Our plans for the day are:
- go to chang kai shek memorial hall
mainly because it's close to the Temple (spoiler alert!) and it'll give us something to do. Slash, it's really famous.
- Go to the temple
- Taipei 101
Anyway, I've emptied my brain for now.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
We made it - a male perspective
So, I'm here on the couch at the Zhou residence giving Andrea some extra time to sleep and I thought I would write what the experience was like for me. Pretty much all of the terminals were the same from when I left SLC to Taipei last time so while we were in airports I was enjoying thinking things like, 'that's the phone I used to call home from the airport' or 'that's where I sat while I waited for the flight'. Like Andrea said we did try to stay awake on the main flight from LAX to TPE, but I would say that I failed the most (probably why I'm awake now and she isn't) but I think it'll be okay, my body feels like it is morning now, and it is morning now. We'll see if I have enough energy to make it through the day. I must say that I got lucky in my meal pickings on the flight though, the only reason I picked beef over chicken is because I like beef more (turns out the beef was rather flavorful but the noodles weren't so I ate the beef first and then mixed the beef juice with the noodles to make it work) and the only reason I picked eggs was because it was the obvious choice over porridge. I forget how humid tropical islands are, it's kind of mind blowing actually. I will say that my skin is enjoying it though.
Taiwan... we made it
After traveling for FOREVER we finally made it to Taiwan. We left Utah 5/4/10 at about 1 then arrived in LAX about an hour an a half later. We then waited around in the airport for three hours for our flight to Taipei to leave. After 13 hours on that plane we landed in Taiwan on 5/5/10 at about 10. I discovered that I might be pickier than I thought because the food on the airplane was super yucky. Not too long after we left the US we were served a dinner. I picked the chicken option; it wasn't too bad except for the fact that it didn't taste like anything so I didn't bother finishing it. Toward the end of the flight they brought around another meal (breakfast I guess because we left LA at 5 local time and then we got this meal 12 hours later). They had two options for "breakfast" scrambled eggs or porridge. Jon picked eggs so I figured I would try the other one. Bad idea. My meal came with tuna floss- this was my first clue that I might not like this. I didn't open the tuna floss because I associate flossing with getting things between my teeth and the idea of anything tuna flavored stuck between my teeth like that was not appetizing. I'm sure the tuna floss was probably more like tuna paste but still I didn't even want to go there. I ate the half a hard boiled egg and roll that came with my breakfast and then decided I would take a peek at what was under the tin foil that the flight attendant had called porridge. I peeled back a corner of the foil and knew I would not be eating most of this. I bravely plunged my green plastic spoon into the white goo that was sprinkled with green onions and something that might have been meat. I scooped up a little bit without any mysterious things on top of it and took a small bite. This tasted like fish and blandness. I tried to take another bite but I couldn't force myself to down the whole spoonful. After this I decided that I'm just going to order whatever Jon orders from here on out because rather than tuna paste his eggs came with strawberry yogurt and little apple pastry. Ok now that I got the whole food part out of the way- while on the flight I decided it would be better if I tried to stay up rather than sleep because we would be arriving at night and then I could get quickly adjusted to the new time zone. To keep myself awake I watched a few movies some were good some were stupid. I watched a french film called Le Petite Nicholas, it was about a little French boy and it was pretty cute and funny. Besides watching movies I knitted a hat and I took a nap. I didn't sleep much on the plane so I'm pretty tired now. After we went through customs and got all our luggage and everything Jon's friend Lloyd met us outside. We walked to his car in the humid warmth and I was getting really warm in my long sleeve shirt and jacket that I had left Utah in. Lloyd drove us to his house and we met his family. He is the only one that speaks English and I'm the only one that doesn't speak Chinese. I going to have to try to get used to not knowing anything that anyone is talking about. I can kind of tell when people are talking about me and I can kind of figure out the topic of conversation from Jon because of his attitude when he talks about things. That probably doesn't make sense, but its true. Lloyd's family is really polite and very sweet to let us stay with them. I took a shower before I started writing this and I realized that I probably won't feel dry the whole time I'm here. Putting on clothes when you still feel wet is not my favorite thing ever, but I will survive. I'm super excited for all the things we are going to do and see here. I don't think it has fully sunk in that I'm in Taiwan, maybe it will when I'm more awake. Here are some picture we took on the plane. Travel pictures are always so flattering.
This is when I finished my hat. The lights were off in the airplane so this is the best we could do with the little individual lights. (I think I look like one of Santa's elves)
This is when I finished my hat. The lights were off in the airplane so this is the best we could do with the little individual lights. (I think I look like one of Santa's elves)
Monday, April 26, 2010
Did I mention that I'm bad at this blog thing?
It has been forever since I last did anything on this blog, but I'm changing that right now (this ones for you Karen because you are probably the only person who checks our blog ever). Lots has happened over the past few months but I'm just going to hit some highlights because I couldn't possibly remember everything that has been going on.
Halloween Costumes
Last October we were furiously sewing for weeks to complete our Classic Batman and Robin Halloween costumes. Luckily we finished before Halloween. We even won best couples costume at our friend's Halloween party. My cousin Ashley ( ashleyandkarl.blogspot.com) took some pictures of us in our costumes.
Christmas
This Christmas was our first Christmas as a married couple. We got our first tree and put up some decorations. It was lots of fun.
1st Anniversary
January 2, 2010 was our first anniversary. We decided to try out the Anniversary Inn in Salt Lake City. It was pretty cool because the room we stayed in looked like a train, the free cheesecake was yummy, and the wallpaper in the bathroom was fuzzy. I thought the fuzzy wallpaper was super cool so we took some pictures in front of it.
New Apartment
We had been casually looking at apartments for a while because we wanted something a little bit bigger, but we didn't want to pay too much more than we were currently paying. We saw a little house advertised on ksl.com with two apartments in it that were both for rent. We called the manager and Jon went over to see the apartment and I came down after work to look at it too. The place was a little old and ghetto but we both felt pretty good about it. We ended up signing a lease and moving in to the new place about two weeks after we saw it for the first time in the middle of February. Moving was pretty stressful and I had a melt down the first day we started moving things in because we did our check-in sheet and had to scrutinize every crack and hole and chip in the paint. It was very disheartening. Luckily we were able to get the carpets and the apartment professionally cleaned (although neither was done very well). We also found out that the tub leaked and had to have a plumber come and fix that as well. Stress. Stress. Stress. We asked the Landlord if we could paint and he said that we could as long as we did a good job. We went to The Home Depot with Jonathan's parents and picked out paint and got to work. It has been crazy because since March we have been not quite settled because I want to get things all painted and nice before I unpack everything so I don't have to move everything I have unpacked to paint. The first room we finished was the front room, then the smaller bedroom, then the kitchen, then the hall, and we are currently painting the bedroom. Once we finish painting there we will just have the bathroom left. I'll be honest there is still quite a bit of touching up to do in some of those rooms but the majority of the painting has been done now. Once we finish the bedroom I'm going to try to unpack and get more settled because currently almost all of our stuff is still in boxes or in a pile in the back bedroom.
Here are some pictures from when we first moved in and after we started painting.
I'm pretty sure this was blood.
Muse Concert
One of our Christmas gifts to each other was tickets to the Muse concert April 5, 2010. All my siblings were there and we were right at the front of GA on the left side; we had a great view and the show was really good.
Skydiving
About a week or two before the Muse concert my brother Mike called Jon and asked if he wanted to go skydiving. Jon quickly replied "No" so my brother asked if I would want to go. After a few seconds of thinking I said "Yes!" I figured that I wanted to go skydiving at some point in my life, so why not now when my brother is already going? I was kind of nervous but I didn't really think about it much until the day before. I told my friends at work that I was going to go skydiving the next day and some were excited, some were jealous, and some just thought I was crazy. On Saturday April 10th Jon, Mike, and I drove up to Erda Utah where we watched a short video about skydiving. The video talked about the dangers involved in skydiving and had some training on what we were supposed to do to. After watching the video they gave us some forms to sign saying that we were not going to sue, that we didn't have any medical conditions that would make skydiving more dangerous, and a bunch of other things that I'm pretty sure I was the only person in our group to read. While signing my life away my hands were literally shaking because I was nervous and it was cold and windy. After signing my papers I met my instructor Sam (a.k.a.the guy guy who I would be strapped to as I jumped out of a plane and who would probably determine whether I lived or died). After meeting him I was surprisingly calm (despite the fact that if for some reason the parachute and the back up parachute didn't work he would have completely crushed me flat because he was at least two times my size if not more). I got my suit and harness on, Jon took a picture of me, my brother and Joel(my brother's roommate) and then we walked out on to the runway to meet our plane.
As we were walking out a group of people was landing on the other side of the runway. We watched as they circled down and landed. We saw one guy come in to land pretty far away and he turned right as he was hitting the ground (not the best idea if you want to land nicely) we watched him as his chute deflated and fell to the ground but he didn't get up. He was pretty far away but we could tell that he hadn't gotten up. We were talking to the man standing on the runway with a walkie-talkie (the Tooele airports version of Air traffic control) and as our plane approached he told us to get on quick so he could go check on the person who crashed on landing and still hadn't gotten up. You might think that this would terrify me as I was about to get on the plan that I would be jumping out of, but I was surprisingly calm.
We got on the plane and took off. In the plane we had a girl and a boy who were jumping single (I think the girl was the instructor and the boy was doing his first solo jump), Me, Mike and Joel and all of our tandem instructors. As we were ascending Sam hooked us together at the shoulders and the waist and we practiced how we were going to count to jump out. When we made it to 13 thousand feet the girl instructor opened the door and her and the guy jumped out. Then it was my turn. I wanted to go first because I was worried the longer I stayed in the plane and the more people I saw jump out the more freaked out I would be. I didn't even have time to think I just walked over to the door and stood with my toes over the edge and my hands gripping my harness at my armpits in the "chicken wing" position ( I learned this from the instructional video). Sam counted one we leaned forward. He counted two we leaned back. He counted three and I jumped belly button first (as I was told in the video) out of an airplane. Watching the people jump out before me and then jumping out myself was a weird sensation. I saw the two people go by themselves before me and it just looked like they jumped backwards because the plane was moving but in my mind the plane was stationary, it felt stationary. As we jumped out we did a flip and a couple spin-things, but I never felt the sensation of my stomach dropping. I guess if you are falling at 110 miles per hour you don't really have that. After jumping I tried to remember to breathe like they told me in the video: through my teeth, so the rushing air didn't jam in my mouth like trying to drink water from a fire hose. When we were steady in our falling my instructor grabbed my hands and moved them from my "chicken wing" position to the "mental floss" position. Now "mental floss" was a pretty stupid way to describe where my hands were, but in the trusty instructional video they told us to think like we had a piece of floss connected from one thumb to another and the floss was going in one ear and out the other flossing our brain. Stupid. Moving my hands was a cue for me to make sure I was also in the "banana" position, this meant I was supposed to bend my back and knees so that I was curved like a banana as I was falling. We were in free-fall for about 60 seconds. I remember my eyes watering and my face starting to tingle as the cold air rushed past me. It was at this point that I realized I had actually jumped out of a plane and I was loving it. After falling for about a minute Sam pulled the chute and I was uncomfortably jerked from exhilaration to relief. When the everything with the parachute was good for us to descend my instructor loosed a few of my straps so I could sit in my harness more comfortably as we floated down.
As we were floating down he gave me the handles and taught me how to do a spiral by pulling down on one side of the chute and then letting that up while pulling down on the other and holding it down as you spiraled down. It was pretty fun. On the way down we also practiced how we were going to land. I saw Jon as we got closer to the ground and called his name and waved at him.
We then slid in for a nice soft landing right on our bums.
Jon borrowed his sister Jennifer's camera and took some pictures of us. Thanks again Jennifer I'm glad you survived without your camera while we had it.
Garden
Toward the middle of March I decided that I really wanted to plant a garden so we researched what plants can survive being planted that early and went over to the local IFA to get us some seeds. After getting our seeds and a few little tools we came home to prepare our garden plot. We cleared off the kitty litter buckets and other random stuff from a little strip of dirt on the south side of the house by the driveway. Then we turned the dirt and tried to get some of the big rocks out of the ground and then we planted some of our seed. We planted two typed of peas, lettuce, spinach, and carrots. The first phase of the garden that we planted that first night is starting to grow. We have little plants of everything we planted. I planted a second wave of these same vegetable so that we hopefully can have a more spread out harvest. I can't wait to have fresh veggies from my garden. I have never planted lettuce or spinach before so I hope they do well and don't get all eaten by bugs or anything.
Taiwan
We bought plane tickets to go to Taiwan for 2 weeks. We are leaving in about a week and I am so excited. We will be sure to take lots of pictures so I can blog about the trip in three months... hopefully I will not wait three months to write about it.
Congratulations you made it to the end of this post and are caught up on what we have been up to lately and not so lately. (I was a little worried that it might never end too).
Halloween Costumes
Last October we were furiously sewing for weeks to complete our Classic Batman and Robin Halloween costumes. Luckily we finished before Halloween. We even won best couples costume at our friend's Halloween party. My cousin Ashley ( ashleyandkarl.blogspot.com) took some pictures of us in our costumes.
Christmas
This Christmas was our first Christmas as a married couple. We got our first tree and put up some decorations. It was lots of fun.
1st Anniversary
January 2, 2010 was our first anniversary. We decided to try out the Anniversary Inn in Salt Lake City. It was pretty cool because the room we stayed in looked like a train, the free cheesecake was yummy, and the wallpaper in the bathroom was fuzzy. I thought the fuzzy wallpaper was super cool so we took some pictures in front of it.
New Apartment
We had been casually looking at apartments for a while because we wanted something a little bit bigger, but we didn't want to pay too much more than we were currently paying. We saw a little house advertised on ksl.com with two apartments in it that were both for rent. We called the manager and Jon went over to see the apartment and I came down after work to look at it too. The place was a little old and ghetto but we both felt pretty good about it. We ended up signing a lease and moving in to the new place about two weeks after we saw it for the first time in the middle of February. Moving was pretty stressful and I had a melt down the first day we started moving things in because we did our check-in sheet and had to scrutinize every crack and hole and chip in the paint. It was very disheartening. Luckily we were able to get the carpets and the apartment professionally cleaned (although neither was done very well). We also found out that the tub leaked and had to have a plumber come and fix that as well. Stress. Stress. Stress. We asked the Landlord if we could paint and he said that we could as long as we did a good job. We went to The Home Depot with Jonathan's parents and picked out paint and got to work. It has been crazy because since March we have been not quite settled because I want to get things all painted and nice before I unpack everything so I don't have to move everything I have unpacked to paint. The first room we finished was the front room, then the smaller bedroom, then the kitchen, then the hall, and we are currently painting the bedroom. Once we finish painting there we will just have the bathroom left. I'll be honest there is still quite a bit of touching up to do in some of those rooms but the majority of the painting has been done now. Once we finish the bedroom I'm going to try to unpack and get more settled because currently almost all of our stuff is still in boxes or in a pile in the back bedroom.
Here are some pictures from when we first moved in and after we started painting.
I'm pretty sure this was blood.
Muse Concert
One of our Christmas gifts to each other was tickets to the Muse concert April 5, 2010. All my siblings were there and we were right at the front of GA on the left side; we had a great view and the show was really good.
Skydiving
About a week or two before the Muse concert my brother Mike called Jon and asked if he wanted to go skydiving. Jon quickly replied "No" so my brother asked if I would want to go. After a few seconds of thinking I said "Yes!" I figured that I wanted to go skydiving at some point in my life, so why not now when my brother is already going? I was kind of nervous but I didn't really think about it much until the day before. I told my friends at work that I was going to go skydiving the next day and some were excited, some were jealous, and some just thought I was crazy. On Saturday April 10th Jon, Mike, and I drove up to Erda Utah where we watched a short video about skydiving. The video talked about the dangers involved in skydiving and had some training on what we were supposed to do to. After watching the video they gave us some forms to sign saying that we were not going to sue, that we didn't have any medical conditions that would make skydiving more dangerous, and a bunch of other things that I'm pretty sure I was the only person in our group to read. While signing my life away my hands were literally shaking because I was nervous and it was cold and windy. After signing my papers I met my instructor Sam (a.k.a.the guy guy who I would be strapped to as I jumped out of a plane and who would probably determine whether I lived or died). After meeting him I was surprisingly calm (despite the fact that if for some reason the parachute and the back up parachute didn't work he would have completely crushed me flat because he was at least two times my size if not more). I got my suit and harness on, Jon took a picture of me, my brother and Joel(my brother's roommate) and then we walked out on to the runway to meet our plane.
As we were walking out a group of people was landing on the other side of the runway. We watched as they circled down and landed. We saw one guy come in to land pretty far away and he turned right as he was hitting the ground (not the best idea if you want to land nicely) we watched him as his chute deflated and fell to the ground but he didn't get up. He was pretty far away but we could tell that he hadn't gotten up. We were talking to the man standing on the runway with a walkie-talkie (the Tooele airports version of Air traffic control) and as our plane approached he told us to get on quick so he could go check on the person who crashed on landing and still hadn't gotten up. You might think that this would terrify me as I was about to get on the plan that I would be jumping out of, but I was surprisingly calm.
We got on the plane and took off. In the plane we had a girl and a boy who were jumping single (I think the girl was the instructor and the boy was doing his first solo jump), Me, Mike and Joel and all of our tandem instructors. As we were ascending Sam hooked us together at the shoulders and the waist and we practiced how we were going to count to jump out. When we made it to 13 thousand feet the girl instructor opened the door and her and the guy jumped out. Then it was my turn. I wanted to go first because I was worried the longer I stayed in the plane and the more people I saw jump out the more freaked out I would be. I didn't even have time to think I just walked over to the door and stood with my toes over the edge and my hands gripping my harness at my armpits in the "chicken wing" position ( I learned this from the instructional video). Sam counted one we leaned forward. He counted two we leaned back. He counted three and I jumped belly button first (as I was told in the video) out of an airplane. Watching the people jump out before me and then jumping out myself was a weird sensation. I saw the two people go by themselves before me and it just looked like they jumped backwards because the plane was moving but in my mind the plane was stationary, it felt stationary. As we jumped out we did a flip and a couple spin-things, but I never felt the sensation of my stomach dropping. I guess if you are falling at 110 miles per hour you don't really have that. After jumping I tried to remember to breathe like they told me in the video: through my teeth, so the rushing air didn't jam in my mouth like trying to drink water from a fire hose. When we were steady in our falling my instructor grabbed my hands and moved them from my "chicken wing" position to the "mental floss" position. Now "mental floss" was a pretty stupid way to describe where my hands were, but in the trusty instructional video they told us to think like we had a piece of floss connected from one thumb to another and the floss was going in one ear and out the other flossing our brain. Stupid. Moving my hands was a cue for me to make sure I was also in the "banana" position, this meant I was supposed to bend my back and knees so that I was curved like a banana as I was falling. We were in free-fall for about 60 seconds. I remember my eyes watering and my face starting to tingle as the cold air rushed past me. It was at this point that I realized I had actually jumped out of a plane and I was loving it. After falling for about a minute Sam pulled the chute and I was uncomfortably jerked from exhilaration to relief. When the everything with the parachute was good for us to descend my instructor loosed a few of my straps so I could sit in my harness more comfortably as we floated down.
As we were floating down he gave me the handles and taught me how to do a spiral by pulling down on one side of the chute and then letting that up while pulling down on the other and holding it down as you spiraled down. It was pretty fun. On the way down we also practiced how we were going to land. I saw Jon as we got closer to the ground and called his name and waved at him.
We then slid in for a nice soft landing right on our bums.
Jon borrowed his sister Jennifer's camera and took some pictures of us. Thanks again Jennifer I'm glad you survived without your camera while we had it.
Garden
Toward the middle of March I decided that I really wanted to plant a garden so we researched what plants can survive being planted that early and went over to the local IFA to get us some seeds. After getting our seeds and a few little tools we came home to prepare our garden plot. We cleared off the kitty litter buckets and other random stuff from a little strip of dirt on the south side of the house by the driveway. Then we turned the dirt and tried to get some of the big rocks out of the ground and then we planted some of our seed. We planted two typed of peas, lettuce, spinach, and carrots. The first phase of the garden that we planted that first night is starting to grow. We have little plants of everything we planted. I planted a second wave of these same vegetable so that we hopefully can have a more spread out harvest. I can't wait to have fresh veggies from my garden. I have never planted lettuce or spinach before so I hope they do well and don't get all eaten by bugs or anything.
Taiwan
We bought plane tickets to go to Taiwan for 2 weeks. We are leaving in about a week and I am so excited. We will be sure to take lots of pictures so I can blog about the trip in three months... hopefully I will not wait three months to write about it.
Congratulations you made it to the end of this post and are caught up on what we have been up to lately and not so lately. (I was a little worried that it might never end too).
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