Last Saturday we spent the day in Taipei. The branch chartered a bus and we left Fengyuan around 10:30. The drive took a couple of hours, but the scenery along the way was amazing. Mountains on both sides covered in green. I don’t think I have ever seen so much green. Here we are on the bus.

We spent most of the afternoon at Liberty Square. At one end is the National Concert Hall and National Theater and at the other end is the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. The whole park is enormous with massive gardens, ponds, open plazas, etc.

In the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, there are guards that have to stand completely still on a little platform for an hour. At the top of every hour they have a big changing of the guards ceremony.

After spending several hours wandering around the vastness that is Liberty Square, we got back on the bus and went to Taipei 101. It is the 2nd tallest building in the world (It was ranked first until just this year). There is a large shopping mall next to the building that we ate in. I ate subway…. Sorry, I have eaten a lot of the local food here but Subway just looked really good. We were going to buy tickets to go to the top (It costs about $12.50 US, cheaper than the Stratosphere), but the wait was 40 minutes and we had to go. Next time I am in Taipei I will go to the top. So we just spent the rest of the time walking around and taking pictures of the building.

On Sunday I went with my friend Thomas and his family to the Dajia river. I can’t remember if I have mentioned Thomas yet… Every Friday morning I do a cultural exchange with a man named Thomas. I teach him English (He already speaks very well) and he helps me learn Chinese. His wife also always makes us lunch. Fridays are our official day when we sit at his house and study, but he likes to take me around and show me other places during the week or on the weekend. So, he invited me to join his family for a trip to the Dajia river, the 2nd largest river in Taiwan. We found a little spot on the river and swam around for a couple of hours.

After we had our fill of sun and water, we went to a Taoist temple nearby in the mountains and ate lunch. Most (if not all) the temples here serve free meals from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm for anyone who wants to come. It was really good food served buffet style. After we ate, we walked around the temple. Not only is the temple itself amazing, but it is tucked away up in the mountains so the surrounding area is also gorgeous.

Thursday night I met up again with Thomas to go swimming at the local pool here named Diya. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures because this is not your ordinary pool. It is all indoor. It has 2 50 meter swimming pools (one with warm water and one with cold water), an area with a good size water slide, several steam rooms and saunas, a few hot tubs, a few ice water tubs, and then a giant spa area that has about 20 different kinds of water jets. Some shoot down from above onto your neck and back. Others have a place where you can lay down and they spray the back of your legs and back. Others are for your feet. Others just for your legs. The area is decorated with cool looking stones, plants, and palm trees. It was very relaxing. Thomas goes there almost every night and introduced me to the owners, the swim coach, the lifeguards, and a bunch of the regulars. I swam laps for awhile (I am really out of shape) and then Thomas and I tried all the different areas of the spa. This is a place I will for sure be going back to. It is only about a 15 minute bike ride from where I live.

To round out the week of adventures, today I went with Thomas, his daughter Lily, and Lien (another teacher here) to Sanyi. It is a city famous for wood carvings. We first went to a Buddhist temple and ate lunch (again, the lunch is free), but I made a donation to the temple because I think it is great what they do. They also have hundreds of volunteers who cook the food, serve the food, direct traffic, tend to the gardens, and everything else. The meal was a little different at this temple. It wasn’t buffet style, you just went up to the counter and they served the food into your bowl. It was a noodle soup and you didn’t really get to pick what you wanted in it. It was good though. They serve thousands of people each day. As we drove up, they had hundreds of giant bowls and buckets in the parking lot drying and 40 people or so washing dishes, pots, buckets, etc. I don’t have any photos from inside the temple because they prohibit photography inside. Here is a picture of some little statues and the temple in the background.

After we ate lunch, we walked around Sanyi. We went to a place with funny statues and then walked down the main street. There are many different shops with intricate wood carvings, solid wood tables, and everything else wood. All the wood smelled really good.

This weeks adventures are in three different photo albums Taipei, the Dajia River, and Sanyi. You can get to the albums by clicking on the previous links, clicking on the pictures in this post, going to the Taiwan parent album, or clicking on any of them from the dropdown menu on the top navigation bar.

We first went to a Confucian temple which was really cool. It wasn’t just one building but had several buildings full of old stone tablets with Chinese writing, bells, drums, and other cool things.

After the Confucian temple we went to a pretty cool art museum/gallery that had a bunch of water colors. As we walked down the street I saw a building that looked like it had some kind of exhibit inside so we went in and it was the Museum of the War of 1895, a war between China and Japan. The museum was in these cool little tunnels, a very cool place.

After the museum we went to Buddha park. The park is known for the giant Buddha statue at the top of a decent size hill that overlooks the city. There are a ton of water fountains and little streams connecting the fountains all over. There was a bunch of kids playing in them and we decided to join them. Lien got a little wetter than I did.

We spent most of the day exploring all the different parts of the Buddha park. There was a huge temple, trails everywhere, a Koi pond where I tested the tilt-shift feature of my camera, and much more. We also ate some grilled squid and it wasn’t too bad. Of course we made sure they didn’t put any five spice on it.

We wanted to stay at the park and watch the sunset from up on the hill. The park is also supposed to be lit up pretty cool at night but we didn’t stay until it got really dark. On the walk balk to the train station we saw the Spaghetti House. We ordered a tomato sauce chicken penne dish and a White sauce baked salmon pasta dish. The chicken one was alright but the salmon dish was amazing. Some of the best pasta I have ever had. The place was pretty expensive, but it was really good. The restaurant was nice and had live music.

As always these photos and many more can be found in my Taiwan photo album. This adventure is under Changhua.

It was a petty short train ride. Maybe 20 minutes? While everyone else went to church, me and Lien went exploring around the city. We didn’t really know what kind of things to do or see so we spent most of our time in a gorgeous park. One prominent feature of the park is a giant goat statue. It has two mountain goats in a little mountain, all made of metal

The park also has a massive pond/lake full of ducks, turtles, and fish. It is divided into several sections with beautiful bridges and there is a large fountain and even a lotus flower garden in one corner. You can rent little rowboats and row around the pond/lake but it was a little more than we wanted to pay.

For lunch we ate some fried chicken from a street vendor. They put some spicy powder on it that was pretty good. They also put the infamous 5 spice powder that they put on everything here which isn’t very appetizing. The is a very distinct smell when you walk through the streets of food vendors and I didn’t realize until just barely that it is from this 5 spice powder.

Tomorrow is my first day of teaching. I will have my two elementary classes. I think I am as ready as I can be and the rest will just come with practice and as I do it. As usual, all the pictures in this blog post and more can be found on my photos page. I made a new album (since Week 1 is over) called Taichung

When we were leaving the park we say the sun was setting and it looked really pretty so we decided to try and ride really fast to the bridge and gorge to get some pictures of the sunset from there. By the time we got there the sun had mostly set, but we still got some nice photos.

This first picture was taken on the way to the bridge. The sun was going down fast and we wanted to get at least one or two pictures of the sunset in case we didn’t make it

We made it to the bridge and gorge but the sun had pretty much set. It only looks light because of the really long exposure time on this picture. The picture turned out really good though.

Here is the bridge we rode across. I don’t think I mentioned before, but some day (I think on Thursday) some of the old teachers went out with us on a bike ride and showed us a cool bike trail. One of the trails leads to this bridge and on the other end of the bridge is one of the longest tunnels in Taiwan. It was used for handcarts but now is a bike/walk path

Then we decided to take a bike ride downtown. There is a main road that does a circle around the entire city and we were going to try to ride around that one, but we went the wrong way. We ended up just riding straight down one road for about an hour. It is really pretty at night with all the colorful signs and lights. There is also a lot more traffic on the roads and people all over the shops. The town is really alive at night. The only bad part is all the exhaust fumes from scooters and cars that I breathe while I bike around.

One of the first days here we all went riding up a mountain road and did a little hike to a waterfall (I need to get a copy of some pictures of the waterfall because I didn’t have my camera). During the bike ride we met a guy who was riding up the mountain too. He had a really nice bike and was dressed in bike gear. He helped one of the girls put the chain back on her bike that had fallen off. He talked to me for a bit and even gave me a push up the hill. Well, last night he was driving in his car and saw us riding and pulled over. He invited us to go biking with him the next day

So this morning we went back up the mountain road at 6:30am and saw him. He gave us some cool little lights that flash to clip to the back of our bikes so we can use them at night and people can see us. He is a really nice guy. Every morning he bikes up that same road so the next time I am going to try to get his email or phone number. The scenery from the mountain road is amazing

After he left, we went back to the place that had the waterfall but took a different trail. There is a cool little stream. We saw a crab, and some some huge Golden Silk Orb-weaver spiders that were larger than my hand. There was also a smaller one eating a butterfly. On the way back we even saw a snake.

All these pictures and more pictures from the last couple of days can be found starting on page 5 of the Week 1 photo album.

on Tuesday we went to the night market. It was pretty small and was supposed to be bigger on Saturday night. They have tons of vendors (food, clothes, music, toys, etc.) and carnival like games.

Wednesday morning we went to a morning market that was much larger than the night market. It took up a few blocks and had vendors of everything imaginable. There were a lot of interesting food for sale like the chickens below.

Wednesday night we went to a huge mall that sold really expensive American brand clothes and things. Most of us only spent about 10 minutes walking through the mall and got bored of it (it looks like a normal mall) and went around the different stores down the street. While out Lien, Allison and I decided to try our hand at some food from the street vendors. At one place we were trying to ask them how much some things were and I guess they took that to mean we wanted some and started to cook up some mystery meat on a kabob then put sauce on it. We had no clue what it was but later found out it was chicken esophagus. We bought some sushi at another place and some of it had some more mystery meat in the center. We found out the next day that that mystery meat was pork fiber. The chicken esophagus wasn’tall that good but the sushi wasn’t bad.

There are a lot of clothes and signs here that have English on them but a lot of them don’t make any sense. Many people speak what is called Chinglish, which is when they speak English but apply Chinese grammar to sentences. Below is one example of a shirt that makes no sense. It is supposed to say “Don’t talk back”. There is another example in the Week 1 photo album.

Tonight we went to the cultural center, or at least the building next to the cultural center. The actual cultural cenrter wasn’t open, but I think the building we went into is part of it. Inside they had a library, a place for weaving classes, and a cool little art gallery with Chinese script.

All of the above pictures and many more from this exciting week can be found in the Week 1 album.

I finally arrived in Taiwan. I actually got here a couple of days ago, but I haven’t updated my blog or uploaded any photos… until now!

The flight was really long but I had about the best seat you could expect. I had an isle seat somewhere in the back but then traded with a guy because he wanted to sit next to his girlfriend. I ended up right behind the bulkhead that separates the business class from economy. There were only two seats there when there normally is three. I also had a bit more leg room. The only down side was that I like to stretch my legs under the seat in front of me, but I couldn’t do that.

Once we arrived in Taipei, we had to go through immigration, find our luggage, and then buy bus passes. Luckily there were some people who spoke English and could help us out. We had to ride one bus for a bout 30 minutes to a central bus terminal, and then transfer to another bus which took us to Fengyuan. The total ride was about 2 hours.

I live on the 4th floor of the school. Since I am the only male teacher working here right now, I get my own room. The rooms are huge. We were also assigned bikes and have ridden around the town trying to explore and figure out where things are. Because of the time differences (14 hours ahead of Utah) we are all waking up around 5:00 am so we go out for early morning bike rides around town

This morning we went to the hospital for medical examinations in order to get our work permits. We had blood drawn, chest x-ray, vision test, blood pressure, height, weight, and temperature. Speaking of temperature, when we came into the airport they had a quarantine desk setup with thermal cameras and they scanned everyone as they walked by to see if they have a fever.

This afternoon I got my class schedule. My first class doesn’t start until 1:30 in the afternoon and I go until 8:50 at night most nights. I am teaching mostly older advanced kids. The youngest class I have are 7 to 8 year olds. I teach two writing classes as well. I am teaching for 29 hours a week right now, but that that will drop to 26 at the end of the summer. I might have to pick up some extra tutoring or something then though. I am happy with the schedule. I prefer to teach older kids and working in the evenings frees up my entire mornings for whatever.

Right now I am going to the famous night markets. I have uploaded pictures from the week so far to the Week 1 album. As the week continues I will be adding more pictures to that album.

I am sitting in the SLC airport right now waiting to board my plane for LAX and then to Taipei, Taiwan. I still hasn’t hit me that I am moving to Taiwan. Maybe once I get there it will hit me… or maybe not. It never really hit me when I moved to Brazil. I just go with the flow and take everything in stride. It is going to be amazing. I am excited.

Last night I went to visit my brother and sister-in-law (the ones that live in Utah, not the ones in Colorado). We had a great dinner and then went to see Toy Story 3 with my niece. I have heard from a couple of people that they heard it wasn’t that good, but none of them had seen it. How wrong they were. It was hilarious. I thought my brother was going to wet himself a few times he was laughing so hard. He has a pretty funny high pitched laugh too so it made it all that much better. I think it is the best Toy Story to date. We also saw it in 3D IMAX which was fun. They didn’t have 3D gimmicks, which I hate. The 3D wasn’t in your face but was just used to add some depth and realism.

My next post should be from Taiwan unless I die in a horrible plane crash (just kidding, don’t read that mom).

According to their website, and wikipedia, WaterWorld is one of the largest water parks in the U.S. There are a lot of really cool rides. My favorites would have to be the Zoomerang where you ride a 3 person raft/tube on what looks like a giant half-pipe. We dropped into the half-pipe backwards and got pretty high up the other side.

The Spacebowl was another of my favorites. You slide into big bowl with a hole in the middle that dumps you out 5 feet or so above a pool. I had some pretty good speed and went around the bowl about 6 times before I got dumped out the hole in the bottom head first. I guess that is what it feels like to be flushed down the toilet.

After we got our fill of Olympic spirit we went to the nearby Garden of the Gods which is a big park with a ton of hiking and cool rock formations. It reminded me of Zions or Arches but not near as big. In the gift store they have these large buckets of dirt you can buy and then you go outside and they have these sifters so you can go through the dirt and find cool stones like pyrite, hematite, amethysts, etc. I must have picked a good bucket because ours was full of cool stuff.

In the visitors center they were having a little car show with some cool cars. I think it is just a group of car enthusiasts with classic cars that all just get together to show off their cars.

Tonight we are having steaks made on the brand new grill with corn on the cob and pasta salad. Continuing on the theme of places I haven’t eaten forever, we ate lunch at Dunkin Donuts. There is a picture of the Dunkin Donuts sign as well as many other pictures in the Colorado Day 2 photo album.

As you can see from the above picture, my brother let me drive his Honda CBR600F4i this morning. It’s a fast little bike. After that we drove to Fort Collins and took a tour at the New Belgium Brewing Co where they make all sorts of Belgium beers. It reminded me of the time I toured the Jack Daniels distillery in Tennessee. We then ate dinner at the Waffle House. The last time I ate at a Waffle House was probably about 15 years ago, also in Tennessee. I had my hashbrowns covered (cheese), diced (grilled tomatoes), peppered (jalapeños), and topped (covered in chili).

Tomorrow we are heading to the Olympic Training Center and the Garden of the Gods.

Check out the pictures in the Colorado Day 1 photo album. There are a couple of pictures of the house and a bunch of pictures from the New Belgium Brewing Co. tour. I will be adding more albums as I take more pictures over the next few days.