But you can't hate this:
Well, Saturday and Sunday did not turn out like I had planned, but were relaxing and much needed, to say the least. I slept for til basically 5pm on Saturday and got up long enough to run, eat, and spend a little time on facebook. Sunday I slept in and then did laundry. We also ventured into the Carrefore(chain sort of like Wal-Mart). Daniel Spencer got a $100NT haircut which is about $3 US. What this $100NT haircut includes is 10 minutes of a hairdresser snipping at your hair hahaha Needless to say, I had to leave the room for a minute while he was getting it cut because I was afraid of how it was going to turn out. It actually ended up looking much better than we all thought!
Basically, these next 5 days we are taking a road trip around the island. We are on a tour bus that is going to take us all over the place. I love roadtrips! This is like the best kind of road trip though because we are on a spaceous bus with TVs, karaoke, and we make stops at all of the noteworthy places of Taiwan. What more could you want?!
Monday morning we got on a bus and headed to Hualien to go to Tarokos Gorge. It took about 4 hours and then some to get there. We drove through the mountains and next to the Pacific Ocean. Its absolutely breathtaking here. It is amazing to see God's creation untouched by humans. Tarokos Gorge is this HUGE gap in between these two mountains that was carved by water thousands of years ago. It is a pretty cool thing to see. After walking around there for a little while, we went to another place about 2 hours away to make bandanas or "toujin" as they are pronounced in Chinese. This time I actually made different designs on mine. They dyed them different colors. I picked olive green. It turned out so good! Pics to come later. Then we went to a small restaurant in the middle of no where to have dinner. It was Chinese buffet style where they bring out many different dished continuously. After that we went to our "homestay" which is basically like a little house with small rooms. We had a mattress on the floor(which is a step up from what we are used to, but still hard as a rock) and a bathroom in each room. It was a very quaint little place! I liked it! We were supposed to go look at lightening bugs by the river last night but as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out so I missed that little adventure.
This morning we ate breakfast at the homestay and then drove about an hour to get to a river where we rafter for about 4 hours. Everything here is so scenic. On our rafting adventure, we were in between all of the mountains. Everywhere we looked was covered with vegetation and trees. At one point, we turned the corner and there were 3 huge water oxen just drinking water out of the river. It was like we were on a safari or something haha. After lots of fun on the river, we drove for about 2 and a half hours to get to our restaurant and then headed to our hotel by the hot springs. The hotel is pretty nice and we are excited to have our own actual beds. Tonight, Tiffany and Queenie(our guide from NTPU who is a student here) spent the evening relaxing in the hot spring pools which consist of 3 different pools that are like a sauna. One pool is freezing cold, the next one is warm, and the last one is burning up. It was so nice. I enjoyed every second of it. Then we headed to the convenient store down the street to get a few snacks. Today was pretty tiring but extremely fun. Tonight I will continue to enjoy internet and a night in my nice bed.
Oh also, SIDE NOTE: Today, after rafting and a long bus ride, Lily, Tiffany and I were delirious I think (or at least we will blame this on that reason). Well we were at the restaurant and the bathrooms were outside. Now, the bathrooms here are different to begin with. And they are not so private. Well, we walked right into the bathroom with this sign on it:
and then we all remembered that we weren't carrying any toilet paper with us. Tiffany dug through her bag and luckily found some. As she was handing it out to us, a man walked in and started using the urinal without any hesitation. Lily made the comment of "Oh, I didn't know that guys use this bathroom too." We didn't think anything of it. Well, after we got out of the bathroom I saw a woman walk right past the door we were standing in front of and into another door. With a pink sign. As we were noticing this, a woman walked past us and heard us laughing and talking about how we went into the wrong bathroom and stopped and laughed at us hahaha Oh it was funny.
Tomorrow starts a whole new adventure. Stay tuned!!! 3 more days left in Taiwan!
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