Busy March

So March has definitely been busy; getting into the routine of classes, actually having readings, papers, and studying to do-- all while trying to make the most out of our time here.  Last Friday, a group of us went to the Millennium Hot Springs in Beitou, which was about an hour and a half- two hour trip from the I-House.  For those who are unfamiliar with hot springs in Taipei, its basically groundwater that is heated by an inactive volcano and is arranged to form springs of varying temperatures up to about 115 degrees Fahrenheit.  We enjoyed the experience of the hot springs, although the water got to be ridiculously hot.  Afterwards, we stopped by the Shilin night market for some traditional street food for dinner.  Not having anything better to do, we watched Johnny English Reborn.  When the movie ended at around 11:45, we decided to run over to McDonald's to cure our late night munchies :].

 A cute display at the Xinbeitou MRT station.

 Super cool decorated train!!!

Oyster omelet with sweet and sour sauce.

 Heading home after a long day.

 What super-cool foreigners do on a Friday night :D.

Last Saturday was St. Patrick's Day, and to celebrate our non-Irish roots, we decided to go to an Irish pub called Carnegie's.  We ate some good food and just enjoyed the fun, Western atmosphere there. Afterwards, we came back to I-House, put on some music, and played Uno for a few hours in the TV room. *Disclaimer: While yes, I have been to bars and clubs with the other exchange students, I have not nor will I ever drink alcohol. They've been totally respectful of my beliefs and it hasn't stopped us from having a good time :]*

 At Carnegie's.

This past Tuesday, my Chinese opera class went on a field trip to watch excerpts from two Chinese operas.  Before the show, however, we were treated to a really cool Cirque-du-Soleil-esque acrobatics show. *Please excuse the blurriness... pictures weren't technically allowed but the usher told us that so long as the flash didn't go off, she wouldn't say anything :]*

  Wednesday night called for a few chick flicks with some pretty cool guys. We watched Something Borrowed and Shakespeare in Love. So cute!

From Friday afternoon until Saturday afternoon, the internet in our rooms weren't working so we had to go downstairs to the lobby in order to access I-House's Wifi. Needless to say, by Friday evening, most of us were downstairs and on Facebook. I had a Skype interview for a position back at ISU at 2 PM Chicago time, which translated into 3 AM Taipei time.  Sooo, my wonderful friends helped me to stay up:

• Went to McDonald's for some ice cream and McFlurries to keep my sugar up.
• Played Uno for a good 1 1/2 hours
• Put on Battle Los Angeles to watch in between rounds
• The only other American girl, Sarah, told riddles to keep our minds awake

Finally, 3 AM came around, they went to bed and I had the interview. Crossing my fingers!!

After sleeping yesterday, a few people went to the Snake Alley to try eating snakes while Sarah and I tried to go shopping at Wufenpu which is apparently THE place to go for women's clothes. However, it was drizzling as we were leaving and we instead decided to stay in and watch the rest of Battle Los Angeles with some fruit and ice cream in hand.  Later that night, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant and enjoyed some traditional Vietnamese food.

Ban xiao, basically a pancake with various meats and bean sprouts inside which you stuff with lettuce and mint. Tasted pretty good.
Today, I went to church, caught up with the other YSAs, and stayed for the Relief Society 170th Birthday celebration. Oh my goodness, the food was de-lish and the message of "Blooming where you're planted" really hit home.  We were all given calla lillies and they are beautiful!

 Call it ghetto or creative, at least my "vases" are color coordinated! :]


Now, its just one last full week of classes before hitting up the Philippines next Wednesday! Definitely can't wait for this trip!

Settling In/Creepiest Museum Ever.

So after such a fun weekend in Kenting, it's unfortunately settled down a bit as classes have kicked into full gear. I just completed my first full week of classes, including my 3 hour Mandarin course on Mondays and Wednesdays. So far, we've learned how to write our names, how to introduce ourselves, the 4 tones, and some pinyin. 

"Wo joao Yi Yaping." (My name is Yi Yaping [my Chinese name, minus the tones])

I also started my Chinese Opera class as well as the Geoinformatics course, both of which I never planned on taking but which are actually pretty interesting.  The advantage of taking these exchange courses are 1) the courses are actually taught in English, and 2) you're in small classes with other exchange students. 

Other than school, I haven't really done too much in terms of going out. Although my friend Melody and I went on a few "girly" outings; we went shoe shopping at one of the night markets (3 pairs of shoes for roughly $20 USD!), explored the Living Mall that I had found in my guide book (and spent our money at the arcade games), and got our nails painted. Super girly, but definitely fun.

 Cute arcade game where the balls are blown into the air and you have to catch them and throw them into the pigs' mouths.

 Yummy candy that Melody and I each filled a bag with. :]

On Friday, a small group of us went to the Lin Liu-Hsin Puppet Theatre Museum. Creepiest. Museum. Ever. Now, just hearing the name, I really didn't go in with very high expectations, but oh my goodness. Most of the puppets displayed, while beautiful in concept, were just plain strange to look at. Plus, a lot of these puppets (and thus puppet shows) revolved around death, hell, and clowns. My three favorite things ever...
Still, it was a good laugh and so far I haven't had nightmares.

 These next few are actually quite amusing. They depict the punishments given in "Hell" for several sins and vary in gore depending on the severity of the sin. *Warning: The next few pictures are a little gory as they depict some of these punishments*

 The "Beheading Bell"... don't remember what you had to do to deserve this but I hope I never find out.

 Yeah... apparently this happens to husbands who are bad to their wives go to this Grinding Hell. Pretty disturbing...

 Creepy staring puppets.

The past few days, a group of us booked our plane tickets to go to the Philippines during our Spring Break. It kind of stinks because we don't get a full week off, but I know we'll make the most of our time there. Can't wait 'til April!!!

So now it's back to another week of classes and homework and reading. Fun, fun, fun!

First Week of School/Kenting Trip

Oh my goodness where to begin. This past week was wonderfully busy! Last Tuesday, I started my first day of classes. The classes themselves are pretty interesting and I'm grateful that there is a selection of courses especially designed for exchange students that are taught in English. I had classes from Tuesday through Thursday (starting next week, I'll have classes Monday through Thursday) and I'm taking 20 credit hours. Sounds crazy, I know, but all except the twice-a-week Mandarin course are once a week for two or three hours each. Seeing as how I actually want to learn and take advantage of the courses here, I decided to load up on a few more courses. However, the stresses of registering and adding and dropping classes was getting to me by Thursday, and I definitely needed to get away for a while. So... 

We had our Memorial Day holiday on Tuesday, cancelling classes for both Monday and Tuesday. My professor for my Wednesday class was in a conference that day so no class for me on Wednesday as well. Seeing as how we only have so many vacation days this semester, I organized a group to go on a long weekend vaycay and we decided to go to Kenting. It's located on the southern tip of Taiwan and is known for its beaches and nice weather compared to Taipei. We booked our bus tickets and were on our way to Kenting at 10:30 Friday night. Our bus terminated at Kaoshuing, so we took a taxi from Kaoshuing to Kenting and we arrived there at approximately 4:30 AM. Seeing as how everything was closed, we hung out on the patio of a 7-11 until 6 AM, when McDonald's opened. 

 Leaving for Kenting!

After breakfast, we dropped our stuff off at our hostel and we rented bikes to go to Baisha Bay, a beach about 10 km from Kenting. Now, most of you know that I am not a very cardio-athletic person, but I would usually "bike" about 5-8 miles whenever I go to the gym. Thinking that the 10 km ride would amount to less than 10 miles, I decided to go along with this idea. However, I didn't realize that a majority of the ride was uphill... along the mountains. So the bike ride took us about 2 hours. As exhausting as that was...

 it was soooooo worth it. We spent the next 4 hours or so swimming, snacking, talking and laying out on the beach. The water was so cleancool and the weather was B-E-A-UTIFUL. I couldn't handle riding back so a few of us were able to ride back in a van thanks to a kind Taiwanese woman and her friend. That night, we went to the night market right outside of our hostel and we ate at this Mexican/Italian restaurant. Now, us Americans came in with veryyy low expectations but ended up enjoying our meals for the most part. Being the crazy kids we are, we were all in bed by 9:30 that night :].

The next day, two guys from another group from I-House joined us and we all went to Chuhuo thinking that we were going to see an inactive volcano and ended up with us making popcorn over what were actually natural gas fires.

 Here's the popcorn lady yelling at me because I was doing it wrong...

Later on, we went to an indoor waterpark that was a 15 minute walk from the hostel. Surprisingly, it ended up being a lot more fun than any of us expected. It was pretty empty save for a few families so we didn't really feel like the creepy 20-somethings swimming with 5 year olds lol. There was a lazy river that we all had a lot of fun with, a tidal wave pool that the lifeguard decided to randomly pour "rain" on, a nice big hot tub, and a bunch of water slides. Now, for those of you that know me well, you know that I am pretty accident-prone. Well I went on a slide with the big inner tubes and I'm sure you can guess what happened. The tube rounded a corner too fast and ended up slipping out from under me. I slammed my head against the botton of the slide, leaving quite a huge bump on my head. After we determined that I hadn't gotten a concussion, we all went about our business. After the water park, we went back to the hostel, showered, and got dressed. We met up with another group of I-House students and we all ate at the night market then sat on the beach that night. We then went to a dance club and met some other Westerners and had a blast dancing.

Monday, we went to the Kenting Forest Recreation Area, and more specifically, Sheding Nature Park where we hiked a trail and ended up at this beautiful park where families were playing ball games, flying kites, and blowing bubbles. The trail itself went through some of the most gorgeous places that I've ever seen. At certain parts, you could see the mountains, forests and ocean in one shot. At the end of the trail, there was the Skyward Pavillion, which overlooked the natural part of the Kenting peninsula and oh my goodness, it's now one of my favorite places on earth. That evening, we all freshened up and went to a bowling alley/arcade about a 10 minutes' walk from the hostel. It somehow ended up being a France vs. USA battle and sadly, the French kicked our butts lol. That night, we shared our favorite parts of our adventure and we agreed that we definitely got our money's worth out of the trip.

Tuesday, half of the group left for the morning bus back to Taipei. The rest of us packed up and checked out of the hostel at 10. We then headed for a semi-private beach closer to the hostel where we enjoyed a good 15 minutes of nice weather before it started to rain. After trying to wait it out for about an hour and a half, we moved to a nearby Starbucks where, of course, the weather cleared up. Half of our remaining group remained inside while myself and a few others stayed outside to enjoy the last of the beautiful Kenting weather. We headed back to Taipei at approximately 4 PM and came back at around 1 AM. 

After catching up on laundry and emails, a small group of us went to the Maokong Gondolas yesterday to take advantage of an unusually mild and sunny day. We waited for a gondola with a 'crystal' see-through floor and I'm glad we did. The view was breathtaking and you could see all of Taipei at the top of the mountain. At the top, we walked past dozens of tea houses and a temple or two. 

 A shot of the gondolas.

 My gondola buddies! (Thibaut from France and Kevin from Iowa)

 Taipei

Last night, some of the I-House needed to watch The Karate Kid for a class so it became movie night! 

Now, it's back to classes and work. *sigh* Now its the long wait until Philippines in April :]