Day 1

I guess yesterday could have been considered day 1, but I'm going to call today day 1 because this was the first day we actually did stuff in Taiwan. Today we did most of the things that Jonathan had planned for us yesterday night. I got up a little before 10 this morning (I woke up around 6 the first time but didn't want to get up that early). Lloyd's mom (aka "Jomama"-she said we could call her this the other night. It made me think "I'm not jyo mama" but hey I remembered it right? I'm guessing that she told us to call her that because their last name is pronounced jo and then mama because she is the mom... I don't know but that is what I pieced together in my head. Ok back to what I was saying before) had made breakfast for us. She made some meat filled bread thins. I don't really know how to explain that better but the bread stuff on the outside was soft and the meat stuff on the inside was tasty. After breakfast we walked to the train and went to a museum thing. It was the memorial hall for the guy who was the father of Taiwan. I discovered pretty quickly that Taiwanese people like to take pictures where it looks like they are holding things in their hands so I had Jon take a picture of me holding the memorial building.


This is us infront of the statue of Chaing Kia Shek ( I had to ask Jon how to spell that because I couldn't remember) this is what is inside the upper part of the building I am holding above.


This is outside on one of the terraced levels of the memorial hall looking out over the courtyard with the national theater buildings in the background.


After walking around the memorial hall building we checked out the grounds we sat by a pond and saw some koi, turtles, and birds. Then Lloyd called Jon and invited us to go to lunch with him. We met him over by the temple (this took us a little longer than expected because we went down the wrong street the first time) and then went to a famous xiao lung bao place. It was really good but on my first xioa lung bao I got broth stuff all over my pants. Oops. After that I was nervous about spilling on myself and looking like and idiot so I ate very slowly. At lunch we met Lloyd's new girlfriend, she was nice and she helped serve me some chicken soup with a piece of chicken that wasn't the foot. After lunch we went to the temple. This was the first time that I had to wear headphones because it wasn't in English. That was kind of interesting. They ended up asking us to do some sealings after the session so that took a while longer. After the temple we went over and talked to one of Jon's friends that works doing translation stuff for the church in the building next to the temple (her picture is in the priesthood/relief society manual she is the asian one reading her scriptures). After the temple our original plan was to go to Taipei 101, a super tall building, but because of the fog and rain that we had today we decided not to because we wouldn't be able to see anything. Instead we took the train to a night market and walked around a little and got some smoothie-type drinks for dinner (neither of us was very hungry because we had such a big lunch). After walking around there we got back on the train and got off at the wrong stop and when we didn't recognize anything or know how to get to Lloyd's house so we called him. This is when we found out we were at the wrong stop. When we got off at the correct stop we knew right where to go. Now we are here and we are tired from walking around all day. Jomama cut us up some melon tonight so we ate that and it was yummy. It was a white melon and the taste reminded me of honeydew. Jon is already asleep so I'm going to get some rest too.