第三十八個星期：I Spent a Lot of Time at the Ocean Eating Shave Ice

星期二：Today I met up with my English buddy at Wenzao who I haven’t seen in forever. She was originally supposed to help me find my way around and get settled in, but after the first two months I haven’t really seen her. Since I’m leaving soon, though, she invited me out to dinner. We ended up going to Cijin where, after sticking our feet in the ocean for a while, went to the Cijin night market where we had steamed buns, tomatoes with a special sauce only found there, and fried mochi that tasted just like a doughnut. We then went back and had shave ice at the famous place in Siziwan, and this time I actually got some mangoes. It was a really fun afternoon, and I’m glad I saw her before leaving.

(with my Wenzao buddy)

(sunset on the ferry ride)

星期四：Today I invited my Vietnamese friend from Chinese class out to eat more shave ice with Kripa, Mackenzie, and Becca. This time we went to the place behind my old house that has shave ice that’s more like ice cream. After having a fun time eating together for a few hours, she went with me to the mall to buy a new hat because I left two of mine of the bus (booo).

(eating more shave ice)

星期五： I headed back to Cijin today with Mackenzie, Becca, and our Indonesian classmate. We all went to the beach for a few hours until the sun set and had a really nice time chatting with our feet in the ocean. I had also been wanting to go see the sunset at the beach again sometime and it was definitely more fun with friends. We then went and got more shave ice at the famous place because we were already there, and then got some soup dumplings before all heading home.

(chilling at the beach)

(beach sunset)

星期六： My host family sort of surprised me with a trip to Kenting this weekend, which was awesome. We first stopped off at a big temple that I actually went to with my last family and then had one last bowl of mango shave ice outside the temple which, for the record, makes that my fifth bowl of shave ice in seven days, so I definitely have a problem. From there we went to a place that was supposed to be like a mini volcano where the natural gas comes out of the ground, but really turned out to be a pile of rocks with a little flame and a lot of birds that kept almost roasting themselves in the fire. After that we decided to just spend the rest of the day hanging out at the beach.

I first played with my little sister in the waves and collected cool coral fossils and then broke all NSLIY rules with my older host sister by going on three different tube rides behind a jet ski where we almost flew off like fifty times. I then just floated around with my older host sister and host dad for a while before it started to get dark. It was really fun just to get to play with my host sisters, especially the older one since she’s usually really busy, and have a really chill family outing.

After cleaning off all the sand, we all went out for a really good dinner and then went around the night market for a bit before heading back.

(at the temple)

(the "volcano")

(at the beach)

(with my little host sister)

(with my other host sister and the jet ski driver)

(family pic after playing in the ocean)

(cool rocks from the ocean)

星期天：We were originally planning to go on a hike this morning, but after heading outside, we all agreed that it was miserably hot and didn’t want to hike, so instead my host dad drove us around the southern tip of the island and we got off at different places to see the famous stuff. We first stopped by a giant rock that’s supposed to look just like Richard Nixon’s profile (though I don’t know what his profile looks like so I can’t speak for the accuracy of the rock), and then stopped by a really pretty cove area with a lot of petrified coral. From there we drove to see the southern point of Taiwan, which is some really pretty sea cliffs, and then stopped by a swinging suspension bridge for the last stop.

In the afternoon after we got back home, I headed over to the business district of the city where there’s always a craft market and where NSLIY had a stand to recruit host families for next year.

(lovely ocean view)

(another awesome view)

(some of Taiwan's lovely flowers)

(the cool bridge)

(working the NSLIY booth)