The city of Taipei at night. This is the view from my co-worker, Elle’s, apartment in the mountains to the south of the city. So beautiful. Close enough to see the city and sort of be part of it. But far enough away to escape the smells and sounds and to breath the fresh mountain air. Awesome.

So, we’re all croweded around the table on the 19th floor of these mountain apartments, eating the refreshing taste of McDonalds (yes, McDonalds is surprisingly refreshing when eaten in other countries) after a long few weeks of hard work and bad food. And all of a sudden, the room begins to shake a bit. A co-worker from Canada goes, “Um, is the room shaking?” I hadn’t noticed at first. But sure enough, the room was shaking. Things were rocking a bit. The Taiwanese roommate, Wanting, goes “Oh, it must be an earthquake.” It was a little scary. Just because we were 19 stories in the air. The Canadian is like “Should we go downstairs? Maybe we need to get downstairs.” I’m like, “Ya, what are you supposed to do in an earthquake?” Wanting tell us, “Well, you don’t really do anything. You just stay where you are and hope the building is constructed well.” Ha! They do have a lot of typhoons and earthquakes here, so the buildings are built to withstand that kind of thing. But kind of scary. More exciting though! My first earthquake 😛 That’s exciting.

I only stayed there one night, but it was a GREAT way to start my refreshing week off.

The next day, I moved to the hostel provided by my company… Which actually ended up being a private, 4 bedroom apartment. It’s in the town of Jjongli which is near Taoyuan (where the airport is) which is near Taipei (the capital). And although it is FAR from nice, it has been nice to sort of unpack and have my ‘own’ place for a few days. And although it’s not ‘my own’, the fact that I have my own set of keys to a sort of homebase adds a HUGE feeling of being at home… even if nothing is convenient about it… I could complain that it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in over a year, and the water literally smells like poop (but not as bad at the Amsterdam houseboat experience :P), and there’s no hot water. But it has been refreshing in a very weird way.

I spend all day Monday trying to find internet. It was a long, dreadful task, that involved all of my luggage (which is a lot), 2 McDonalds 4 times, 3 7-11s, 2 taxi rides, and 1 Starbucks, a cold train station floor, and the Home Box (like Home Depot). Ha. And since I was already emotional and on the verge of a breakdown from my long week, there were tears involved. It’s a long story, but after a long day, I did find a place with consistent internet.

Tuesday I spent doing absolutely nothing. Which was amazing. I sat at a Starbucks and MOS burger (sort of a Taiwanese McDonalds) and caught up on internet use and talking to people back home. Beautiful. Tuesday night, Whitney and John, the 2 teachers that had been working in Tainan with me arrived at the ‘hostel’. Their contract is a bit different than mine, but basically they are completely finished as of Tuesday. But we had planned on meeting up and spending some time in Taipei.

Taipei is about an hour away. You can take a bus to the train station and then a train to the city. In total, it costs less than $2. Which is great.

Wednesday morning we headed to Danshui. It’s a small sea-side town in the north of Taipei. They have a bunch of markets and a cool board-walk type of walkway. From there, we took a short Ferry to the “Fisherman’s Wharf” at the end of the Danshui River. It was cool. Nothing spectacular. But neat, definitely. And, if you face the opposite direction of this picture, you’re looking towards China! Cool! Though we weren’t there for sunset, it would have been a fantastic place to watch the sun go down!

I also met a bunch of Russians in Danshui. I got to talk to one couple on the ferry. They were in town for a chemistry conference. Gross. But I enjoyed conversing in Russian!! I also met a Russian guy in Taipei who was in town for some sort of international table tennis tournament. I kept running into Russians. It was so great. Of all places…

Next, we headed to ‘Snake Alley’ or Huaxi Street Market. It’s known for its considerably strange restaurants that serve snakes and turtles and such. But it’s not just the fact that they have snake on the menu, it’s that the reptiles are kept live in cages in front of you… Until you decide to buy something. Then they kill it, skin it, and do whatever else to it right there in front of you…

My friends slash co-teachers, Whitney and John, who are much braver than I, decided they wanted to try the famous… maybe more correctly, infamous… shot of snake blood.

It was actually pretty funny, because everything happened so fast. They weren’t even sure they were going to do it, but all of a sudden, the guy was getting a huge cobra out of its cage. And before they could say ‘no, not now’, the guy had already banged the cobra’s head on the ground to kill it. And at this point, there was no way they could say ‘no’, because then that snake would have died in vain. And besides that, within less than 30 seconds of killing the snake, the guy sliced it open and was letting its blood into a cup. Everything seriously happened so fast, like I said.

We found dinner at a little Taiwanese-Italian place hidden among the dark and very shady streets… I’ll explain in a second…

One thing that I’ve been so impressed with here, is how friendly and helpful people are. Though I haven’t spent that much time outside of my job, the Taiwanese people have been consistently kind and helpful. Multiple times, people have come up to ask if we need help with translation. Example. The other day we were ordering a bubble tea. Bubble tea is usually milk tea (tea with milk) but also with these tapioca bubbles in it (kind of jello-y and about the size of marbles). Anyway. There’s a ton of choices, so usually I just point. But there’s so many options that sometimes it’s hard to order. Sugar? No sugar? Milk tea? Plain tea? Ice? A little ice? A lot of ice? Fruit? But we usually manage. Anyway, Whitney and I were attempting to order, and a lady walked up with her kids to ask if we could use some help. She helped us order and translated. So nice! And that has happened more times than I can count on my fingers. Wow. That’s pretty incredible. I’ve traveled a lot of places, but there are very few places where people would be that consistently kind and helpful… Usually you have to ask at least 5 people ‘english?’ and get turned down by at least 4 of them before you can manage some help. But not here. Pretty awesome.

And I have decided, that although my job itself has not been the best experience, I do LOVE the Taiwanese people. There is a LOT that I don’t understand culturally, and I probably couldn’t live here, because I hate not speaking the language (and Chinese seems to be the one language that I can’t catch onto), but the people, as a whole, have been incredible.

So, anyway, after dinner, we proceeded to walk around the Huaxi Street Market area. It was by far one of the shadiest places I’ve ever been. Maybe it wasn’t THAAAAAT shady. It just felt that way… Basically, there’s a lot of brothels there. I mean, here in Jongli too, but around that area, there were more than I have noticed anywhere before. And that bothers me a lot, but ok, what do you do? The thing that really bothered me, was that people looked at us as girls differently. There were a lot of creepy men. And it was uncomfortable to say the least. Not unsafe uncomfortable, just ‘don’t look at me like I’m a freaking piece of meat’ uncomfortaable. Almost equivalent with Egypt uncomfortable… and Egypt was pretty uncomfortable. Not quite though. But Whitney and I were just glad that we were with a guy… Probably not a place I would revisit in the evening.

One thing the area is known for is its temples. There is a really famous one called the Longshan Temple. A lot of people come around for that. But nearby there is sort of a plaza area that has water that shoots up. It was really cool. Water always has a certain quality of peacefulness and refreshment for me. So we stood there for a while until we decided to make our way home for the evening.

Thursday, we slept in, which was nice. And ordered pizza for lunch. Yum! From Dominos! Even better! How cliche are 2 americans walkin down the street carrying 2 pizzas and coca-cola? Haha, cuz that was me on Thursday afternoon. So delicious. So worth it.

We traveled to Taipei after lunch… Then took a taxi to John’s hotel… He decided to stay in a hotel for the night so he could be closer to the airport for his flight in the morning…

While we’re stopped in traffic, the taxi driver beckons a woman selling-flowers to his window. He buys 2. They’re like air-freshener flowers because their scent is so strong and sweet. He hangs one on his rear-view mirror and hands Whitney and I the other. He didn’t speak english, so we weren’t sure if it was a kind gesture to foreigners, or if he was telling us we looked nice or more, or if we just smelled bad… which is a definite possibility considering the fact that the apartment water literally smells like poop. Haha. But anyway. It was funny.

 After John found a hotel, we headed to a small night-market, where I bought some shoes for really cheap!

Afterwards, Whitney and I said goodbye to John, and we headed to the Taipei101 building. It’s currently the 2nd tallest in the world… beat only by the building in Dubai. It’s over 1500 feet tall, and has the 2nd fastest ascending elevator. It goes up around 55 feet per second. Let me put it to you in normal terms… We got to the top of the 1500 foot buildling in less than 30 seconds. That, my friends, is not normal.

We both felt very light-headed upon arrival at the top. Proabably had to do in part with the fact that it was 8pm and we still hadn’t eaten dinner. But still. It’s not ok to go up that far that fast. So, we bought expensive some orange juice to keep us from passing out... Anything you buy that high in the sky is guaranteed to cost at least 3 times more than the normal price. (Example: SkyMall) haha.

And something that I didn’t expect… They actually have an outdoor observation deck. I did NOT expect that in a building so high. It was really neat.

Here’s a fantastic picture of Whitney and I expressing how we felt during and after the ridiculously fast elevator ride. Pretty rough. Haha.

Today, I said goodbye to Whitney as she headed back to Korea and then later to South Carolina. But I’m trying to convince her to finish graduate school in Texas instead 😛

It was a restful week. And that’s what I needed for sure.