Taipei and Keelung

Each day this weekend has begun with sunshine, a boxed lunch, a half hour bus ride, and a museum at a new destination. On Friday, we spent the day touring Jioufen and Keelung beginning our day in the Gold Ecological Park located in the beautiful, mountainous town of Jinguashih. With plenty of historical and natural heritage, this park was the first ecology museum in all Taiwan! 

This park definitively lived up to its reputation, overlooking the ocean between breathtaking mountains that dipped and rose with an untouchable grace. For lunch, we took a bus halfway down the mountain, only to climb hundreds of narrow stairs leading to the streets of Jioufen Old Street, a quaint town tucked away in the mountains. So far, this town has officially become my favorite place visited in Taiwan. Each street sits above the next as if the town was laid out lining up and down tall rice terraces. If you looked carefully while battling the crowded streets of the markets, between the cracks of buildings was a breathtaking view of the entire valley leading to the ocean. We shopped through the crowded streets of town, and I actually found plenty of souvenirs to bring home to friends! As I sat on a bench with my new friends here eating one of the most divine strawberry icecream cones I have ever eaten, I just took in such a great afternoon.

Our next destination was the Bisha Fishing Port, complete with an intense walkthrough fishing market filled with more live fish and seafood than I could ever want to see or smell again! I think Hanah said it best at dinner: “Best dinner ever.. and not because of the food!” J  More shopping and eating followed at the night market in Keelung. Our group split up somewhere along the way, and let’s just say that my group took about a about half mile detour down the river on the way back to our meeting point at the end of the night.

This morning kicked off with another museum: the Taipei County Hakka Museum. We learned the history of the Hakka culture and attempted our best at the games the people of this culture traditionally played. The skies were clear again today, and the sun brought both shine and smiles to our day! We had Italian for lunch and played at the Yingge Ceramics Museum for a couple hours. The museum itself was very interactive and just fun to walk through with its inside and outside exhibits.

The absolute highlight of our day, and probably one for this entire trip, was our mini-ceramics class in the late afternoon. We painted coffee mugs and learned the technique of making pottery pieces with a spinning wheel. Most of us hadn’t played with clay that is fired in a kiln since elementary school! It was great getting our hands dirty and molding some pretty impressive pieces from slabs of clay. I could sit for hours doing crafts like this! Dinner tonight was just a great time all around: great company with great laughs and great food. I am very much looking forward to another overnight trip tomorrow to the beach with everyone!

Espcially last night, I’d like to say a huge thank you to Jesus for Skype and chocolate bars.

View from Gold Ecological Park

Bisha Fishing Port

Ceramics museum

Spinning wheel skills

 

Happy Dragonboat Holiday

To summarize the past 3 days, I can only use one simple phrase: Ah, life is wonderful. Every minute of this trip brings its own entertainment, and I love how the best way our team connects is with laughing and humor. Not only is there no fear or even shyness between us anymore, but I can tell we are all completely being ourselves here. It is both freeing and inspiring doing life together and just taking in all that Taiwan has to offer us!

We finished class on Thursday afternoon and headed straight to Taipei city to work the Judo Tournament at the Taipei gymnasium. We will happily be out of a classroom until Tuesday, as our next couple of days focusing mainly on the cultural side of the trip. We had a delightful dinner in the city, one of the many favorite dishes of the night being Peking duck wraps.

After dinner, we headed to Taipei 101, 2 blocks away from the hotel where my parents were staying in. It was quite the landmark to have them meet up with us! Standing firmly at 1,670 feet, Taipei 101 is currently the largest building in the world! At least until the Burj Dubai opens in September. The elevator of this building got us up to the 89^th floor in 37 seconds. My ear popped about 4 times on the way up and back down! It was amazing!

The following morning came a little sooner than comfortable, and we arrived at the National Palace Museum in Taipei in time for a 90 minute tour at 9:20am. Although my preference would be to wander aimlessly and make my own way around a museum, our guide spoke great English and shared so much history with us throughout our tour. The Palace Museum’s claim to fame is its collection of eclectic, imperial treasures from the Sung, Yuan, Ming, and Ch’ing dynasties. The attention to minute detail in each piece of china wear (now I know where that phrase originated) is absolutely amazing. My favorite pieces, however, were the intricate designs in all of the ivory carvings! This culture knew all too well how patience in artwork yields great beauty and majesty.

We spent the afternoon celebrating the national holiday at the International Dragon Boat Festival! Dragon boat races went on throughout the day along the river, while thousands of people watched from the stands. Traditionally, the festival is a time for protection from evil and disease for the rest of the year, but we just enjoyed every sight, sound, and smell around us! Well… most of the smells. J We walked around the festival for most of the afternoon, tasting some of Taiwan’s finest market food and dancing (yesssss finally some dancing!) while avoiding stinky tofu the best we could. 

Did I mention my parents got this VIP Taipei treatment and got to spend this amazing day with us? Again, the hospitality and genuine care that our hosts showed to my parents all day truly amazed me! If anyone is travel savvy in Asia it is definitely the two of them, but Alice and Joyce (two NTSU students) were so key in making sure my parents made the most of their two-day stay in Taipei with us. With everything that each day brings during this trip, we are all realizing how much time these students put into planning and facilitating each day.

Before dinner, we visited the Longshan Temple, built in 1738 by Fujianese immigrants. We have seen plenty of these majestic temples from afar as they tower over every building and stand out with the boldest colors and dragon decorations around the roofs. It was great to finally go inside one of these temples, and one of this size! Dinner was at a restaurant in Ximenting, one of the biggest business and entertainment cities in the country. 

After enjoying some mango juice with my creamed rice and hamburger meal at dinner, I said farewell to my parents! They were off the following morning to Kuala Lampur for the remainder of the month. The past two days with them could not have worked out any more perfectly, and I owe all my gratitude to the students at NTSU. In these past days of tours and site-seeing, we have had the best weather here yet! My hope is that it carries on into our weekend in Kenting at the beach!

at the Judo tournament

Taipei night life

National Palace Museum

Cristina, me, Becca, and Katelynn

Mikhail and Aya

... we didn't know these children. :)

we see many funny things

Dragon Boat races

Hualien

喂 (hello!)

We moved onto our next lecture on TCM: therapy via herbal medicine. I have always been interested in learning more about herbal therapy but have never had an opportunity such as this! Having both the informative section of lectures each morning combine with hands on activity and practice creates such a wise learning environment: each of the forms of therapy, no matter how foreign from our country, become both tangible and fun!

After much anticipation and a minute hint of cabin fever, we finally left campus, and our host students took us to the city to spend the rest of the day shopping in markets of Taipei and surrounding areas. The amount of people, merchandise, and food that can fit down one long stretch of road is pretty incredible. We were confronted with samples of street food left and right as we took in the variety of colors and smells of the city. We learned how to count in Chinese and ask questions like “how much?” and “Can I have a discount?” My grandmother would be so proud of the display of bargaining skills our team displayed.

The following weekend was pretty stellar as well. Departing at 7am, we set off on a two-day trip to Hualien, a city famous for the greenness of its jade stone and taste of its clams and seafood on the northeastern coast of Taiwan. Our tour guide, Jessie, was so willing to share her sweet heart and culture with all of us; it was the perfect fit for our trip. Through the windows of what seemed like never-ending trains and buses, we watched the landscape change from city buildings to fields and farms in front of a breathtaking mountainous backdrop that rose as high as the rain clouds above. Jessie took us on a bus/walking tour of the most beautiful side of Taiwan we had experienced yet: the Toroko National Park. Hundreds of steps and pictures later, we checked into our hotel and for dinner, we were once again fed like royalty dishes that looked as beautiful as they were delicious. The following morning was even earlier as the day before, and we were up and eating breakfast by 6:30am. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon white water rafting down the Siouguluan River: 24 kilometers of winding water opening up into the Pacific Ocean at the end! We made both foes and allies after almost 4 hours of water wars and joke telling down the river. I don’t ever want to forget the mental picture of this precious little Asian woman who had the last laugh as we pulled our raft to the shore. We enjoyed another hefty dinner meal at the Li Chuan Fish Farm that night. I tried some golden clams and loved them! A much larger collection of photos has finally been uploaded to facebook so you can see bits and pieces of what we have seen, so if you are not satisfied here, go there!

I get to see my parents tomorrow! Which is exciting beyond belief! Trips like these are sometimes so difficult to portray to loved ones back home with only pictures to tell stories for you. But because my parents are spending time in Malaysia this summer for a wedding, Taiwan is just a hop and skip away. It will be interesting to direct them to a place for them to meet our group in the city tomorrow so say a little prayer!

The number of students on this trip is absolutely perfect. With only half of our trip left, I absolutely love how close our group is together and how many Taiwanese friends we have made as well. I am learning so much more than therapy methods and Chinese tradition. God’s plan in choosing each student involved with this program is just perfect, because we all bring such a unique piece of the puzzle here. This trip really would not be the same without one person on my team; I just hope we continue to make the most of our time here and our time together!

We love herbal medicine!The gates Toroko NationalPark 

 Toroko Gorge

Rice wine!

at Li Chuan Fish Farm