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.

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.

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

We'll be going to the 2:00 session, it'll be fun to listen in Chinese again.

• Taipei 101

We're going at night on purpose so that we can see the beautiful views of Taipei at night, we'll make sure to take lots of pictures.

Anyway, I've emptied my brain for now.

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)