The Old Street in Dashi.
The kids looking at toys. Definitely not what you'd see at Toys R'Us.
Most of them got these windmill things they thought were pretty neat.
Aaaand back on the bus! This is what all school buses look like here. Ours has the hippo sticker since that's HESS's mascot.
The next day all hell broke loose in class. Before Exercise Time Jimmy shit his pants and had to be cleaned and changed, not by me thank goodness. Then I went into the room to find Kylie, the Chinese Teacher, feeling nauseous and about to vom in the sink. During snack time Sophia gagged and spit up into her plate, and then after Jimmy drank his bowl of milk he stood up only to spew it all over the floor. Messes everywhere! Everyone was sick. Luckily I'm still doing ok.
Then on Wednesday night, Tyler arrived! We went to get him from the airport that night, and brought him to experience "The dumpling shop." He had some noodles, and apparently it was also his first time eating with chopsticks! Thursday we set out for Sun Moon Lake! We took a bus to the HSR (High Speed Rail), then the HSR to Taichung, then another bus from the Taichung station to Nantou, which is the county that holds Sun Moon Lake. About 2 to 2 1/2 hours total to get there. Sun Moon Lake is beautiful. We got there on a Thursday, and since it wasn't a holiday weekend or anything, there were hardly any people. There's not much of a "town" or anything around the lake, just a few souvenir shops, some restaurants, and loads of hotels scattered around the lake. Our hotel was quite ritzy, with touch screen lighting, a Jacuzzi in the bathroom with a flat screen TV, and a little Japanese living room table. After checking in we walked around the shops and took a boat ride across the lake to another area. There were tons of people there, and a walking area with some painted rocks they were all crazy about getting photographed with. Then we had supper at an outside cafe, walked around some more, and then back to the hotel. There isn't much of a "night life" there.
Me with many of the boats at dock.
The view from our hotel room at night, and then in the morning! There were lots of bicyclers out in the morning on the pathway.
The next morning we got on a bus that circled the lake, but made various stops were you could get off, and then back on another bus whenever you wanted. We stopped at a few temples around the lake and walked around to get some good pictures. There was also an area were you can take cable cars up to The Aboriginal Cultural Village, which is actually just an amusement park? Yeah. And that's really all there was on the other side of the cable cars, so we rode them just for fun I guess, but it was a nice view of the whole lake. Tyler was quite frightened by the height.
Going up in the cable car!
Here we rode the train further down south to Chiayi where we would spend the night before heading up to Alishan Mt. early Saturday morning. It was only a half hour ride from Taichung to Chiayi, but then we needed to take a shuttle bus from the HSR to the train station in town, and then a taxi to our hotel. So many different forms of transportation! This hotel was great as well, it's called the Nice Prince Hotel. After checking in here we spoke with the front desk about how to go about getting up to Ali Mt. Originally we had wanted to make it up the mountain in time to see the sunrise. Ali Mt. is well known for having a fabulous sunrise view. However, it takes 2-3 hours to get up to the top by bus, so they said we'd need to leave like 2:30 am. We decided to save the sunrise for another time, and just go up in the morning at a normal hour. The rest of Friday night we walked around Chiayi in search of a restaurant, we took Tyler to a teppanyaki place, where they cook it right in front of you. It was delicious.
We planned on taking the 8:10 bus up to the mountain, but needed to go to the train station to get the bus. It was a bit difficult figuring out where to go, and all sorts of people with vans were walking around trying to harass us about riding with them for a cheaper price. My limited Chinese includes the phrase "buu yow" which means "I don't want" but they just didn't take me seriously. We got our tickets for the real bus, and were off! This bus ride was rather scary. The driver was in some sort of hurry I guess and drove like a maniac! On narrow, winding roads up a mountain with traffic coming down the other lane. Looking out the window you could see so far down, and there wasn't much of an edge to keep you there. I slept off and on, and it was 2 and a half hours to the top.
The bus dropped us off and we went to find the famous little red train that drives you around up there. We took that to the end of one path, and then hiked around on the trails for a while. Sadly we missed the blooming flower season by like... a week. There were maybe 4 trees with flowers still present, otherwise it was just dead petals all over the ground. A bit sad. We also failed to find the view of "a sea of clouds" as the train running to that part was closed, so we weren't sure how to find it. It was a nice foresty area though, so I wasn't disappointed. We stayed up at the top walking around for about 3 hours, then took the bus back down the mountain, back into town, back to the HSR, and then we were headed for home! Side note, Anthony has not disappeared, he just didn't take the days off work to be able to come with us. He's still well and alive!
So many treeeeeees.
Now, Abe had been planning his monthly theme party for April to be held on this Saturday night. We got back to town around 6 30, and it started at 8 30. Since it's April, and Easter just passed, he had an Easter egg hunt in store for us. He painted eggs and hid riddled notes inside of them, all leading to one golden egg at the end. Tyler was tired from just arriving in Taiwan and already doing a lot, plus his flight left Sunday morning at 8 am for Japan, so he opted out of the hunt. We had 4 teams of 4 or 5 people. My team was Greta, Nate, Rainy, and Austin. Oh, and only Greta, Rainy, and I are from Jhongli, and Rainy's English isn't perfect, so I think we were at a slight disadvantage. Our first clue mentioned "A river" so we thought, for sure the bar "The River" that we frequent. Well we went in, no egg, but Jinger was working, so we all had a shot, and set out to the apple store, cause it also mentioned an apple. It wasn't there either, so we called The Master of Games (Abe) and said we didn't know. He told us the bar, but not inside. Ahhh. So baaack to The River (and another shot) and we found it. This one mentioned being lazy, and a bird, clearly The Lazy Bird. Since we took so much time finding it though, they were closing and moping the floors. Luckily the staff there knows us, and Abe had given them the egg to hold, so they let us in and we had our next clue. This one we didn't even need to read the whole thing, and we knew it was at Search. Greta found it hidden under a bench. Well, then we got the call that another team had won. Oh the sting of defeat. There was still one more egg to be found, but everyone decided to go to the bar in the park since it was so nice out, so there's still one more egg out there. I was told it's outside our apartment somewhere actually. Anthony's team won, and it was 50 NT to play so the winning team could have a small prize. They spent their winnings on drinks in the park. It was fun hunt.
Today is now Sunday, and tomorrow back to work from my small vacation. Anthony and I went out for a while this afternoon as I need a new phone card and he wanted to get some sandals. So down the street from our apartment is a laundry mat, there used to be 2. Although we have a washer, we lack a dryer so we bring our clothes down to dry them. We used to like the one on the corner, it was pretty ghetto so no one really went there. Then one day it was closed, and then another day, then we saw them tearing everything out. Then a few days later it opened. As a ukulele store. So random. Anyways today as we were walked home, I stopped to take a picture of it, then Anthony become curious about how much one costs. We went in and he decided he must have a ukulele. There were 2 guys in back playing together and came out to try and talk with us. I think they were pretty amused that 2 Americans wanted a ukulele when I was saying how Anthony didn't even know how to play it. They were laughing, but very friendly. I convinced him to get a colored one. Now Antony has a cute little yellow ukulele and he's looking up the chords and practicing it right now.
