Seeing the Country

Well. It has been a great day. My Mom said it sounds like they are taking care of me. And they surely are! I met Emily (a co-worker who works in the personnel office) at the faculty birthday lunch. She was nice and stayed until I had finished. She called me up on Thursday and invited me on an outing planned for Saturday. Although I couldn’t understand where we were going, I said yes. I’m here to explore this country. :D

I asked Scott and Sarah and they said it is a beautiful place; where they spent their honeymoon in fact. I still didn’t know where we were going. But I was game. I talked with Yvonne and she told me what to bring (a day pack with sunscreen, umbrella, etc.) and said we would be walking. She even showed me a few pictures from when she was there.

So Saturday morning at 7 a.m. I show up at the school and Emily is there waiting. We got onto a nice bus and off we went. We stopped and picked up people at different places. We also stopped at 2 “rest stations” where we used the toilet and walked around a bit. Emily was my buddy and so was Claire. Claire’s mom works for the school. Claire just graduated from junior high school. Between her and Emily, I was able to understand all they wanted to tell me. Emily says her English is poor and she only knows a little. But she knows quite a bit. More than my Chinese!

Emily actually helped me work on my Chinese. I learned the word for “egg.” And I can’t even remember the rest at this very moment. The pressure is driving everything from my mind. Ah! Emily was a good tour guide. She pointed out things as they passed by my window. And she would say the Chinese word and look at me to repeat it. I just wish more of it would stick in my head. The school took good care of us. Gave us water and nectarines and tea and newspapers. The principal was on the trip so you could say it was an outing for important people. I met some other important people. One lady was friendly and bought me some treats. At the very end of the trip I found out it was the principal’s wife. Oh!

On our bus ride, Emily showed me how to write my Chinese name. It didn’t look very nice since we were in a car. And it’s just a bunch of brush strokes that look like mini pictures to me. So fascinating how they use characters. It’s also fascinating that they use chopsticks. (And now I do too.) Who decided to take 2 sticks and hold them a certain way? You know, it’s hard to pick up rice sometimes. Emily told me it was okay to pick up my bowl and hold it to my mouth while pushing the rice into my mouth. Good thing. Didn’t know how I was going to get those last few pieces.

Claire actually got in trouble twice for not holding her bowl in her hand. The first time, I noticed and quickly picked my bowl up and said, “I didn’t know!” And I chuckled because it would be totally improper back home to hold the bowl in one hand and move it close to your mouth like they do. Yeah for different cultures! I just hope I don’t have too hard a time relearning things when I get home.

I am happy to report that I tried everything Emily & Claire handed to me. And they gave me lots. At the rest stations we walked around. Each time there was a food sample, it was handed to me. And I stuck it into my mouth. I’m not even sure of some of the things I tried. Dinner was interesting. More on that later.

Our destination was Sitou Forest. (I’m thinking it is a national forest.) We walked with the group to a famous bridge. We had to wait in line, because not too many people could be on it at once. It made me chuckle. And we talked about knowing how to swim. Emily and I knew, and Claire had just barely learned how. Good thing! But we didn’t have any problems. Another bridge we went over was more wobbly. I kind of enjoyed it, but thought of those that would have been scared.

So after we got off the famous bridge, I saw a sign that said “Sky Walk 2200 m”. It sounded awesome to me (Yvonne had shown me pictures and it looked neat. You walk on bridges at the level of the tops of the trees) and I told the girls that. Emily looked at her watch and said if we hurried we could do it. And hurry we did! We were all quite tired. I just checked google and 2200 m is 1.36 miles. We were fast walking it. Oh and it was uphill. Boy oh boy! There were times when I considered turning back. But I was determined to stick it out and see this site.

Eventually we all made it there. We waited in another line as they monitored how many people were on the walk at a time. Emily stayed behind with my camera so I could get a picture on the bridge. Well, we walk on and I realize we are going the opposite way of where I would pose for Emily. But there was nothing I could do. It was a one-way bridge. So we just wandered and I borrowed Claire’s camera. She doesn’t like heights and once I said, “Cool, look down.” And then said, “Wait! Don’t! I’ll look down. You just look up.” One time she even told me to look forward. I just chuckled and kept looking around. You’ve got to enjoy all the views!

We were just arriving at the picture spot when I hear Emily calling my name. I didn’t see here on the trail. She was actually behind us on the sky walk. She thought we had gotten lost so came to find us. Ha ha. She took some pictures then got off the sky walk and took a picture of me on it. Yeah for memories in the form of pictures. I already have a bunch and I don’t want to think of how much it will cost to print them all. Ugh.

So, did we make it to our destination on time? We went so fast and were all sweating and tired once we made it to the sky walk. Yeah, we were on time. In fact, we had extra time!! Kind of frustrating. As we descended from the sky walk, we saw the principal going up. So we could have taken it slower. Oh well. I felt a great sense of accomplishment once we reached the sky walk.

We went to another site in the forest. The gingko plantation. They had some cool-looking leaves that Emily showed us. And we took time to sit on a bench and relax. The amazing thing is that we only covered a small portion of the site. Emily said it’s best to have 1 day at that forest. Then you don’t have to hurry like we did. :) It was very beautiful. Tons of green stuff. It actually reminded me of Costa Rica. Too bad we didn’t see it from a zip line!

We had lunch at a restaurant just outside the forest. This is where I first learned about holding the bowl in my hand. Everyone gets a small bowl of rice and takes a little from the main dishes, which are sitting on a lazy susan in the middle of the table. A type of family style. The only thing I recognized was the fish. And it was the whole darn thing! Eyeballs to tail. Wait, I recognized the cabbage too. I love how they eat cabbage a lot here! It’s so tasty. And once you eat all the rice in your bowl, you put some soup in. And the final thing you eat is a little fruit. It’s their form of dessert, you could say.

Alrighty, time to head back. Oh – we left the school at 7 a.m. and arrived at the forest around 10 a.m. then we had lunch at 12:30. The schedule said our next stop was a coffee break. Hmm. Emily knew I was like Steve and Scott and didn’t drink coffee. She and Claire took care of me. I actually discovered tons of things that were made with coffee. It was very interesting. I would consider eating something then Emily would say, “It has coffee. You can’t have.” I did get an ice cream treat at this stop. It was peanut flavor. And they don’t lick ice cream, they bite it. That was a little cold.

We also had time to walk around and look at local shops. More stuff to try and look at. The principal’s wife bought us a lemon jelly treat. I kept saying I didn’t want one (My last experience with such a treat was still fresh in my mind. That bitter stuff from the YSA activity. Ick.) but they bought me one. The principal’s wife said it is her favorite and she knows how to make it. I watched them make it and it was fascinating. I have pictures. Another cool thing was watching a man sculpt cups. I could have watched him for hours. It was so cool! It’s amazing how people can use pottery wheels and clay to make things used by you and me.

Now I’ll share my dinner experience. Things were going okay. I was eating everything they put into my bowl (again I don’t know what half of it was). And then Emily was pointing to this mini octopus thing (or maybe it was squid, they eat a lot of that here) and indicating I should try it. I made a scared face and another coworker started laughing. But I said I would try it and Emily put it in my bowl. It was so unpleasant looking! It took me a moment to work up the nerve to eat it. I tried to bite it, but couldn’t. Claire said I should eat it in one bite. That meant I had to eat the whole thing. Uh . . . But I did it! And I had to take a picture to show everyone what I ate. It tasted okay. The overall idea is unpleasant though. I would prefer not to eat that again.

They brought out some soup and fired up the flame to boil it. And, like usual, they put a bunch in my bowl. I asked what it was and understood it was pig. So I started eating it. I asked again what it was and they said pig stomach. Gross! It was slimy and very chewy. No thanks. I had to finish my bowl of it though. I’m kind of amazed that people at the table had seconds. They asked me and I responded with a definite no. But I tried to be polite. I ate the first helping, does that count for something?!

Emily was very helpful at dinner. I saw shrimp and thought with relief that I like shrimp. The only problem was it was the ENTIRE shrimp. I don’t know how to eat that! Last time I had this problem, I told my Dad to fix it. Emily pulled it apart and made it into something that I could eat. Thank you! And yet, at the end of the meal Emily was a stinker. She told me I had to finish the fish dish. Ha! They gave us so much food. We were both full before we even started dinner. I’m pretty sure I gave her the evil eye. Then I said put more rice in my bowl. If I’m going to eat more fish, I need more rice. She laughed and dished up more rice. Then Claire cut the fish and put pieces in my bowl. I quickly finished all those and adamantly refused any more food. It was luckily time to go.

The only other thing I can mention is that we watched a movie on the bus. I think it was in Japanese with Chinese subtitles. Even though I could only watch and listen to the music, I got caught up in the show. They paused it for a stop and I was bummed. I wanted to know what happened! Everyone else did too since there was a collective groan of complaint when it stopped playing.

SO, to sum up: I got to explore more of this beautiful country. And I got to do it in style. With a bunch of important people from the school. And it was cheap! Only 900NT ($30 U.S.) They gave us snacks, lunch and dinner. Man. It was a great deal. And I had fun! I made 2 new friends and got to know them better. As we left the school I told Emily thank you. She said thank you with a shrug and said, “We’re friends.” I said yes! And thought, man I’m a lucky girl. Wow. This entry is super long. But it was a full day! I was gone for 13.5 hours. Hope you got to experience a little more of Taiwan with me!