because I didn’t know what else to do.  Picking out an English song to sing didn’t seem like a great option to me.  Then at a rest stop one of the teachers came up and said, “Charissa. We are the world.”  It took me a couple times to understand even what he was saying but then I realized he wanted me to sing We are the World.  Well, as fun as that would be, I knew I didn’t know the tune well enough to sing the whole thing even with the words, but after that I paid more attention to the songs coming up incase someone had just gone ahead and requested it for me.  I never did sing anything though, which was fine, because there was never really a lull during those 2.5 hours so I figured there was no reason to take their fun away by taking a turn myself.  So here's a video I tried to discretely take of the singing.  Pretty much all the singing was behind me so I didn't want to turn around to actually tape the singer, but I guess this way you can imagine exactly what the ride was like for me.  This particular song was in Taiwanese.

All in all, it was quite the trip.  I was glad to get back to Luodong for the rest of the weekend, but I think it was worth the trip.  Definitely an interesting experience.