Legos, Church, and the Seaside....

Yup, you got it: Another Weekend. 

Yay!

Saturday morning, I went to Taichung City with Gem, Mountain Man (Hai Chien's director),

 and Alex (a volunteer teacher at Hai Chien who has great English) to a lego creation display.

 Hope you all like pictures, because I posted a LOT this time!

 Taipei 101, the third tallest building in the world that I visited a few weeks back.

Taiwan is very well known for their delicious Bubble Milk Tea!

Now that's just crazy.

Definitely one of my top three favorites!

Yes, this dinosaur is really made out of lego bricks.

left to right: Mountain Man, Gem, Alex, and I.

The Cellos are especially for you, Jem!

Budding lego artists... hopefully not.

Lego sculptures as a life work... I think not.

Sorry, Nathan Sawaya.

 Cool tiger.

I think the sign post shows all the places the display has traveled.

Hum... transporting lego sculptures... Sounds quite difficult.

Lego pictures, that's pretty cool.

After the display, we went to a coffee/cafe' that was started to support a special forest in Taiwan that they are trying to make a national park.

A bunch of the stuff there was made out of wood from the trees.

The food is all apparently organic and natural. 

Isn't this table amazing! 

Dessert: honey cake, coffee jello, and a cookie thing I don't remember the name of.

 Lemongrass Tea. Everyone else had coffee. 

Believe me, I've learned my lesson about coffee.

I had some at a Taiwanese family's house one evening to be polite... Ummm. 

Let's just say I can be kind of scary on a caffeine high. Poor Gem.

She stayed up past twelve watching a movie with me.

By that time I was able to sleep.

Moving on...

We visited an art museum where they were having a performance.

Here, some people are dressed in aboriginal costume complete with

 painted faces do some sort of traditional dance.

Elementary students performing a dance/drum song.

Oh, yeah.... the Lion Dance (as they call in here in Taiwan)

atop some platform thing. 

You can see it better in the next picture.

Ok, that's just crazy...

And then they started throwing candy.

~

By the time we got done at the museum, it was about 5:30 

so Mountain Man generously offered to take us out for dinner.

Oh, boy...

I should have said NO!

The outside of the place he took us smelled like sewage and there were big bowls of food just laying around.

Inside, the food was cafeteria style and lukewarm. Who knows for how long.

I prayed really hard for my food before that meal.

That was just about twenty-four hours ago and I haven't felt sick. Hooray!

:)    :)    :)

Sunday, I visited a church in Dajia. I was especially excited because when I first got here 

I didn't know of any churches. It was really great being

 able to get to know some other Christians that live in the same area I do!

Gem, Me, Michelle (who translated for me), and Sandy.

After the service we went out to eat at Mos Burger with a bunch of other people from the church.

Black tea, fries, and beef in a rice bun.

The music in the restaurant was a bunch of pretty hymes and they told me the guy who owns this branch is also a Christian. How cool is that!

Sandy, from the church, took me to the seaside and I walked along 

the sandy beach by the sea for the first time EVER! 

I have been wanting to do this since the very first day I got to Dajia, but the lady from my HCT sponsor group told me I wasn't allowed to go there alone and Gem had little interest in visiting the beach.

But I finally go to do it!!!1

Here I am with Ace, Barbie, and Daniel.

Notice that way in the background under the striped umbrella is a Foreigner!

I have actually seen several of them over the last few days.

I love staring at them like they're some kind of oddity and whispering "waigou ren" 

(foreigner, in Chinese) to whoever I'm with.

Yay! it's the beginning of mango season!

Notice that it's a lot smaller than a "regular mango."

That's because it's one that hasn't been hybridized.

Delicious!

Mango, Banana, yogurt, and flax seed smoothie.

Hey, I think I deserve to brag about part of my dinner a little after what I had to eat last evening!

~

Yeah, so that was a Loooong post. I hope you all liked it!

I know I've been posting about nothing but my weekends lately, but I'm still planing on doing one on my schools sometime in the (hopefully) near future. I didn't forget!

My Eighth Weekend

Friday afternoon Gem and I went with Mountain Man hiking on the mountain again.

We took a different trail then last time so here are some pictures.

A picnic/barbecue area.

The little shelter things over the tables are pretty interesting looking.

The view would have been a lot better had it not been so cloudy.

However, I think it was worth it to have a cool day.

The day before, the thermometer in the apartment read 82 degrees.

A sad deserted gazebo.

Again, if it wasn't so cloudy, you could see a pretty sweet view through the trees in the back.

Always lots of stairs!

Some cool person who did some amazing thing, I assume.

If you look very closely you will see a bridge far below through the fog.

The walk back to the car wasn't so scenic.

I saw at least ten stray dogs on the way back. 

Mangey, half fed, poor, miserable mutts that they are.

Thankfully, I haven't met any vicious ones... yet.

We went out to dinner afterwards and this poster was hanging on the wall.

I see they appropriately used a blonde for the picture.

Saturday afternoon I went over to the Huang family's house to hang out.

Here, everyone is playing dodge ball.

Willy throws and Abby dodges while still holding their dog Money by the leash. 

I went to my co-teacher's house from my Friday school. Her daughter Sandra (in the blue shirt) had about ten of her Junior High School friends over to meet the "foreign teachers."

"Jeremy Lin, Obama, and Michael Jordan" had quite the sense of humor.

We got to have a bunch of different Chinese dishes and Pizza Hut for dinner! 

~

Sunday, I went the church in Taichung City with Laura, Nick, and Josh from the Nantou team again.

Laura has been in Taiwan four (?) years now and translated the sermon for those "less experienced" in the Chinese language among us. Afterwards, I went out to lunch at a MEXICAN RESTAURANT with the Nantou team and a bunch of people from the church. Yes, hadn't had Mexican food over two months so bare with me for a moment.... It was sooo good! Ok, I'm done now. 

Anyway, that was my weekend.

I'm hoping to do a post on school and my students sometime in the next week or two for all you faithful blog readers who bare with me post after post as I write about weekends and food. haha.!

~

Wow, I just looked at my calendar and figured out that this is my eighth weekend in Taiwan. Aha! now I have a blog post title!

~

Day 55/154

Yes I admit to the fact that I count the days.

  ~                                                                  

                       If you have any suggestions for a post topic let me know in the comment section!

1/3rd Of The Way There!

Wow, today is my 1/3rd of the way done with my time in Taiwan! 

I have 154 days altogether.

Today is day 51! (I decided not not to count the last day since I would have to divide it in three!)
To celebrate, Gem and I went to the nearby city of Dajia to explore.
We went to an awesome stationery store.
Found a new grocery store that we like better than the one we have been going to.
(It actually has peanut butter, not that I need that now, haha)
I ordered dinner from one of my favorite food stands and while I was waiting, it started pouring rain. Of course the "foreigners" had forgotten their umbrella. Well, suddenly the person at the stand pulled out an umbrella and told us to take it. It was really raining hard so we accepted it with many thanks, then rushed to the nearest 7-11 and bought umbrellas so we could return the one the people at the stand had given us.

I brought my camera with me but somehow forgot to put the memory card back into it, I took these pics at the apartment when I got back.

Here's a Taro milkshake I got from a drink stand along the way that was absolutely delicious!

~

Well "happy 1/3rd of the way there" to me!!!

Taichung City

Taichung City "the big city" about an hour by train from Dajia. It's sort of a central location for meeting the other teams in the area and hanging out. I spent some of my weekend there so I thought it would be an appropriate title for my post.

                                      

Friday was Gem's birthday so do to a lack of having wrapping paper, 

I used some colored plastic bags to wrap her gift. Ingenuity at it's best!

This is the Dajia train station dog, or at least he's always hanging out there.

He's always so pitiful and sad looking all the time. :(

Saturday morning we headed to Taichung City by train to meet up with members from two of the other teams from the area to go to "America, otherwise known as Cosco."

Mango Shaved Ice. 

It's a little bit like ice cream but icyer (in the literal sense of the word) with extra toppings.

Yummy!!

~

Haha. Yeah, I know that's a really big jar. But Cosco isn't known for it's small sized items.

Sadly, peanut butter is one of those things that's hard to find in Taiwan so Gem and I snatched up this opportunity to have some American comfort food.

Yes, we will be sharing this jar.

It's in the fridge because I don't want to share it with the ants too.

Matt, Mary, Peter, Kelli, and Gem.                                                         

  American Pizza at the food court.

Taiwanese pizza is a thick slab of bread with some cheese sprinkled over the top.

                                It was a fun but long day. Taichung City is a big place and waiting for
                                              and riding buses can take up quite a bit of time.

~

Now, on to Sunday...

Gem and I went to church with the Nantou team in Taichung City (that's where it's all at!). We all took a bus  but still had to walk several blocks in the rain to get to the church. I would have enjoyed the rain more if I hadn't been thinking of the old wives tale about acid rain making your hair fall out. Rain just isn't the same over here, ya know. 

My favorite part of every church service I've attended in Taiwan so far has been the singing. I love hearing the English and Chinese as it blends into one melody as everyone sings the hymns together. It's really cool. After the service, we went out for lunch at a restaurant called "Hawaii 51" afterwards. I got a BBQ hamburger that was sooo good. 

Me, Riane, Nick, Tim, Laura, and Tim.

Here we are afterwards. The restaurant had all these weird things 

you could dress up in to get your picture taken.

Hung out with Gem at the mall and got Cold Stone banana

 chocolate ice cream before heading back to Dajia.

Gem and I discovered this drawer in the kitchen area just the other day. We went a little overboard in our excitement and actually started screaming and laughing. It's a good thing the repair shop below us was closed for the evening. Hehe. No more flipping eggs and pancakes with spoons. Hooray!!!

Happy Monday, everyone!

Hello Taipei!

This last Monday, Gem and I headed up to Taipei (the capital of Taiwan) for a three day teachers meeting held by HTC, our sponsor group.  

~ 

Afterward, we spent Thursday and Friday sightseeing around the city with two of the other teams!

The meeting was great, despite the lack of enthusiasm shown in this picture.

 Monday evening a bunch of us went to one of the many night markets in Taipei.

Taipei - notice the mountains in the back round.

                                        A group of us took a gondola up to one of the mountains.

                                              Definitely one of the highlights of my week!

An amazing view from the gondola.

We got to do some hiking at the top.

Here's a picture of a very cool modern bridge I visited.

I really have no idea why it's called the Love Bridge.

There's always room for a selfy!

Another highlight of the week was visiting Taipei 101.

The world's 3rd tallest building!

   

                                                     Equipt with the world's fastest elevator.

The observation deck didn't open until 11:00 so my team mate Gem suggested some trick photography.

Sadly, it was cloudy and rainy when we reached the top. 

Guess that elevator wasn't quite fast enough. lol

Check out that huge awesome world globe.

Obviously I thought it was really cool.

                                                                           Taiwan!

I was really excited when I found an Indian food restaurant inside the mall.

Don't get much of that round here!

One last picture of Taipei 101

I also visited this other famous memorial place that I don't remember the name of. Hehe!

Here are a pictures I took there.

This building held a very large statute of the first president of Taiwan.

pictured below

The changing of the guards, which happens every hour, yet is still a very elaborate ceremony.

So I had a very fun and crazy busy week in Taipei. 

It was great meeting and getting to know the other teachers while gaining advice and encouragement in the teaching aspect of things.

However, it's definitely nice being back in Dajia again.

~

Thanks for reading!

 I hope this post wasn't too boring.