星期四：:The Chinese Language Center was on break for a week, but since we're government scholarship kids, there's no break for us, so our tutors taught our classes in the morning. It ended up actually being pretty fun though as we had one class on aboriginal culture, one on poetry where we all wrote really awful poems, and one class where we just watched a cute Taiwanese rom-com and talked about the culture in it. Today though we spent the whole class learning lots of rules about the game Mah Zhongg and then playing it for a few hours. Though it's always super fun, I was slightly miffed that we played for so long and I never even got close to winning.
After class today all four of us girls decided to go meet Kripa and Andrew, the iEARN tech guy who's really cool, to get some sushi. We went to a place where the sushi rolls come around a conveyer belt on little plates and you just grab whatever you want. It is very much like a sci-fi movie with a never ending stream of sushi circling around the store; it's all super good though. After that we all went to see the almost not Oscar best picture movie "Moonlight" which was really really good, though we did all end up pretty much sprinting home afterwards in order to not miss our curfew. It was nice to kind of have a girl's night out (plus Andrew) since we haven't all just hung out in a while.
(magical sushi conveyer belt)
(seeing Moonlight)
星期五:Today we left for our NSLI-Y cultural trip to Kenting. We rode a bus for a few hours, though with a great ocean view the whole way, and then arrived in the older part of Kenting. We first walked along the old city wall for a while, before getting to an older street to eat lunch. Not many restaurants were open when we arrived, so we ended up having to eat at one that, while it looked good, was actually some of the worst Taiwanese food I've had in a while, so that was fun. We then rode a bus to get to a street that was filled with different entertainment shops. We all went to go go-kart racing, which I kind of hate and also think is silky because according to NSLI-Y rukes we can't ride bikes, swim, ride motorbikes, etc, but apparently go-karts are fine. I rode the first time just myself and drove really slow which was kind of boring, so the second time Liam offered to drive me. I'm not torally sure why I accepted because he was like the fastest driver, but I will say that it was much more exhilarating than when I drove by myself.
From there we all walked to a famous baozi place where they have about 12 flavors to choose from. I got a sweet custard and mochi bun that was quite delicious and a really good cup of milk tea. After that we all went to our hotel where we met a car to take us up into the Kenting forest/cave park. Once there we got to see lots of pretty flowers, explore a good number of little caves, and go up a giant tower to see the great view, all while passing about twenty signs warning of poisonous snakes and bugs. But we didn't see any dangerous animals so it ended up being really nice. We then all rushed back to the hotel because we wanted to be at the beach for the sunset. We didn't have time to change or anything, so we just ran to the ocean and jumped in with all our clothes on. While it was really fun at the time, and the ocean sunset was worth it, we kind of regretted it later when we didn't have any other clothes and our hotel room was covered in wet sand.
We then all spent the evening at the night market. It's pretty big and had a lot of drunk foreigners, but it was still a lot of fun. I ended up mostly with Heather and we got some fries, crepes, real coconuts, and some dumplings. We also got out feet eaten by the little fish which is honestly the best after a long day of walking. After a few hours we went back to the hotel and crashed for the night.
(the old wall of Kenting)
(Liam driving me around too fast)
(eating some baozi)
(orchids at the forest park)
(group pic)
(oh YAY! so many scary animals...)
(view of the mountains with the ocean)
(at the beach watching the sunset)
(eating peanut butter while Heather eats some jelly because quoting Heather "you're the peanut butter to my jelly")
(fish eating our feet)
星期六：Today we all got up early to spend our morning in the ocean. Technically we weren't allowed to swim but were allowed to "play in the water" which is essentially the same thing. Since we got up early, we had the beach to ourselves mostly and had a great time being five again by burying ourselves in sand, riding the waves up onto the beach, and swimming around the ocean. After a few hours we had to go back to the hotel and clean up before going to an absolutely fantastic lunch of Thai food. We then went to see Kenting's famous lighthouse, and then spent our last our just lazing around and napping on the beach before heading back go Kaohsiung. My host family wasn't going to be home for dinner, so once we got back Kripa took me out for some Korean food by her house, which was really nice, and when my host family did get back they brought back a cup of bubble tea for me, so it was a good evening.
(chilling at the beach all morning)
(beach selfie)
(the main street of Kenting)
(Kenting lighthouse)
(the weather started to get scary)
(Korean food with Kripa)