Taiwan turns 100

Saturday, I knew I needed to do something to get out of the house, so I made plans with another exchange student, Austin, to go to Shilin night market. He also invited another exchange student, Charlie from Illinois. I hadn't met Charlie before but he was really cool. I had already eaten dinner but they hadn't so we went around looking for a place to eat. Instead of stopping and getting fried chicken, tofu, or even noodles like one would expect we ended up at a place selling Big-Juds sized burgers, In Taipei. Who would have thought? So they ate and I talked with them for a while about there exchanges and lives in Taiwan before we had to head home to make curfew, not much of a night market experience, but still pretty fun.

Monday was the 100th anniversary of Taiwan. I went out with my host mom Sophie to meet some other exchange students. Austin, and Jay Slack. We walked around C.K.S Memorial Hall but it was too crowded too enjoy so we headed to Ximen to kill time until the fireworks. Sophie was tired at this point so she headed home. Me, Austin and Jay didn't really know what to do so we just wondered around Ximen until we got hungry. Then we went to a Philly-Cheese steak restaurant, again, in Taiwan. It was surprisingly delicious, probably the best I've ever had. Then we headed to the fireworks. We didn't know exactly where they were at, but we knew they were near the river. We asked a few people for directions and pretty soon we were in a mob headed for the fireworks. We went to the side of the river but it started raining and we didn't have an umbrella so we hurried to a 7-11 and bought one. But by the time we got back we couldn't get back to the same spots and we settled in a nearby park, hoping the view would be good, but when the show started we found out we could barely see the fireworks so we wondered down the road looking for a better view, listening to the fireworks explode and set off nearby car alarms, which was almost as cool as watching the fireworks. We finally found a spot where we could semi-see the explosions and we enjoyed the rest of the show before we began our walk back to Ximen, and home. All-in-all an awesome day.

Sorry about the delay in this post!  

Settling In

Sorry I didn't blog last week! Not a lot has been happening the past few weeks. I can't get out every day and the weather has been pretty bad. Yesterday and Today I didn't even leave the house for the first time! But I got to enjoy delicious dinner with the host family :) I had to give a speech at a Rotary meeting this week, my host-mom Sophie helped me with it for a few days so it turned out pretty well and I learned a lot. I also had to give a speech to the freshman from my high school which went well too. I'm a little sick of speeches now, I wasn't overly fond of them to begin with though so...yea. It has started to cool in Taiwan and what they call winter is on the way. Here is gets chilly and it rains a lot, In Idaho it gets below zero and snows! But I am actually kind of glad its getting cold here, the heat and the humidity were starting to get to me. I can deal with extreme cold better then extreme heat I think. Well that's about all I have for now! Sorry I don't have more interesting things to tell about. : p.