Celebrating Family

For my first weekend that I could actually do something in Taiwan, my 'buddy' Ray and I visited his home in Yilan. Every international student was given a Taiwanese buddy to help them out, pick them up from the airport and show them around. Ray is definitely the best buddy out there! Some people I talk to either 1 don't even know they have a buddy or 2 have talked to their buddy once. Throughout the weekend, he insisted on paying for things and making my time as easy on me as possible, as long as I kept my promise to take care of things when he came to visit the states.

Yilan county is located on the eastern side of Taiwan, basically due east of my campus. Since Taiwan is very mountainous, especially right down the middle from top to bottom, you have to take a bus north to taipei and then south to Yilan. In all, it took about 4.5 hours on the cheap, comfy busses to get from my dorm to Ray's house on Saturday morning.

His dad and aunt picked us up from the bus stop in the family Camry, and we drove about 5 minutes on narrow roads to their house, which is surrounded by rice fields. Ray lives there with his mom, dad, younger brother and grandparents.

After dropping my stuff off at the house, Ray and I went to see the National Center for Traditional Arts. They have a theater and a temple, but the main section is a long road with shops in either side. In the downstairs, there are people selling any sort of Chinese trinket you're looking for, and the upstairs section of any given shop will usually have an area for children to make their own crafts.

Carrying lots of soap

This traditional Yilan dessert is a mixture of two scoops of ice cream, some crunchies and :( cilantro wrapped in a thin tortilla. Get the greens outta my ice cream!

That night, we went out for dinner at a fancy Japanese restaurant in town. This restaurant reminded me of eating in China, where they give you huge portions of everything. Except at this meal, you didn't share. I think my soup had at least 9 types of mushrooms, and mostly gigantic mushrooms. It was a good meal, topped off with a big glass of kiwi juice. After dinner, we checked out the night market, which was packed and had a lot of cool shops. Ray's parents bought me things, of course with me insisting that they're far too kind the entire time. They also gave me a little good luck charm, a box of cookies, tons of fruit and traditional candy. 

When we got back, we celebrated Grandma's birthday the Taiwanese way with cake and birthday candles

弟弟，我，哥哥

On our way back on Sunday, we hung out in Taipei for a while. From what I saw, it's a nice little big city with the easiest transit system I have ever navigated. It reminded me of Japan with everything so nice and new looking, but it is so much more simple than Tokyo's craziness. I tried teaching Ray what "showing someone the ropes" meant after I had to show him the way two or three times. The saying wasn't understood, but we got a good laugh after I called him a country boy!

I finally started class on Monday! The future looks like fun on the weekends with lots of studying in between. 再見