As I mentioned before I left for Taipei Yuling invited Andrea and I to come with her family last weekend to a concert at the beach. It was so much fun, going in we had no clue what to expect, but we were both so glad that we had gone. After school we waited for Teacher Stephanie and Yuling to clean the school and then we hoped on the scooters (Andrea with Yuling and I with Stephanie), this was only my 2nd time riding a scooter and I am not sure if I had mentioned it before but I am sort of terrified of riding them (all right not sort of, they freak me out). Teacher Stephanie knew that I was a little scared and so she went a little bit slower for me and told me where I could put my feet so they would help me balance the most and just told me to wrap my arms around her, not once did I feel really scared or unsafe, after the first little bit it was actually fun. I could definitely see myself having one and enjoying it :D
We went to Yuling's house and Teacher Stephanie left us to go home to get her family. We had to wait for everyone else to finish getting ready and then we were off. The whole way there (about 30 minutes) all we heard from Allie (Yuling's niece) was about Jolin, Allie was so excited to see her, she had even brought a plastic doll and pen in hopes of getting Jolin to sign it for her. We finally got there and man was the place packed, we were pretty close to the beach so it was a little bit cooler, luckily Yuling had told us that it would be cold so we had both worn a sweatshirt and jacket.
Yuling showed us where our meeting place would be, so that we could go look around by ourselves if we wanted and not have to worry about getting lost. We walked around with everyone looking at the different food and game booths, Yuling and her family quickly began buying food--that is one thing that I find funny about watching Taiwanese people at night markets or just eating in general, they can eat and eat and eat and then eat some more. I could be full after the first thing that I eat but they would have to try 3 or 4 other things before they even begin to slow down (my brother-in-law Erick would fit right in :D). Andrea and I split a couple of things but the smell of really strong Stinky Tofu kind of turned us away from food for a little while.
We went back to where we were supposed to meet up and listened to a couple of singers, it was so much fun just dancing, laughing, screaming and feeling like a teenager (I have only been to one concert in my life and this was an outside one with hundreds of people it was so cool and different). We got several looks but we didn't really care, we were having fun! After that Andrea, Allie and I headed back towards the food booths to try and find some food that didn't smell for us. We walked past a cotton candy stand and Allie informed me that she had never had cotton candy, I felt that we needed to fix that very quickly- it's not one of my favorite things in the world but it's just something that you have to experience. In Allie's rush to go back to the stand we lost Andrea but we figured that she would just be back at the meeting place.
On our way back to the meeting place we walked past Teacher Stephanie (we were quite surprised, we didn't think that we would see anyone that we knew or that we would have any luck of finding Teacher Stephanie once we got there). She was trying to find her husband Bob and daughter Eliza but couldn't find them, and she had forgotten her cell phone at home so she couldn't call them. She decided to just stand where she was and wait for them. Finally about 15 minutes later I stood at the spot so she could go and use Joseph's cell phone, we found out that Bob and Eliza had gotten lost and couldn't find Stephanie so they had gone home...Stephanie said oh well but I'm staying :D
We had just gotten back to the meeting spot when Yuling's house keeper came running up to Allie to tell her that they were waiting for Jolin, Allie heard Jolin and she took off, we struggled to keep up with her. We got back behind the stage and we found Yuling and Andrea, they were standing with a bunch of other teenagers waiting to see if Jolin would come through. We stood there for over 30 minutes when they finally told us that she had already come in before the concert had even started, Allie was pretty disappointed :( but then we got to hear her sing, we were pretty close and with Allie on Yuling's or mine shoulders she could see her pretty well. (Yuling said that she feels too old for stuff like this, "I'm not a teenager" but that Allie is the only one that she would do stuff like this for).
Jolin sang 3 or 4 songs and then there was the BIGGEST/BEST firework show that I have ever seen in my life! It was probably 30+ minutes long and it just kept going and going, bigger and better. Beautiful fireworks! (After wards Yuling said "there goes our tax dollars!") Andrea and I were so impressed, of course we couldn't really hear after wards, but that's ok :D I was super happy because I got to play with my camera settings (remember FIREWORK setting!) there are definitely some good ones and some not so good ones, but I haven't had time to go through and delete the ones that aren't really worth keeping.
