A life less ordinary

Before I go back to studying for my Mandarin mid-term I thought I would do some stream of conscious writing and an update:

Many I have spoken to at home say they are afraid to study abroad because they are 'homebodies' or 'they will miss their family.' It really is amazing how far technology has come to make both of those not possible. My life has always been a stable one. I am not ashamed to admit this because I think it has made me stronger in the long run. One of my wishes in my life was to travel, and now I am doing it. I am so happy with the place I have gone and could not have chose a better place to travel to. One of the questions that is always asked by people here is 'Why Taiwan?' This is a very hard question for me to answer. There are so many reasons I came here and I find new ones each and every day. I wanted to get away from America for a bit to see a totally new world. Nothing is more exciting to me than taking myself from what I know and experiencing something totally new. This fulfilled that and gave me more. I never thought I would be learning a language as fast as I am. Granted I am not learning as fast as I wish I could but just to think that almost three months ago I did not even know how to say hello, thank you, and yes. Within three months I have experienced a totally new culture and broadened my mind more than I ever thought I would. Taiwan is a very different country and one that needs to be experienced first hand to truly understand the greatness of a small island that's biggest claim to fame for average Americans is that they create HTC phones.

Having that said here is a little update:

About a week ago Jack and myself went for a hike up Tiger Mountain and had a great time. The hike was really hard but felt great at the top, and had a great view of all of Taipei. That evening we went out to dinner with his father, these nights are always the best in my book. Mr. Chang always has made me feel like family and wants me to know so much about Taiwan, he really does love his country and wants to spread the love. Any questions I have he always wants me to ask, which is nice because I sometimes I have questions that might seem taboo but he allows me to ask and not feel shame in being curious.

Last week we had our spring break, or here it is called Tomb Sweeping Day. This is a day of remembrance for Taiwanese. To put it in the simplest terms, Taiwanese will go to their families graves and clean them and pray for them.  For this most of the international students had planned trips to different areas; some went to Hong Kong and others to spots around Taiwan. My group decided to go to Ken Ting for Spring Scream. This is a festival that is held every year and hosts many beach parties and music from all over the world. We decided to just partake in the free beach parties that were available and just relax on the beaches in paradise.

We took a midnight bus on Thursday night and arrived at 6 a.m. in Ken Ting. The bus was very comfortable and we turned it into a party bus to get ready for our long five day weekend away from the stresses of school. When we got there we all blew off some steam by sleeping for a few hours. A group of two Germans, Martin and Phillip, and myself decided to buy tents and set them up on a campsite to cut down on the price a bit. We purchased our tents for about 500 nt, which is about $15.00. When we started setting them up the price became evident because first my tent broke, then came Martin and Phillp's a bit later. So we decided to get a cabin on the campsite and had the best rest we could have asked for.

Three of us got Ken Ting Boy shirts, totally worth it
1 of the Ken Ting Boy's Ingmar

When we woke up we all regrouped and grabbed some beers and sat near the beach talking into the early morning. Then it was right back to sleep to wait for the next night. The next day we all went to the beach and relaxed for a while just tanning on a private beach of a hotel. The hotel finally caught wind of a bunch of international students at their hotel and asked us to leave. This wasn't a huge problem because we just moved to the public beach. The night brought the same as the last but instead of the beach we checked out a bar.

Our puppy who took over our tent

When we awoke the next afternoon we saw a totally different Ken Ting; the whole town had turned much livelier and and a night market was setting up for the night. Not to mention that we had a visitor who occupied our tent, a baby puppy who would growl at us if we got near but he was so small that he could do nothing and was just very scared, but the cutest little guy. The expected amount of people to attend was around 200,000 but this number seems very large for a street that is about six city blocks. The night came and there were not too many people. We hit the beach for the night and then back to rest up for the next day.

Day three was fairly similar that we went to the beach again and just relaxed. In the evening we went to the private hotel for a beach party. The party was kind of quiet and not much was happening. I meet a great Taiwanese friend Serena and we talked for most of the evening just relaxing by the beach drinking.

Day four was a huge surprise because there were so many more people. This was the official day of Spring Scream starting so many more people showed up to see the happenings of Ken Ting during spring break. Martin, Phillip, and myself decided to go for a hike where we got quite an experience. The mountain we climbed had no path visible so we just climbed freely through the trees and vines. This was the hardest hike I think I have ever done due to the conditions: hot and difficult zig-zagging terrain. We got about 45 mins into our hike when we started smelling something but kept walking a bit further. The smell we had smelled was wild dog excrement and we found this out by the barks that began running towards us. We never saw how many there was but I would guess there were at least four running towards us. Immediately we turned around and ran down the mountain, which took forever to walk up but we were down within 20 mins and finally decided never to go up again.

The mountain we climbed

We ate dinner at a great Thai restaurant and then decided to head to the private hotel that had a free beach party that evening. I decided to stay back and check out the huge night market and see all the different stands that opened up. There were tons of promotions going on and many companies came out to show off. The best show had to be the Svedka Vodka bar that had a huge show going on with music and free shots. It was truly the party experience you see on TV. Along with all the stands there were tons of people all over and some of the best cars I have ever seen racing down the strip. It was one of the craziest places I have ever been. After walking around I went to the beach party we had gone to the night before and it had completely changed. There were a ton more people and the atmosphere was a lot different. Since this was our last night and our bus left in a few hours we just danced and had fun for the last beach party together. The bus brought us back and it was back to reality.

The Foot

The evening of coming back I looked down at my foot and found out that early in our trip I was burned on my foot by candle wax and the burn had become very infected. My foot has swelled up to about 2x the size. This made me very nervous so I made the decision to go the ER. I found out there that my foot had either a second degree or third degree burn that had become infected. They gave me a shot and four prescriptions. Just another experience to check off while in Taiwan.

Now I am just studying for mid-terms and getting worried about my Mandarin mid-term. This is still the most fun class, but is the hardest for me. Tones are really a hard thing to understand but I am slowly getting them more and more.

New food tried: Chicken foot, not too bad all thanks to
my language exchange buddy Yen-ting You