September 20, 2008

The hike begins here!

eww la la! The 2 peace girls and the 1 hang loose girl. Pick your pick :)
Grace, Kitty, and George
I just couldn't stop taking pictures. 
Unbelievable is what this is. 

These spiders are the biggest spiders I have ever seen. Wow it was cweeepy. 
And this would be the biggest green grasshopper I have ever seen. And it so happened to jump onto Britta's leg. 
Melissa just thought I looked really funny in this pose so she took a picture. I was going to the extreme with my pictures trying to get the right angles. 
And this was the biggest leaf I have ever seen. Its like 5 times the size of my little niece Avery. 

And yes, you could say I was profusely sweating. 

The stairs to heaven. 
The foggy view from the top, this is usually how Taiwan is, all foggy and polluted day in and day out. 
At the top of the mountain. 
 Look how beautiful the orchids are!

Kitty has the best facial expressions

The trail through the Gardens. I was in heaven, it was such a peaceful place. 
Can you see it?
Simply amazing! 
Its all about the perfect alignment. 

We were attempting to do the whole L-O-V-E thing as silhouette, but apparently it didn't really work out exactly how we wanted it to. 

I was taking advantage of the cool sunlight... as you can tell. 
We were sweating so bad that my whole arm was covered in these little white pockets filled with water. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen. 
Look at the crevice of my elbow. My whole body looked diseased and this was the beginning of it. Out of all the people of in our apartment me and Britta looked like the zombies. Our skin/body was looking pretty nasty. 

Twilight.... with the fireflies in our midst. dun dun dun

The tea factory. 
Buckets of random liquids. I just liked the pictures. 
Inside the tea factory. 
After they make the green tea they put it on these mats.
The machines that make the green tea. 
The green tea. 
The Pineapple patch. 
Kitty and me infront of a giganguous mirror! 

A man's day of work. 

Yes people live right by the tea gardens. They have such a sweet view, however they live such an interesting life. 
Crap I forgot what fruit this is. But it looks cool... I think its a banana tree. 
The Tea Gardens from up above. 
Look how sad, this dog is in such a small kennel. Nar don't make fun of me. It was sad. 

Everyone that went on the hike... oh and our photographer Melissa. 

The temple at the end of the hike... of course. 

Our din din. 

The Trains

The train going by sooo fast. 
The Tunnel 

Today Kitty's parents are taking us on a nice, long hike in the mountains. It ended up being like a 3 1/2 hour hike. It was the coolest thing. I have never seen anything like this hike. When I was a little girl my oma would always take me hiking because I absolutely loved it especially when we went mushroom hunting. So this hike brought back so many great memories. 

For the first hour it was going up steep stairs on the mountain. And as you can clearly see I was sweating like a pig. My back slowly turned into wings and transformed into a smily face. Everyone loved looking at my sweaty looking back. 

Living in Taiwan I have noticed that asains are all about working out, doing the chi and so forth. They do this weird thing were they stay in one place and swing there arms back and forth for hours. Its so random. And im not quite sure what the purpose of doing it is. At the top of the mountain they had bars and all these work out bars. It was fun! 

Then we ventured off to the Tea gardens. I had never seen anything like this before. Just row and rows of Tea. It was unbelievable. George (Kitty's dad) stopped and bought us all Super Supau's, our favorite! We drank while watching the dragon flies fly in the midst of the air as the sunset was slowing going down. It was beautiful. This is the first time since I have been in Taiwan that I actually got to see the sun. 

We then came across like banana trees, rows of pineapples in the ground, and many other kinds of fruit. It was fascinating to see where all the fruit comes from. After the hike we were all pretty exhausted. We got in the car and went to our next stop which was the "Railway to Galaxy" This is were we ate and got to see the high speed railway train goes by. It goes up to 180 mph. We got all so giddy every time it went by. It was fun. Our food that we ate was ok... the waffles of course were my favorite. Everything else I kind of just swallowed down. 

After dinner Kitty's parents took us through the 2nd largest tunnel in Taiwan. It was awesome to see this as well. How often do you drive through a long tunnel, and no this does not even compare to the one up Provo canyon. I'm just glad our students parents love us so much that they take us on all these adventures and on top of that they pay for everything. It is so generous of these people to do this. It kind of blows me away how much they do for us.