After running down nine flights of stairs because the power was turned off in our building, I saw my host family’s car pull up just as I was running around the corner of the dorm.  The stairs don’t exit to the front of the building, apparently.  All of our faces lit up when we reconnected.  I sipped on the soy milk they brought me as we began our two hour road trip to Taichung for their family vacation/Father’s Day/son’s birthday celebration.

We met up with a lot of their extended family at a restaurant and took some pictures.  I’ve been inducted to the family!  I don’t stand out at all.

There was a great view from our table:

And there was this awesome giant bird outside the restaurant.

Back to the car.  First stop: green tunnel.  We drove onto a road covered by a green canopy of trees, train tracks running parallel to the road.

Writing down some blog ideas in the car while eating a guava.  This is the life.

Next stop: Sunny Hills, a pineapple factory.

They had all kinds of vendors here, and then a few performers put on a show.  Below are a couple of videos of one of the performers.

The boy who performed the Chinese yoyo routine was champion in Taiwan.

Right outside the pavilion, pineapples were growing.  I’ve never gotten to see a pineapple plant before.  So cool!

Then we stopped at our bed and breakfast, the apple house, and dropped off our bags.  Our room had some interesting decoration.  The ceiling had sky wallpaper on it, with perfectly identical clouds, all equidistant from each other.

And then there were these cool but slightly creepy three-dimensional bears on the wall:

We took a walk to the train station, passing by a bunch of lanterns that will be used for the lantern festival this year.  I’m so jealous I won’t be around in January to see the beautiful parade of lights.

   

I wouldn’t even know how to start to make one of those lanterns.  Before dinner, I got to try fried banana, which this area is famous for.  It was delicious.  The stand had a bunch of pictures of TV and movie stars eating fried banana at their stand.  Then we went to dinner.  Two things in particular stood out to me:

Rainbow sprinkles on fried shrimp?  That’s a first.

Second, I did not expect to see Hello Kitty in the table’s soup!  She’s edible though.

Next we walked around the night market.

Their whole family kept giving me food!  We played pinball and looked at all the different stands.  Then we walked back.  When we got back to the apple house, the entire family went out on the balcony and split a cake.  We sang happy birthday in Chinese and English, and everyone hungout outside.  It reminded me a lot of my family reunions, actually.  Just spending time together, outside, with food to share.  Making little jokes, everyone just happy to be together.  One of the girls and I looked over the edge of the balcony as the train went through town.  Different relatives were teaching me phrases in Taiwanese (which is a completely separate language from Mandarin) and acting out things they were trying to convey.  I consider myself a pretty good guesser, but they were also quite good at stringing together actions that allowed me to guess!  The whole weekend was a game of charades.  It was a blast.

It was a busy day!  I was ready to go to bed.

I was fortunate enough to wake up early and get a little bit of homework done before breakfast: fried noodles.  SO good.  Soon we were off to the train station again.  It’s called Jiji.

It’s the oldest train in Taiwan.  We had a lot of fun riding the train.

Everyone kept saying train at me in English and pointing to it.  It was really sweet of them to go out of their way to speak English to me.  I tried to use all of the Mandarin phrases I have, but my library isn’t that extensive yet.  The train went in and out of long tunnels.  Ginger, the 6-year-old boy was really afraid of ghosts in the tunnel (it’s ghost month here, and that’s serious business), so we had a fun time bumping him in the tunnel and whispering things in his ear.

Inside a tunnel 🙂

Then about 10 or 15 minutes in, there was a stop, and we took more pictures.

I even talked to the conductor.  I said ni hao to him and he said hi to me.

After the train, we stopped at the visitor’s center.  Upstairs there was a pretty cool lego room with models of train stations all over Taiwan.  Recognize the fourth picture?  I took photos of that station at Alishan!

The next room had lego murals of famous sites and events in Taiwan.

And the next room had a lego wall where you could leave pictures and messages and love notes.

I left a little piece of home on that wall.

Next we went to where the epicenter of an major earthquake was 10 years ago.  A damaged temple was still there.  It was crazy to see the ornate building in ruins.  They built a new one across the street, but it was entirely different, and didn’t have the over-the-top intricate designs on it.  Maybe it was so it wouldn’t take away from the original.

The whole building was slanted, and the major towers were off at different angles.  My host family said they could feel that same earthquake in Kaohsiung and in Taipei, entirely opposite sides of Taiwan.  I can’t even imagine.

 

Outside the temple there was a pump to extract water from the ground.  Ginger had a fun time pushing the pump down as hard as he could and then running away.  He still got soaked.

We stopped at a little stand that sold honey and bought honey water.  It’s exactly what it sounds like.  The vendor put some honey in the bottom of a bottle of water and mixed it up.  It was sweet.

Back to the car.  Car rides are fun!

Our next stop was a power plant.  Here we just looked at the pretty water and mountains.

  

One of the girls who was a senior in high school sang a couple of songs after the family urged her to.  Then they got Ginger to dance Gangnam Style.  But he wanted to dance with me.  How could I say no?

Our last stop was to get ice cream.  I got a pineapple popsicle.  It tasted like the pineapple I’ve had in Taiwan, sweet, not sour or acidic.  It was a great end to a weekend packed with activities.  Then I slept nearly the entire two hours on the way back to Tainan.  It felt so good.  A much needed rest.  I was so glad to get to hangout with my host family again.  They are the nicest people.  I could see my family in theirs so many times throughout the weekend.  And I could see younger versions of my brother and me in Ginger and Jessica.  It was a major reminder as to the importance of family.  It was so easy to see that they loved each other.