Saturday, August 30th

The mammoth Exhibit 

Me, Erin, Dustin, Connie
Taipei 101

Inside Taipei 101

The Riot
The little boy dect out with the swastika flag.. 

Chillin in the bus
The beautiful temple in Taipei

Dusty and me!







Chiang kai Sheck Memorial




Chiang kai-shek's will in chinese characters
                                            A moment that needed to be captured

Good morning Courtney!!!! My alarm didn't go off and we had to be at the train station in 20 min. We were going to Taipei for the day! But we had to be in Fenguong by 10:30. We rushed to McDonald's and got some yummy pancakes, locked our bikes up and ran and got our tickets. Our train was leaving at 10:10 and arriving at 10:38 but we had to be at the church by 10:30. Britta was rummaging through her backpack trying to find jakes cell number hoping he would answer so he could tell the bishop to come pick us up at the train station because we had no idea where the church was. But his phone was off, then Melissa had a brilliant idea and that was to try to find someone with the internet so we could get on facebook to see if anyone was on from the other school. We were so lucky at the information desk in the train station this lady let us use the computer. Lindsey was on and we told her we were going to be late and to tell the bishop to come get us at the train station. It was a lot more dramatic then what I am explaining but this is the short version. As we arrived in Fenguong the Bishop was there and told us to take a taxi over the the church where the bus was. 

The bus was super nice. We had it all to ourselves. We arrived in Taipei 2 hours later. Most of the branch did a session at the temple while the rest of us when to Chiang kai- sheck Memorial. It was so cool. We went to the museum and read about his entire life, they also had the mammoth exhibit there as well but we didn't end up going inside. and after we wanted to go to the peace building. While walking there, there was a riot going on. Everyone was wearing neon orange headbands. We weren't quite sure what was going on because everything was in Chinese. But we put the orange things on our heads and walked around everyone was giving us 2 thumbs up and we had like 50 camera men filming us. It was pretty entertaining. But then we got thinking that we didn't know if we were doing something bad. There were people holding up and american flag with Taiwan on it. We come to find out that the riot was about them becoming there own country and not being owned by China, But us Americans consider them part of China and we don't want them to have their own independence. It was still pretty funny though to see how excited people were when they saw us. 

After we headed back to the temple to meet up with the rest of the branch members and we headed to Taipei 101, the moment I have been waiting for! The love sign like the one in NYC was in front of the building... oh and if you didn't know Taipei 101 is the 2nd largest building in the world and has the fastest elevator in the world. As we entered inside the building i was in complete awwwwwww. It was amazing. Unfortunately we only had less than an hour. So we decided to use our time wisely and go to the top of the building. It was awesome to see the whole city of Taipei. Wow, I still can't stop thinking about it. It was so cool. 

I was a little sad that we couldn't stay longer and explore the whole building, it is just one big mall. We only had time to go to the top and down to the basement were all the food was. I ended up getting subway, I have been yearning for a nice delicious sandwich, it was so good, however we were planning on going to Chili's! I was so stoked when I heard we were going, but we had no time... :( There is always next time though, I can't wait! 

We ended up going to back to Fenguong and sleeping at the other schools place. We played skip -bo and went to bed! It was a great day!

Friday, August 29th

Wow today I have been here for one whole month. I can't believe it. This month is probably the fastest month of my entire life. I thought it would be the slowest, but it definitely wasn't. I will be home in 4 months. But we didn't really do a whole lot after school tonight. I had to stay after and tutor a couple of my students. We got home around 9:00 ish and I decided to get on my hands and knees and clean our disgusting bathroom, wow it was by far the grossest thing I have ever done. But I cleaned it and it looks pretty darn good for how gross it was, its still gross though. It's just one of those things that I will have to deal with. I was exhausted, I tried going to bed but I could not fall asleep like usual. 

Saturday, August 23rd

                                                          The Night Market in Funguong

Train Station
Tai Chung
       This is how out of control the streets are!


        Yes our swimming caps... so sexilant! 

We woke up early and met the other school in Tai Chung. We went through the day market again and just looked around. We didn't really have time to go to the mall... sadly to say. Time flew by so fast. The guys departed from the girls, so it was a girls day in the town. We went to the Goat park again and got some yummy popsicles, they were actually pretty slimy, it was weird but good, anything cold is amazingly great in humidity. We went to the mission home to see if brother and sister Dowse were there, but the only people there were the missionary's we sat and talked to them for a bit. 

      After arriving in Fenguong (where the other school is) we went straight to the spa. Before entering this spa you must wear a sweet water cap. It was so much fun. This spa was amazing. I'm sad I didn't get to take any pictures, but I will for sure next time. You walk in and there are two huge swimming pools with a slide and a little water play ground. then in the back there are like 4 different saunas, a little pool of ice cold water, 2 hot tubs of pure salt water. Then they had a lavender and green hot tub. Then you walk into the spa part they had these beds that you lay in and water shoots up from underneath you and massages your back. They had jets that would massage your butt, thighs, calves, feet, etc. Then they had this one were you hold onto these two bars and the jets are so strong that you just float on the water why it massages your belly or back. It was pretty sweet, it's kind of hard to explain, it's one of those things you need to see. After the spa we went to the food market and got some food, I had a weird crepe thing with chicken in it.

After we ate we went to the other school to spend the night. We watched the funniest Asian chick flick movie. It was actually kind of sad, but with a happy ending... of course. Thats how all chick flicks are usually. Britta and I shared a huge blow up air mattress, we could not stop laughing when we went to bed, I can't even remember what we were laughing about but when we woke up the next morning we were still laughing because she was trying to share my pillow with me through out the night and I guess she woke up in the middle of the night and my entire arm was across her face. ha ha I love sleeping with people you always get funny results. 

Friday, August 22nd

Today was a long day at school, after we decided to make another attempt trying to find the ham fried rice place called Pang ge's meaning fat boys. As we hurried over there, it started raining, we were getting pretty wet, it was really funny. ha! After trying to talk a gazillion of asians trying to find this place, we finally found some high school students that spoke English. Britta and I like to call them our boyfriends, we just like hitting on the Asian men, and they love us... I'm joking if you couldn't tell. As we pulled up to the place.... mmmm... they were closed. We were so sad. So then we sat in silence deciding what we should do. Finally Britta said, "Well I'm going this week if anyone wants to follow." Amy went home and the other 3 of us followed Britta, we biked for quite a long time. We thought we would make one big circle and end up back in our town, but that was not the case. Darren decided to turn back around and go home, while melissa, Britta, and me just kept on going. After an hour we made it back into our city. We wanted to go to a nice restaurant. We made it to a little cafe place, it was kind of cool inside. We saw that they were making waffles, and we wanted some so bad, but literally for 20 min we were trying to explain what syrup was to them and if they had it. We had like 5 different people come up to us trying to understand what we were talking about. And no, no one still could understand what syrup was. We got some kind of honey sauce out of it and whip cream. It was pretty good. But the best thing was... our little band boy. He loved us. He sang and played the piano. He played some Maroon 5 and other English songs, but I can't really remember. It was very entertaining though! And boy oh boy is it awesome to hear a Taiwanesse boy sing! 

Harmelessly holding the umbrella?

             -The Forever Heart-

My 2nd graders making shadow puppets!

Thursday, August 21st

Thanks Darren! He found us a bowling ally! He has  been yearning to go bowling, and he most certainly found one. All of the roommates and our two cute secretaries- Penny and Emily came along with us. Yeah I was completely dogging it the first 2 rounds, but wa la! I made it into 1st place the 3 game with a total of 117, beating a guy kind of ruined his ego, but I guess that is what I do best right? I completely kicked butt! Cause at the beginning I was starving and just wanted to eat some food.

 After bowling it was nice cause Darren Had just gotten a scooter and so we could just putt putt right away. We went to our new favorite place where I have eaten at the last three nights. I get the MOSS BURGER and the MOSS HOT DOG. mmmm So good I'm telling you. They have such little portions here, maybe thats why asians are so tiny. 

Wednesday, August 20th

                                                           Emily, Melissa, Me, Britta

 Hooray we got a new roommate, Melissa, she is Britta's cousin. Sadly to say I'm still the baby of the apartment. 

Saturday, August 16th

The Indian Restaurant on the 13th floor

       Heart shaped rice
        Got love Starbucky's

            Oh heaven...It looks something like this right?

             All the creations.... oh and Darren
   The Club 7-eleven logo
           My Favorite Creations
          The Expo

          The cutest old man feeding the birds

               

                The pointless goat
              The day market

We decided we wanted to get out of Chunghua for the weekend and head over to Taichung, its about a 40 min bus ride, also it is located where we go to church. I was super stoked for our little excursion because we were going to a HUGE mall! Blessing! As we arrived in Taichung it was so so hot, we were just dripping beyond dripping sweat. We decided we wanted to get lost. So we just started walking down streets. We reached this one mall, but it was pretty weird. Every level was a different country. It was kind of cool, but really dirty inside. As we were leaving we ran into the cutest lady from our ward. Her name is Regina and she is from the Philippines. She is seriously the happiest person I have ever met. Out of all people in Taiwan we run into Gina in the weirdest place. She decided she want to come along with us. She took us to a nice park with a huge goat statue. We're not really sure what the goat represents but I guess its cool. Its one of those things where you kind of just laugh and say its a Taiwan thing. After that we made it to this huge day market. It was sweet, this is were all the cheap stuff is. And guess what I didn't buy one thing. Just food and what not. Whoops I lied we met this guy who owns an awesome bracelet shop. He is from Brazil and is a total hippie. He has lived all around the world just traveling and selling these bracelets. Britta and I are a guru of them. By the time I get back I'm going to be covered in them. After a couple of hours we made it to the mall. They always have some kind of huge performance, contest, or some sort of extravaganza thing going on. Today was "Who wants to be on Television!" Boy did I get a kick out of this. #1 contestant- sang, he sounded pathetic, it was hilarious. There were two guy host doing this little t.v thing and you could just tell that they wanted to kick this guy right off the stage. Don't worry all of you fans of Courtney Oldroyd, I recorded this. (Now I just gotta figure out how to download it to my blog) #2 contestant- A group of mini Michael Jackson's. They were ok I guess, they just think they can break dance so amazingly good, but they weren't to bad. #3 (my favorite) contestant- A man and his best friend that was a dog. This dog was amazing, he walked like a human, he crawled like a human, he crossed his legs whenever he was told to, he weaved in and out of the mans legs even in reverse style. He acted dead when the guy would shoot him (the full affect to he would be walking and the guy would shoot him and he would just fall right over, sadly to say I did not get this stunt on my camera, I was kind of angry, but you can only imagine!) 

As we made our way into the mall, I was in complete awwww, yeah I know I'm a fanatic about clothes. This mall was not your typical American mall. Instead of everything in separate stores everything was together and the levels were huge and there was 13 of them. Can you even imagine. They had clothes from the top designers world wide. It was pretty sweet, but also pretty pricy for my budget.  Our favorite store that we saw were purses and they had devils everywhere and the saying for the store was "Made in Hell, Sold in Heaven" we tried taking a picture of it but they got mad at us. But this mall, Im sorry for bringing it up again but the mall was phenomenal I can only imagine what Taipei 101 is going to be like. We found the toy level for kids and of course there was an arcade game, I swear Taiwanese people are such gamers over here and come to find out Darren is such a gamer. He loves them arcade games. Its quite entertaining . 

We then came to the Expo center, weirdest thing I have ever seen. They had all these sculptures or figures of some kind of chinese animation design, it was really interesting, me and Britta were getting a kick out of them. When we were about to leave there was a display with three little monkey's in it. And out of no where I just slammed my hands again the glass, and no the glass was not stabilized. It was moving back and forth making the loudest noise ever, and instead of stopping it, everyone just stopped and stared at me, it was so weird. Then I snapped out of it and stopped the glass and we were all bustin up laughing. I don't know why I did it and it was completely un-called for. We wondered our way up through the mall, I did purchase some converse's, just the original ones. I have been wanting them for a while, and I figured I needed some to go to school and such. 

At last we made it to the 13th floor where we found a great indian restaurant, the cook who was from India and he came out to great us, he could speak English which was nice. This was the first meal that I loved I got Tiki Masala and Nan Bread! So yummy, and the portion was huge. We were on top of the building just eating some amazingly great food and relaxing! What a day!