The best start to this blog would be with the heart-warming start to my week. Seeing as last week was my birthday, one of my classes (a while which I teach only one day a week) took it upon themselves to arrange a party to celebrate. They approached me last week and asked if we could have a party during class (because their other teacher told them they needed my permission first), and when I said "yes" they took it upon themselves to assign jobs for the party. The students arranged to bring drinks (soda and yakult), snacks (chips and crackers), and candy (chocolate and jelly), as well as balloons and gifts for me. I have some great students!
 |
| Celebrating my birthday with a party thrown by CEI11 (they forgot to look at the camera after throwing the balloons) |
I'd love to think I will keep this brief, but I have a lot to talk about this week. I have spent the last five days dragging my parents all over Taiwan (well, the west, north, and east coasts at least), making sure they get the most of their time here. I took my first chunk of time-off in 9-months and started the "Parent Tour" of Taiwan with a High Speed Rail trip to Taipei on Wednesday. It isn't every day that I would call traveling 1/4 of the way around an island an "easy day", but on reflection...it was. We arrived in Taipei in the early afternoon and found a hotel right outside of Taipei Main Station next to the 2-28 Memorial Park (home of the not-so-famous 'aquatic rat' (because it is so hot in Taiwan, the rats go swimming too)). We got a tour around the city by one of my favorite locals (a friend who moved to Taipei a few months ago), ate dinner in a Japanese restaurant, and got a birds-eye view of the city from the top of Taipei 101.
 |
| My parents and I made it to the top of Taipei 101. |
Day two was dedicated to history-based sight seeing. We started our morning at the National Palace Museum, which is the national museum of Taiwan, showcasing a collection of near 700,000 pieces (many of which were brought from China during Chinese Civil War) which span in ages up to 8,000 years old. The museum has a variety of carvings, paintings, rubbings, coins, textiles, etc. which are so great in number that they are in a display rotation because there isn't space for everything, and fill multiple floors of multiple buildings. We didn't discover until the end of our museum trip that we hadn't even entered the main building yet (that will have to wait until a future trip for me). During the evening hours we moved on to the Longshan Temple which was built in the 1700s but was partially destroyed in both of the World Wars and had to be repaired. It is a popular destination for Buddhist, Taoist, and folk deity (like Matzu) worshipers. The Longshan temple is at the outside of a "tourist night market", which obviously gets it's name to draw travelers but I think we were the only foreigners present that night and the formerly infamous "snake alley", an area known for snake charmers and meals made from snake meat. While we didn't partake in any snake soups, we did enjoy a seafood dinner in the night market.
We left Taipei on day three and took a train East to Keelung. This was my first trip to Keelung, but there isn't much to be said about this city. It is very busy (and the traffic is possibly worse than Taipei's, though that was more likely due to poor street planning around the harbor and train station areas than due to the drivers or population. Keelung is one of the largest ports in Taiwan, and is one of the rainiest cities in the country (though we got lucky and were not rained on during our stay). From Keelung we were only a taxi ride away from our day-trip destination, the geopark in Yehliu. As I mentioned during Chinese New Year, Yehliu is known for its oddly-shaped rocks (like the iconic Queen's Head rock) which are known for being narrow at the base and wider at the top due to the rocks' varying hardnesses. Once again, we finished the evening with a seafood dinner from a night market (what can I say, we are creatures of habit, and this habit of mine imprinted on my parents immediately).
 |
| Dad and I, climbing the cliffs above Yehliu Geopark. |
The only word I can think of to describe day 4 was: ridiculous. The goal of the day was simple: jump on a train or bus and travel south along the east coast to Hualien. Unfortunately, though we attempted to get up and get on the road early, our lunch and my photo-taking adventures caused a complete change in the day's plans. What was presumable only a short time before we arrived at the train station (probably during the 10 minutes I spent wandering around the harbor taking pictures of boats and the Statue of Liberty behind McDonalds) there was an accident at the Keelung Train Station. Just as a woman stepped onto it, one of the footbridges used to walk over the train tracks collapsed and sent her falling to the platform. She had only minor injuries, and thankfully no trains or people were under the platform at the time, but the accident delayed incoming and outgoing traffic for the rest of the day. The next best solution would obviously have been to take a bus south, but no buses run directly between the cities, so we took a taxi to the nearby city of Qidu, where were were told we could take a train (that would bypass Keelung), but we had to board it at Badu, then when we reached Jiaoxi I failed to realize that our "transfer" tickets were for different seats on the same train (but I assumed they were for a different train, so I convinced everyone to leave the train, run to the next platform, realize my mistake, run back to the first platform, and watch our train depart without us. That gave us the chance to spend an unintentional (and frankly, unwanted) hour in Jiaoxi. We finally reached Hualien, and settled in for the night after nothing but a short scooter tour around the city.
Our last day, today, was all travel. We started with an early morning on the road with our scooters, making the hour-long journey to Taroko Gorge from Hualien City. Once again, as mentioned during Chinese New Year, Taroko Gorge is a gorge carved into a marble mountain by the Liwu river. It is considered one of the must-see sights of Taiwan, and is home to the picturesque Eternal Springs Shrine - a shrine built with a waterfall flowing under it, meant to commemorate those who died while building the cross-island highway through the gorge many year ago. We then raced back to Hualien City to pick up our luggage and go to the train station, only to realize that we were doing too well on time and had two hours to wait. So we waited...in a hotel, in a restaurant, in the train station, and then on a train, for 7 hours, because that is how long it takes an express train to get half-way around the island. The train ride was a bit long, but we all kept ourselves entertained, for the most part, with sleep, reading, work, or in my case, pretending to have an angry bird battle with the small Taiwanese boy sitting across the aisle from me (I think I got him in trouble with his mom on multiple occasions for being too loud because he was too enthusiastic about our game). What is an "Angry Bird Battle" exactly? I wouldn't have known either, but it turns out it is pretty easy to do, even if both parties speak different languages (the conversation could be summarized by him informing me "Wo buyao ge ni" which means "I don't want to give [them] to you", and me saying "Weishenme?" "Why?" and "Wo yao" "I want [them]"). The game involves a lot of throwing, catching, shrinking, and growing of invisible blobs, a back-and forth of vocal noises (somewhat like animal noises except that most of these animal species would be unidentifiable), and sporadic use of English letters, numbers, and colors. Come to think of it, I think might be easier to learn as you go, I definitely recommend it for your next 7-hour Taiwanese train adventure.
And now, here I am, back safely from that exhausting adventure, and I'd like to note these things:
*Taiwan is a beautiful country, especially the east coast.
*Trains are such a efficient method of transportation in Taiwan, it is a shame that same concept doesn't apply equally well to the US.
* While my Chinese is not that great, it managed to get us a hotel every night, food for every meal, travel around the cities/country, and directions when needed. I'm feeling pretty good about my minimal knowledge in this language right now.
 |
| My parents, showing off their scooters before we explore Taroko Gorge. |
No comments:
Post a Comment