Tuesday night when they got here they came a lot later than I had been planning on, plus Yuling was late picking them up, and then it took us awhile to find the place where they would be staying; so when we finally got back to the preschool it was already after 9. The plan was we were going to find something to eat, but after Nathan tried doing something and it got to be pretty late we decided not to go out Tuesday night- after I had, had something to eat I showed them where their bikes were and then showed them how to get back to where they were staying.
Wednesday night after I was done with my tutoring group we headed out into the slight rain towards the local night market. I was pretty excited to show them some of the normal foods that I get to eat every night.. I took them first to try the fruit juice stand, Donald was kind enough to give some suggestions of what his top two favorites were- Nathan and Sallee went with those. Once we had gotten our fruit juices we walked over to the coffin bread place- as usual AMAZING! As I have explained before coffin bread is a little greasy- but oh so yummy! Nathan was still a little hungry so we were going to go and try the crepe place but it was closed, next we walked over to try the sweet potato dish that Natalie and I really liked but it was closed too! I was a little disappointed, but decided to take them to some other place over by where they were staying and by the bakery. I considered stopping at the buffet/cafeteria place but they were also closed, so we went down the street to the noodle and dumpling place. Nathan got some noodles and I got some dumplings to share. When we were finished there we rode over to the bakery and I had them try different yummys- I think they discovered why it is a bad thing to have bakeries close by. We went to the grocery store so that I could buy food for Sunday- I wasn’t really sure when I would be back up that way, and some more ponchos for them and they went home as they had to be at the train station at like 7 the next morning as they were going on water rapids.
Thursday when they came back from the water rapids they were really tired and wet, originally the plan was we would meet at my apartment but because Nathan and Sallee were a little tired and they wanted to take showers they asked if we could meet at their place instead. When I got to their place they were just laying in bed- we talked for a little bit and then decided that we should get going- we were thinking about going downtown to get curry but because they were both really tired they asked if maybe we could take a taxi down or something- so we walked out to the street to try and catch a taxi, but for some strange reason there were no taxis that were available- normally they are pulling over all the time asking if we needed a taxi. Since no one was coming we decided to look just around their place and to see what they had- I suggested the cafeteria/buffet place- we went down and it was open, so we had our dinner there- it was kind of nice as it gave them the opportunity to try a lot of different kinds of things…though I am not sure that it was exactly their favorite meal.
Friday I was supposed to have my tutor right after school and then go tutor the Chou family until 9- so Nathan/Sallee and I had arranged that we would meet at 9 outside the Chou’s house and then we would head downtown. It was raining really hard when I was finished with my tutor group and as I was rushing upstairs to change and grab my stuff Yuling stopped me to tell me that Mrs. Chou had called and that she had cancelled the tutoring because of the rain (which I thought was very nice of her, but kind of pointless as I was still going to have to bike over there anyway), I still changed and grabbed my stuff and headed over. Instead of going to the Chou’s though I went to where Nathan/Sallee were staying in hopes of meeting up with them earlier, they weren’t home- I didn’t really want to have to go home and come back in an hour so I decided to just head over to the stuff store and shop there for the next hour or so. I found a bunch of really neat stuff while I was there- stuff for a Halloween costume, some cool paper, and other stuff- it was funny though, as I was shopping Natalie walked past me. We shopped together for a while but then it was time for me to leave to go and meet Nathan and Sallee. I headed down to the Chou’s place, sure enough there was Nathan across the street- I found out that they had come home maybe 10 minutes after I had been there- which I figured would happen if I left.
Again they were tired and wet and didn’t really want to go downtown but they had grabbed some food, we went back to the house where Sallee was waiting..it just so happens though that the food that they had grabbed was exactly where I was going to take them. The Famous Dumplings- and they were so YUMMY! I was happy that they had decided to stop there and get dinner from there. When we were done with dinner we played some mean rounds of Uno ;D…I love playing games and I have kind of missed that since I have been here as Natalie is not the biggest fan of games. Nathan and Sallee asked if I just wanted to spend the night and we would go over to the apartment in the morning but I had some stuff that I needed to do so I headed home.
*before I went to bed Friday night I checked my e-mail (yes I know, surprise, surprise) and found the most amazing news….my brother Joel and my sister-in-law Becky are having a baby!!! I couldn’t believe it, when I saw the title of the file that was opening I began to wonder but decided that no, that couldn’t be it, but then I saw the picture and go super excited. I couldn’t wait until the next morning to tell Nathan and Sallee about it (yeah don’t expect me to be someone to keep secrets for you :D). I am even more excited as I just found out today that it is going to be a girl!!!
Saturday morning came very quickly, I was already ready to go when Nathan and Sallee arrived- unfortunately Natalie was just getting up. While Natalie was getting ready Sallee made a bunch of sandwiches for us to take for lunch. She had just barely finished when the taxi driver pulled up. We hurried down as quickly as we could, though it took us a little while- I quickly discovered that it would be an interesting day as the taxi driver knew absolutely no English. Once we were all in the car we headed off, it was a beautiful day!
Our taxi driver was great, he had a phone number that was an English/Chinese hotline where they would translate for us and if ever there was something that he wanted to tell about where we were he would call and have them tell us- it was especially nice when we first got to Taroko and were at the entrance, we realized where we were but he wanted to be sure that we knew and so he called and had them tell us- I thought that it was very thoughtful. He took us to a lot of amazing spots and gave us plenty of time to look around and take pictures- he would even pull over at random spots and just ask if we wanted to take a picture of it.
I can’t even begin to explain how beautiful Taroko was, we hiked (oops, make that walked) a ton (and I even did really good and was at the front most of the time) and saw amazing sights. I think that I will let the pictures do most of the explaining of Taroko.
When we were done with Taroko our taxi driver met us with popsicles, once we were done with those he headed back to Hualien. First he took us to the beach and I took some beautiful pictures- the rocks there were amazing and it was really cool to watch how quickly the water would sink into them. After the beach he took us to a winery- yep we were a little worried too when we pulled in, but he was taking us to feed fish. It was really cool getting to feed the Koi, watching how they would attack for the food and how fast they could move towards the food. I wish that I had taken some pictures but I didn’t think to because I didn’t really know what we were doing there. After feeding the koi fish he took us home. We got a really amazing deal, only having to pay $2000NT when I know that he had the meter on and it was way past $2500 by the time we got home. I feel that we were really blessed in who we had for our taxi driver and that it was an amazing day.
By the time we got back from Taroko we were a little hungry but we didn’t really feel like biking out to somewhere downtown as it was already dark so we decided to go to the local night market. In the night market that I normally go to there is two different aisles, I normally only stick to one side and have only tried a select few there even so when we went on Saturday night we decided to try some of the other places that I have never tried before.
The 1st thing that we got were these little balls that I always see them making but never knew what they were- we found out that they were seafood, they weren’t bad but they weren’t good either. We then also tried this yummy place that had this chicken and vegetable with rice bowl things…good stuff. After dinner we headed home, decided the time that we would meet in the morning for church and then went our separate ways.
Sunday was my birthday and there wasn’t anything really spectacular about it..I went to church, and then had a big birthday dinner with Amy, Natalie, Nathan, Sallee, the elders, and the sister missionaries—yummy too, it was waffles, scrambled eggs, fruit salad, and cake!
Yeah I can’t believe that I am actually getting caught up with the last three weeks or so, all I have left now to write about is my trip to Hong Kong! I will post the pictures soon..I need to get pictures from Natalie first but she loaned her camera to Grace and should be getting it back later today, and then you will get overloaded with pictures.
I hope that everyone has a wonderful Sunday/ Sabbath! Love you all!
~Betherd~
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