Yingge & Taipei

After the world's largest mango, Christine invited me to go with them to dinner. I wasn't really hungry but I went with them. We struck out at a pasta place that was already closed and then decided on BBQ. When we got to the place, Alex, Carly, Kristen, and Carson were there too so we sat and talked wit
h them. The food was delicious. I had a little bit because each skewer of food is only 10NT. It was super spicy and super delicious!

Saturday, Dannica and I decided to go to Yingge (pronounced yingah). They have a beautifully restored temple there along with an 'old town' and a really prominent ceramic district. So we hopped on a bus to downtown, then on a train. We were pretty proud of ourselves for figuring out the train because it was all in Chinese. I read the schedule and said I figured it out but we were still a little skeptical so we asked a couple people - turns out I was right!

After we got off, only one stop, we pantomimed with a nice young lady who told us how to get to the temple. It turned out to be really cool. Apparently it is the example for temple restoration in

Taiwan. It looked great. We wandered around the temple for a while and then this old Chinese man and woman came up to us and herded us over to a table where they served us up some soup. It was really weird soup - cold, sweet, but it had peas or some kind of beans or something. I didn't really mind it but Dannica hated it. And they were standing over us watching us eat it. I was dying laughing. After I almost finished mine the man tried to serve me more! Haha. They were being really nice in letting us have it I'm sure, but we didn't want it! And the whole time we were eating these two old women were just chatting away with us in Chinese. Like we had any idea what they were saying. Haha.

After the temple we went down to the old ceramic district. It was a pretty cool area. Lots of stores with handmade ceramics, cobblestone streets, horse mounted police. It was cool. After window shopping through the area we headed back home to the dorms. When we made it back we were very proud of ourselves!

Saturday night we had Kristen's going away party at Mimi House. It was a lot of fun and so many people were there! I got to see everyone I had already met, talk to some new people, and meet tons of people! I'm bummed Kristen is leaving so soon after I got here. It has been really nice getting to know her. She is one of those people that you feel like you've already known for a long time when you first meet them.

We stayed there for a long time and then at about 330 I decided I should return home. Because on Sunday Dannica and I went into Taipei. We took the bus again, this time a much more enjoyable ride, and went into the pedestrian area of Taipei - mostly shopping. That area is crazy! It is like Times Square without cars. Thousands of people everywhere and every kind of shop selling all the same stuff! We walked around there but branched out a little bit and found a cool flea market type thing that happens once a month. Next to that was this weird rehearsal or something of people dressed up in costumes and holding snakes and it was really weird.

It started to rain so we cut our trip short and headed back home. All in all it was a good weekend, with lots of walking! So much walking!