星期二：Today we started the new Wenzao semester which means we all have two new afternoon electives, so I decided to try out two art history electives on Tuesday. The first one went really well as, since we will be heading back to America before final exams and therefor won’t get a grade, the professor said I could just hang out to practice my Chinese and meet some new friends, which was my goal all along. Halfway through the class two girls invited me to sit with them, which was super nice, and they told me if I end up having to do participate in any presentations I can be in their group. The second class on the other hand wasn’t as awesome for one because I was half asleep through most of it, but also because the teacher wouldn’t let anyone talk which, while totally understandable for a teacher, made it hard to meet any friends, so I probably won’t continue on with that one.
星期四：I got to try out my second elective today, a language and culture class, and it was fun because I walked in and half of our tutors were in that class, including both of mine, so they could help me out. I also met to other new nice girls who talked to me some so I’m making some progress on meeting friends. While he was confused as to what I was doing in his class, the professor was also very excited to have a foreigner in his class and decided to ask me like twenty questions during class while only asking the Taiwanese students about five or so. I seemed to do a pretty decent job of understanding and answering most of them, but it was pretty terrifying especially because I kept dozing off.
星期六：We had a four day weekend this week for the 228 holiday, a commemoration of a massacre of Taiwanese people when the Chinese first arrived and the event that sparked the White terror, a period where many were executed and imprisoned out of fear of communism, so my family decided to take me back to Taitung. After riding the train the night before, we all slept in before heading to Cishang, a town an hour above Taitung. We first stopped to eat Dou Pi at a famous restaurant. Dou Pi is made from the film that forms on the top of tofu when it’s being made. They take of the tofu “skin”, dry it, then stick it with a bunch of other layers and fry it. While it both sounds and looks pretty horrifying, if you add some hot sauce it’s actually pretty good.
After that we rented one of those motorized bicycle cart things to ride around the valley in. I actually went here in November with NSLI-Y but it looks pretty different as this time all the rice in the paddies has just been planted whereas last time it was about harvest time. It was really peaceful and fun to ride the cart thing through.
We then had lunch at a restaurant where you could eat inside and old train and then stopped by a nearby lake to look around. Then, at night, we went up to the top of a mountain where they have a café so you can eat, drink tea, and look over Taitung at night when it’s all lit up.
(Cishang rice paddies)
(host family photo)
(a nice reflection)
(cool train restaurant)
(at the cafe seeing the night view of Taitung)
星期天：We slept in again today, and then drove up the coast to a famous eight arched bridge that leads to an old sheep grazing island. It was actually really stormy all day, but we still went and walked to the island. The bridge had a lot of steps, but the view was really nice. There was apparently a lighthouse we could have gone to at the end of the island, but since it was super windy and rainy we decided just to head back.
After that we stopped at a random bakery that was started by an Italian family and only sells bread, which was fine with me as it was really good, and then went to a place called “water flowing upwards” which from the name sounds like some giant waterfall that somehow flows up instead of down, but instead turned out to be a little stream that appeared to be flowing up a hill but wasn’t actually super cool. I don’t know if it’s a weird science or just an optical illusion, but it did at least appear to flow up a s
(bridge to the island)
(another family pic)
(stormy ocean pic)
(the stream where apparently the water is flowing upwards)