Today was exhausting, and though I feel awful about slacking off with regards to making an accurate portrawal.kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkklllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkfor two pages.
Hopefully the second time around is little more successful. I'm sitting at desk this time and armed with nasty hotel coffee and even nastier hotel tea. At the very least, I hope to avoid writing about being lazy and then immediately fall asleep.
The reason yesterday was so tiring was largely due to the massive amount of stuff we did. It started much as the previous 2 days did with breakfast at the local breakfast shop. This time was a little different because Dr. Huang and I went there and then brought breakfast back for the girls. I also got to learn some more breakfast vocabulary, which is fantastic for any language, mostly because breakfast is involved. We also talked about how to make some of the items. Once I'm back in the states, I'm totally making warm soy milk (DouChang). It is too delicious not to share, no matter how tedious the process may be.
After breakfast we all packed up a few days worth of clothes and our dirty laundry and then made the trip from Tu Cheng (the section of Taipei City Dr. Huang's house is in) to Bei Tou. Bei Tou, besides for Japanese tourism and prostitution, is known for its natural hotsprings. The whole area smells like sulfur, although my sense of smell was all but too messed up to tell. It worked out pretty well though. Upon arriving in Bei Tou, we went searching for a hotel to stay in after visiting a museum of the Indigenous population of Taiwan that strangely allowed very few pictures. After that, Dr. Huang left us alone to wait for him while he scouted out the area's hotels. The spot we were left in turned out alright, as there appeared to be a couple getting the wedding photos and a gentlemen making giant caligraphy scrolls for New Year's. When we weren't getting super excited every time the calligraphy guy moved at all (he had stopped making the scrolls by the time we arrived) Kenna, Kathryn, and I also had a good time discussing how things are different from the U.S. and simultaneously not. It's weird. Some things make us stand out like a sore thumb (language, skin color, clothing, wealth,etc), while other parts of Chinese culture come very naturally to us.
Eventually, Dr. Huang made it back and then led us to an awesome hotel. It was admittedly small, but the designs in it were gorgeous and after this morning's breakfast I'm an addict. However, the best thing about the hotel was that instead of communal hot springs, each room can be fed water straight from a hot spring into a tub. That was nice beyond words, although there were certain points where I thought I was going to pass out. Luckily I didn't and was able to go to the night market. For the most part, we only utilized the market for it's structures that provided food and doughnuts. Then we went home and slept like the dead. T'was good.
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