So, as I said, Jared and I woke up on the Saturday after Christmas and decided to buy tickets to Tawain. We bought them online, took to train to Seoul, and flew out the next morning. The flight was only a couple hours long, and we arrived in Taipei before noon. My childhood friend from my cottage in Canada, Chris, lives in Taipei, and gave us directions to meet him at a temple in the city. After meeting him and Breadon, another cottage friend who was vising Chris from India, we ate a quick lunch at a revolving plate sushi place, and went back to his apartment with beers in hand. Chris and Breadon are part of a hash running club and it was a running/bash day. Breadon left to run, while we drank in preparation for the evening's bash. Around 430p, and feeling pretty good, we left for the bash where we met about 40 mostly guys from around the world, ate some delicious food, and drank more beers. The bash was followed by more bash at a neighboring restaurant, where chants and songs were sung...some more crude than others.
After a fun night in Taipai, we took a train down the east coast and went to a town called Hualien. It was a bit rainy and we found a nice hotel, went to a small night market, and came back to the hotel early for bed. We woke up early the next morning and were happy to find it was a beautiful, sunny, warm day. We rented a scooter and took it up into the mountains along a beautiful gorge. We got out to walk around a few times and check out the huge marble walls. We ended up riding up the mountain for about three hours until it got really cold, had a cup of coffee at a little shop, then came back down. It was a great day, followed by another night of walking around the town.
The next morning, we took another train ride further down the coast to a hot springs resort village called Chippen (Nothing is ever spelled the same in Taiwan, as there isn't an official way to Romanize words, so this place was spelled about 5 different ways...a little confusing). We hiked in a really cool park , although it was cloudy and the lookout wasn't what it promised, then we went back to our hotel which had natural hot springs...and it was hot! We soaked for awhile, while talking to a couple Taiwanse people who invited us to eat dinner with them. They were a group of 6 Canon workers who brought a grill with them and were making a big soup out on the patio next to the springs. Two of them spoke pretty good English; the rest, just a little bit. We had a good meal with them, followed by 3 courses of fruit, and rice cakes. We were very full by the time the food stopped coming.
After our relaxing evening, we decided to go back to Taipei the next day, as it was New Years Eve and we wanted to see the fireworks at the 101 (the second tallest building in the world). We made about 30-40 calls to hotels around Taipai trying to find a room, and finally found one for $90US a night. We took the 4 hours bus ride back up the coast and arrived in Taipai at 7pm. We spent 2 hours walking around looking for our hotel. We ended up making fools out of ourselves by going in a Family Mart and asking them where our hotel was....they looked it up on a map, called people, looked on the computer (for quite a long time), then finally walked outside with us...yeah, it was right next door. It was a pretty nice hotel with a huge hot tub. We ended up getting food and hanging around the hotel until almost 11:30p, before catching a cab downtown. It was completely packed...like thousands and thousands of people. The fireworks were amazing, but only lasted a few minutes. We walked around a bit, checked out some stores, then walked back to our hotel. It was nice to wake up not hungover on New Years Day...like really nice.
The next day, we found a cheaper hotel, which ended up being the best one we stayed in the whole trip. It was huge, with an awesome view of the river, the city, and the 101. We met up with Chris again, got some drinks, then met up with the "bashers" again. The night was over way too quickly, and was filled with way too many drinks. Somehow I woke up the next morning at 8, when we had planned to set the alarm, but drunkenly forgot to. We spent the next 14 hungover hours traveling back to our apartment in South Korea....By the time we got home, we had slept off the hangovers and were wide awake to watch movies...luckily we came home on Saturday evening, and had Sunday to fully recover and get our minds back into school.
We have now been back at school for 4 days, and besides the administration being totally disorganized and telling us today about a presentation we need to do with the kids tomorrow (that neither the kids or us know), it has been much better. I started some new disciplinary tactics that seem to be working, and I have been maintaining a positive attitude at most times.
This is super long, and if you're still reading this, that's very cool. I'll update again soon. Hope everyone is doing well...we miss you all very much! The holidays were not the same without family, friends, and snow.
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