Day 7- Taipei 101

This morning we slept in then took the train over to some place that I can't remember the name of and we walked around the shops and bought a few things. Jon has made sure that our food choices have been more American since the other day, so for lunch we stopped by starbucks and got a roast beef and cheese croissant. We saw a movie theater and Jon has wanted to see Iron Man 2, so we looked at the movie times then walked around more shops to kill time until the movie started. It was a pretty good movie- lots of action and fighting type stuff, but it was a great excuse to sit down for a while and do nothing. After the movie we took the train over to Taipei 101. Taipei 101 was the tallest building in the world for a little bit, until another taller building was built. It is called 101 because it has 101 floors. They still do have the world's fastest and most high tech elevators though. The elevators were pretty impressive and the building was cool too. Just kidding.

The building was cool because it was very clear weather today and we could see a whole bunch of stuff in all directions from the top.

Besides having some cool elevator technology they had this really big heavy ball thing that helps absorb the wind and any earthquake shaking so the building doesn't feel like it is swaying in the wind. I remember watching some thing on tall building in one of my science classes (probably in junior high) and they talked about these things, but I had forgotten all about that until I saw this one today. It was pretty crazy and big and expensive according to the free audio guide we got.
Our ticket to go up 101 included the observatory floor 89 which had the audio guide and windows that could look out in all directions, floor 88 which was another place you could see the big ball thing, and floor 91 which was where you could go outside and look off the building and feel the wind blowing.

After checking out the view from the top we went back down the fancy elevators with their pressurized cabins and speeds of 1010 meters per minute. We then had dinner in the bottom of 101 at the Subway (this Subway wasn't really any different than the ones in the US no corn or anything like that).

It was good and my tummy is feeling good. After that we went back to Lloyd's and went to play badminton with him and some friends. I'm really bad at badminton, but Jon is pretty good and I don't give up easily. Luckily we were just messing around and weren't playing for real or keeping score or anything.

After this we scootered over to a night market to grab some food for some people. This was the first time since Monday that I have been in a place like that and it wasn't too bad. I caught a whiff of stinky tofu but it was pretty far off and I was able to hold my breath so I didn't hurl instantly. Its been a pretty good day, but I realized this morning that my bum is sore from the bike seat yesterday. I can't believe I have been here for a week and I'm still going to be here for about 6 more days.