7:30am we hopped on a bus and headed off. Still working on my 【sleeping on public transit】 skills without much luck. I need on of those neck wrap around pillows lol. Might seriously buy one for the flight back, that was straight up torture. Anyway, here's some road pics.
And 4 hours later bam here we are! TAIPEI 101. Fifth (fourth?) tallest building in the world I believe with the fastest elevator in the world, and the only public viewable Tuned Wind Damper in the world, which is also the largest TWD in the world. It's also just plain sexy.
The elevator tops out at 1010 meters/min, it takes about 40 seconds to get from the 5th floor to the....92nd.... or 88th, I can't remember which floor the observatory is on. Regardless, it's awesome haha. They have this machine to pressurize the elevator while you're flying up and have a bunch of flashing lights representing different star formations in space playing in the ceiling along with some audio with is pretty sweet, but you do still feel your ears popping. Unfortunately for us, the typhoon was just heading out so the weather was a bit cloudy, but it was still quite breathtaking. Picture splattering.
The passive tuned wind damper. This amazing piece of engineering moves around to compensate for the movement of the building due to strong winds and earthquakes so the building doesn't fall over. There's some pretty cool YouTube videos of it at work.
My beard is getting a little crazy lol
Daniel was hanging out with us too, and we did take a group photo but it turned out really bad... sorry Daniel... <3
Tricolor jade cabbage. Not "The Jade Cabbage" that is in the National Palace Museum. Just took this over-exposed pic real fast, they make you walk through the "gift shop" on the way out. Everything was super expensive of course. Lots of people were in suits and I'm running around in my rain jacket like a nerd lol.
Lunch time! We were going to get dumplings at this famous place in the TAIPEI 101 food court, but the wait time was 40min and everyone was hungry lol so I got this, which is quite tasty.
Taking the metro on our way to the National Palace Museum! Tickets for both TAIPEI 101 and the National Palace Museum were provided by the school. Seriously has to be the best study abroad program ever. Taipei makes Tainan look like the sticks lol it's so dang busy.
I'm quite proud of these shots. I got this ridiculously elated feeling when a break in the buildings occurred and I could see all the way down the street.
Unfortunately I could not take pictures of the things in the museum because it's not allowed, but we did sit down to watch this musical performance that was captivating.
I also bought a reproduction of this painting created somewhere around the year 1000. It's a perfect blend of Chinese landscape art, epic scale, and black metal. It's kinda huge, like 4 feet tall, so I'm hoping I can keep it safe in my luggage on the way back to the States. It is in a pretty sturdy box, so I think if I wrap some clothes around it (like the pajamas I erroneously brought) it should be good. Paid a pretty penny for it ($150USD), but have no regrets.A much more intimate view of the painting can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/nbtkrb8 the link will take you to Wikipedia's Wikimedia file for the painting where you can view at 2800x5600 pixels and zoom all around it.
On our way to the Shilin Night Market 士林夜市.
很多人!
Ate this wrap thingy. It was tasty
Also ate some matcha ice cream with red beans which was really freaking good. I'm taking this back to the States and opening up a shop.
Everyone in Taipei was so cool looking. So many hipsters, but in a good way. I was telling my language partner the other day, its like they copied the best parts of hipster and hip-hop culture from the West. Unfortunately this may actually be a bad thing, as I'm sure you know by now if you've been reading my blogs is that Taiwan has a bit of an identity crisis going on, and imitating the Western style may be doing more harm than good in finding what exactly is Taiwanese, especially considering the United States is one of the many countries that does not officially recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. Our policy is basically "alright China, you can't go over there and take over, but we will still say it's China". So it's all sorts of nasty. I'm still just now starting to scratch the surface of the Chinese Civil War and figure out how all this came to be.
Overall a super busy and fun day. The Taipei metro is amazing! You can get anywhere, it's cheap, clean, and fast. I could see myself living there for a while... Though I do really appreciate the Tainan pace more now. It's so much more chill in the south haha.
Real beds! I haven't slept so well since I got here. The bathroom was kinda cool too, but I was so tired I forgot to take a picture. Two stalls and two showers, since it's a 6 person room heh. Room accommodations also provided free of charge from the TUSA program (seriously, why are these people so good to us?). I cannot state adequately or enough about how amazing this TUSA program is. I was not expecting is to be this great at all.
Thanks again to my friends and family back in the States for cheering me on, and especially thanks to 芦老師 for bringing the program to my attention, constantly encouraging me to get out of my comfort zone, for writing a letter of recommendation to the program, and for two wonderful semesters of Chinese class. My first semester of Intermediate Chinese I had almost given up, I fell into a nasty bit of depression and self-loathing but 老師 was there for me to spill my worries on, and to guide me through that difficult time. I sincerely appreciate all the office hours and countless emails sent back and forth. I wouldn't be here without her help. Many other people have helped make this dream possible for me and I could write a whole other blog post listening who and why (maybe at the end of the trip :P). Since my Moms death in 2012, my mental state has been less than optimal and there were plenty of times I just wanted to crawl under my bed and not come back out. I owe so much to my friends, coworkers, teachers, and family for bringing me back to life, love you all!
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