第十六個星期：Taipei, Pandas, and More Doughnuts

smhanes88
Dec 20, 2016
5 min read

星期二：I didn't have class in the afternoon again so I went to Lotus Lake to walk around and explore some more than I already had. It's pretty inconvenient to get there, and a decent walk around the lake, but it's nice views all around. I went into a pagoda I had never been in before where you got to walk through the inside pf a dragon to get out to the end of the pagoda. I then went and saw Kaohsiung's Confucius temple, and, though it was closed and I wasn't dressed conservatively enough to go in anyways, it was cool to look at even from the outside. I then found a little island I hadn't been on yet, got stopped by probably 10 separate people telling me how beautiful and pale I was, and then started the long walk back home.

(Kaohsiung City bear in front of the pagodas)

(Spring and Autumn Pavilion)

(walking out to the end of the pavilion)

(Confucius temple)

星期四：Today was relatively uneventful other than the fact that I don't often stay at Wenzao late enough for it to be dark out, but, since I had choir, I discovered that they had decked out the whole school in Christmas lights and had a giant Christmas tree that was also lit up. It was super festive and I loved it (perks of being at a catholic school I guess is that they don't hold back on Christmas...though luckily Christmas is on a Sunday because, while they'll put put all the decorations, they don't like giving any time off).

(Christmas Tree)

(Christmas Tree on campus)

星期五：Today we left for our cultural trip to Taipei. We took the bullet train in the morning and it was much cooler to take it in the daylight, as the last time I rode it it was nighttime so you couldn't really see how fast you were really going. Once in Taipei, we ate at a good American restaurant downtown and then headed to an art district where there was a Christmas market. The Christmas market was ridiculously crowded, so we mostly just went in the artsy shops outside of the Christmas ones. We then got the opportunity to go to the Ministry of Education and meet some pretty important people who helped make special visas for us to come to Taiwan as they generally don't let high school aged students come study. From there a few of us went to Ximending, which is essentially Taipei's Times Square. I finally found dumb touristy stuff to buy and indulged in a fair number of Taiwan keychains and magnets. We also ran across Taipei's LGBT scene where we learned that there would be a marriage equality march the next day that we could possibly join.

After shopping for quite a while, we bought some slightly sketchy wonton soup and then headed back to the hotel where we totally crashed for the night.

(having some surprisingly good American food)

(the insane Christmas market)

(flags outside of a government building)

(visiting the ministry of education)

(picture with people from the ministry)

(shopping in Ximending)

星期六：Today we started off with a walking tour where we first went to see Taipei's famous Longshan temple, then the Bopiliao Old Street, the presidential house, the Chiang Kai Shek memorial at Freedom Square, and then a park dedicated to the 2/28 incident which was a massacre of an unknown number of Taiwanese people back when the Chinese first arrived after being given the island by Japan. During the tour we ran into the equal marriage protestors from the night before. While we didn't have much time, we all got posters and/or flags and walked around waving for a bit. It was pretty cool to be a part of that while in Taiwan; apparently by the end of the day around 20,000 people had joined in.

After leaving and getting another American meal, we headed to the National Palace Museum, which hosts the largest collection of Chinese artifacts in the world (over 700,000) most of which were evacuated from China to Taiwan during the Japanese invasion during WWII, but, once Taiwan and China split and China was going through the cultural revolution, the artifacts were never sent back to China. Though I was super exhausted, the museum was so interesting and I managed to make it through almost all of the exhibits before we had to leave.

Once we finished there, we headed to Shilin night market, Taiwan's most famous, to shop and snack. Once we'd had our fill of snacks and crowds, Becca, Mackenzie, and I headed to the Taipei 101 tower, which for a few years was the tallest building in the world. While we didn't go up, we ate dinner there and then found the nearby Krispy Kreme (yay!) though getting the doughnuts may or may not have caused us to be late for curfew...

(in front of Longshan Temple)

(people visit to pray to the god of knowledge, childbirth, or love)

(Bopiliao Old Street)

(selfie statue in Ximending)

(228 Memorial Park)

(found a rainbow flag tree)

(gate to Freedom Square)

(National Opera House)

(Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall)

(Presidential House)

(in front of the Palace Museum)

(Shilin Night Market)

星期天：Today four of us opted to go hiking with Jenny, Kripa, and the iEARN tech guy Andrew who's really nice and funny. We went to a mountain just outside the city and hiked (actually just climbed like 50 million stairs) halfway up (the stairs got too exhausting to finish) and got to see a pretty good view of the city skyline.

After that, Becca was super nice and accompanied me to the zoo to see the panda with me (Woo!). Though we didn't have much time, we got to see the two pandas a few times, and it made me so happy. We also saw some other cute animals like a tapir, which was my favorite other than the panda.

Before going home, we all bought some last Krispy Kreme doughnuts to bring back to our families. We looked pretty silly going on the train as we were very obviously American with our six dozen doughnuts.

While on the train home, as the sun was setting, we spotted super bright double rainbow, which we all decided was the perfect end to the trip.