Wednesday, May 13th

We visited the Presidential Office today. Charles was doped up on Benadryl for allergies and fell asleep numerous times on his feet, while several people almost passed out from exhaustion and heat. Our guide had a lot of trouble giving our tour in English, so he would switch back and forth between English, German, and Chinese, confusing all of us. It also took at least twice as long to get through the tour as it was supposed to because he wanted to give us every single detail of Taiwan's history.

Next we went to a Bubble Tea cafe to go over our OLPC case study...I love bubble tea, but I think most people didn't care for the tapioca pearls. We met some Canadians and invited them to come with us, until we realized they could be carrying swine flu and promptly dumped them.

That evening's entertainment consisted of Party World! We stayed there for hours singing everything from Backstreet Boys to Skynyrd to The Beatles. The biggest hits of the night turned out to be an Avril Lavigne song and The Beatles' Hello Goodbye...changed to Nihao, Bye-Bye, of course.

Tuesday, May 12th

Today we took a really long bus ride to a small town where the Giant Bike factory is. On the way, we got to experience "bubble gum girls" who wore next to nothing and sold gum and betel nuts. Megan, Meredith, and I did our presentation on the bus about Shimano and Giant Bikes. Since we didn't have time for breakfast at the hotel, they ordered from McDonald's for us...that was the strangest egg sandwich I think I've ever had. There was a hamburger bun with a strange fried egg, ketchup, and uber-sweet mayonnaise on top...yuck...

After Giant, we stopped at a traditional Chinese restaurant where they served us like 7 courses, but most of us never got full. We sampled things like goose, squid and jellyfish salad, and...dragon soup. Charlie said it was "black chicken," but we weren't falling for that. I've never seen a chicken with spines and ridges on its flesh.

We also stopped at a "sex phone" museum where Megan played a few solos and a duet with a famous sax girl.

Next stop was a local winery where the owner gave us plentiful samples and several bottles to drink.

Finally, we were on our way to the "love motel." Charlie rented the room for 3 hours, a "rest stay," and we split up into groups to find dinner and drinks to bring back to the room. Megan, Danny, Charles, and I wandered into a local mall and brought back Japanese food for dinner. The love motel had a pool, hot tub, wooden table with a massage shower above it, plenty of chairs, giant bed, and a karaoke machine. Danny, Charles, and I rocked out most of the night at karaoke.

After it was time to go back to our Hotel Flowers, a big group of us went out to a bar section of town. We stopped in a few, but since we, apparently, were not up to their dress code, we found an empty bar called Barbados, which soon became our bar of choice.

Monday, May 11th

Today we went to a small pottery town. The original ceramics museum we were supposed to tour was closed, so Charlie found a little markety-village area where we walked around and shopped for a little while. Then we tried our hands at throwing on the wheel...I did well until it came time to finish my piece...and then it all fell apart and flew off the wheel. After we finished designing our pottery, we walked around to find lunch...again, 7 Eleven.

We left the pottery town and drove up on top of a mountain to a gorgeous spa resort. It had many pools with different types of water and temperatures...Danny and I went around sampling all of them together. My favorite was the warm pool with lots of different jets and seats. I also captured a few pics with my underwater disposable camera.

We drove back to Taipei and picked up our photo books from Lishe. Evening free-time consisted of Megan, Danny, and I returning to the same place where Crock and Rogan took us for dinner the night before for sunglasses and shoe-shopping. We found a TGI FRiday's for drinks and a snack and met Mitch, our super-awesome bartender who spoke wonderful English. Megan forgot her shopping bag so we had to go back after closing time and while we were there, scored Mitch's phone number...we didn't know how to work Taiwan numbers, unfortunately, so we never called him.

Sunday, May 10th

Today was such a great day! Logan, Clark, and Amanda joined us as we took a private bus to Fulong Beach and stopped at an old mining town on top of a mountain called Jiufen. It was like a few hours bus ride so we sang lots of karaoke on the way...my favorite was definitely Dr. Fox "singing" Frank Sinatra's "I did it my way"...wow...he's actually pretty darn good at improv..."I chewed it up, what?!, and spit it out?"...yeah, and Charles and I sang a ton...Charles is hilarious with karaoke because he like has this great tv announcer sing-talk voice.

Before the hike up the tiny little narrow stairs from the parking lot to Jiufen, we took some pictures overlooking the mountains and ocean...and waved like crazy at passersby who seemed to enjoy seeing crazy Americans. We got to wander around in the markets up on top of the mountain in the little village. Megan and I thought we were the last ones since we were running late to meet up with the bus so we ran down the entire way, stairs and all. Charles ended up being the last one and returned just as we were sending out a search party for him.

We loaded up the bus and drove for probably another hour before we got to the beach area where Charlie handed out Chinese lunchboxes from a local restaurant. These were...different...I kinda liked the vegetarian one...it had random tofu and tvp pieces, seaweeds, rice, a tea-boiled egg, and who knows what else. I think Sally or Angela found a fly in theirs though, so that was pretty gross.

After lunch, some of the group went on a bike ride, but the rest of us headed out to the beach and laid claim to our hot piece of sand-land. Megan and I were invited by some local Taiwanese guys to play some volleyball with them...we all sucked so I didn't feel too bad. Charles and Trey joined us about halfway through and Charles kept spiking it way out of the court. Every time the Taiwanese guys wanted me to serve, I couldn't get it over the net, because I've definitely never played volleyball.

When Megan and I decided to finally get in the water, everyone else was being a big chicken and thought it was too cold. We warmed up by "jumping waves" aka every time a wave came we tried to jump over it and basically got taken under and got wet pretty fast...so really there was no time to be cold because of all the fun we were having jumping and singing random songs. Charles, Emily, Haneul, James, and Danny joined us for a bit. Oh, and all these locals kept getting closer and closer to us in the water...I think we were pretty entertaining to them what with us making a racket singing and splashing.

On the bus ride back we sang karaoke, and Dr. Fox complained about certain people's singing abilities...many people passed out on the long ride back. At a bathroom break we got our first taste of the stupid hole-in-the-ground Asian toilets...the girls bathroom only had one working (if you can call it that) stall...so while we were trying to use the stupid trough, the tank above us kept leaking (more like pouring) water on our heads...disgusting...

Later that evening Crock and Rogan and Amanda took us to this Japanese restaurant where we pointed to pictures again on the menu and ordered fun drinks. I ended up with some kind of cheesy seafood pasta/rice dish but it was pretty good. We were in the middle of some kind of big shopping area and we wandered around for a few minutes while we waited for our table.

After dinner, Charlie and Crark and Rogan and their friend Kyle took us to a little bar called 45...awesome...Charles basically kept falling asleep next to me in the booth...Danny and I had to make sure Megan didn't fall over the railing since we were upstairs after she did her Thriller dance for everyone...pretty funny...Charlie had to help Haneul down the stairs I heard...I think that was it for Sunday.

Saturday, May 9th

This was our first real day in Asia and it was absolutely amazing!

First we had breakfast at Cafe DuTour. It was kind of strange; all we had to order from was a picture menu and I thought I got like some kind of egg and cheese and lettuce sandwich...but it ended up being a corn, asparagus, and thousand island sandwich instead. Then we got our subway cards and learned how to use the MRT system. We took it to this little dress shop called Lishe and split into two groups--one to get their makeovers first and the other to tour Chiang Kai-Shek memorial first. I was on the tour first with Megan, Trey, Charles, Emily, Meredith, Taylor, Haneul, Kyle, and Charlie. We had this really nice Japanese tourist woman take our picture in front of a giant statue with all 50 of our cameras; she was extremely patient with us. Then Charlie told us we had free time to walk around until it was time to go to Lishe and promptly left us. Charles, Megan, Emily, Trey, and I wandered around a little bit and walked back over to Lishe.

The other group was still working on their pics so we got to see some of them in their clothes. We got to choose a traditional Asian outfit and a formal one, and then had our hair and make-up done. The first Asian outfit I chose was definitely way too small so I chose a Korean one instead. The makeup artist put waaaaay too much crap on my face, but it looked dramatic enough for the pictures....the best part, though, was when she french-braided half my hair, wrapped it around the other half in a low ponytail, and then teased it! I love teased hair! I mean, I had been talking about getting Jareth the Goblin King hair the entire pre-trip and so far on the trip. Meredith, Haneul, Emily, and I went outside and took some pictures in our Asian clothes with the funny photographer who barely spoke English. After we finished outside, we went inside to take another shoot downstairs in the basement...Charlie and Dr. Fox were absolutely hilarious to watch! I ended up picking out a white weddingy-looking dress but the girls at the shop were like "no fit you" so they picked me out one that was so-so and still way too small. I think my ribs might've broken a bit from those tiny clothes. Charles had on a ridiculously awesome off-white suit with coattails that I loved, so we took a whole extra shoot together upstairs in the "wedding room." It was so cheesy, but I loved it. The running joke of the trip became "1, 2, sree, smiyee!" whenever we took pictures because that was how the photog said it.

After our long photo shoots, we went to a Chinese potsticker/dumpling restaurant. Our group had to split into 2 tables, with both professors at the same one. I was at the table of just students/not professors and instead of ordering only a few items to share with everyone like we were apparently supposed to, we each ordered one to two things and ended up with waaay too much food. It was fun though; for most of the meal we just took group pics of our table, which consisted of Danny, Emily, Megan, me, Charles, Trey, Chad, James, Taylor, Meredith, Haneul, and Mel.

After lunch, we walked to this place called Monster Ice, where they sold frozen fruit dessert things. We got a few different kinds and they were amazing. I had one with fresh kiwi, strawberry, and mango, on top of shaved ice with a mango ice cream on top.

The day continued with a trip to the National Palace Museum across town. To get there, we had to take a super-bumpy bus ride where Charles basically had to hold me up on the entire ride there because I was bouncing all over the place. Charles, Chad, Megan, and I walked around for awhile and met Danny in one of the exhibits. By the way, most of us didn't know each other's names pre-trip, and we met along the way over the course of the first couple of days in Taiwan. We got to see a concert downstairs by three girls playing zithers but several people (ahem...Dr. Fox) fell asleep during it.

After the museum, Charlie took us to the Shilin Night or Ny Market (still not sure what he was saying) where Megan and me and a couple of the guys walked around...Megan and I almost immediately separated from the guys somehow though and ended up wandering around the smelly place by ourselves looking for shoes and luggage. I bought a few pairs of leggings and thigh-high socks. We almost gagged at the stinky tofu smell in the food section of the market, the mean sunglasses vendor ran us off when I wouldn't pay full price, and then we found some luggage for Megan for about 13 bucks. Oh yeah, and there was this amputee banging his head against the ground begging for alms or something right on the street. Leaving Shilin was Megan's and my first time navigating the MRT by ourselves but it was successful.

When we got back to the hotel, we got dressed up (or rather I did) in punky little outfits and met Josh, Mel, Haneul, Taylor, Meredith, and Kyle to go to the club Room 18. We split into 2 taxis and once Josh, Mel, Megan, and I arrived we never saw the other cab, so we walked around the mall part a little bit, got dinner, and came back to the hotel. We met "Crark and Rogan" when we got back and just chilled with them for a little bit drinking Kirin grapefruits from 7 Eleven.

Friday, May 8th

Since we crossed the International Date Line during the Texas-to-Tokyo leg, we arrived at NRT around 3pm Friday. I think this may have been the scariest plane arrival I've ever had.

Because of the swine flu thing, we had these guys in full-on Hazmat suits and heat-sensing cameras come on the plane to make sure none of us had a fever. We had to fill out these health questionnaires and any sane-minded person would've checked no on every question asking about coughs and fevers...but apparently there was a crazy Canadian on the plane who said they were sick. While my row made it off the plane with our handy-dandy "you passed the quarantine test" papers, Drs. Fox and Chen, who were sitting behind us, and their little section were detained for half an hour.

The majority of our group was waiting outside the gate wondering where our leaders were and clueless about where to go next. The small wing of the airport we were in was so strange; there was no air-conditioning and we had trouble figuring out how to get our tickets for the next flight. We thought we were supposed to be flying American again, but ended up on Japan Air.

When we finally got our tickets, we made our way down to the gate and found a little store that sold super-awesome Kirin lemon beer that tasted nothing like beer...delicious. I think we departed NRT around 5pm. Megan and I sat together again with a cool girl from Taiwan, but who was a grad student at Missouri or some other random American university. Apparently on this flight we had free drinks, but Megan and I were unaware of this fact...the food was amazing though.

Finally, after what seemed like a million days of traveling, we arrived in Taiwan sometime around 7pm. We still had a loooong bus ride to the Hotel Flowers; everyone was exhausted as Charlie and Jerry tried to tell us about the population of Taipei (I guessed an accurate 3 million) and how to use dang Asian cell phones. I think we just went straight to bed after we chose our roommates (Megan!!) and checked out our cool rooms with rock-hard beds. Oh yeah, we also all had trouble figuring out how to turn on the lights because you had to stick the roomkey in a box to work the electrical stuff in the room.

Thursday, May 7th

I did not go to sleep at all the night before we left because I had to leave Franklin at 4a.m. for the three-hour drive to Charlotte. After Rhys dropped me off, I saw Megan first, who was really the only person I knew from the pre-trip meetings, as I arrived at the American Air counter.

We left CLT around 9am and on the flight I sat with Megan and a hot military guy with a really nice arm tattoo that Megan took a photo of while he was sleeping. Megan and I had to do some convincing people to switch seats so we could sit together. We arrived in Dallas around 10am after the 3-hour flight and Megan and I walked around to find snacks and chapstick. Saw a sushi place in the airport but decided against getting sushi while we were still in America.

Our boarding was running a little late and there were a ton of Asians at the gate waiting for our Japan leg of the flight. We left DFW somewhere around noon and Megan and I sat with Kyle. That was fun...we all ordered some type of alcoholic beverage to prepare us for the 14-hour flight. At some point, I fell asleep and they took a lovely picture of me with my mouth hanging open.