Wulai

The past two weeks have been particularly busy for me, but the two big events were the trip to Wulai and the final exams. The final was pretty hard and quite stressful. I had given a speech about the importance of recycling and global warming. The other students did so well compared to me. I guess going first was not a good choice. Still it is over and I am happy about the peace that comes from having nothing to study. Now I have to find more creative ways to continue to study Chinese on my own.

Wulai was extremely fun because the group just didn't get too big. It was just Bryan, Stacy, the girls, Dave and me, and some random girl who turned out to have some stalker attributes, but Dave said she was cool. We really got a chance to go out on our own, and it was the first time I ever got to plan a trip in a foreign country and not really know how to get there and what to do when we got there. It was fun though.

We took a bus there and walked the streets eating some of the food from street venders. The main attraction there were the hot springs and the waterfall, which were what we planned to see, but as for when and what else we would see, we really had no plans which we liked a lot. It was a time to relax and be free. However, it did take a lot of walking. Still the food we ate at the restaurants there made it all worth it. Steak cooked and chopped in red and green peppers, sticky rice in bamboo chutes, fried fish and braised fish were all great local dishes that we enjoyed.

After seeing the beautiful waterfall there we decided to head back and go into the hot spring. Being students we really wanted to go into the free one, but when we arrived at the free hot spring there were a bunch of senior citizens there soaking in every nook and cranny of the spring. Slightly disturbed by this we went to 7/11 to go get some snacks and then walked down the street to find a private spring we could afford. After about 30 minutes of haggling and trying to sort through prices we came upon one nice couple that worked in one bathhouse. They were very kind and gave us two hours for the price of one. We really just wished we could have taken one hour though because soaking in the hot spring waters for that amount of time just seemed too long. After that wonderful soak, we all had dinner and headed home pretty exhausted from the long day there.

On the way out of Wulai there was an interesting boy carrying a bunch of toy guns. It was interesting to see him run around the streets as if he owned the place. I got him to take a picture eventually but he didn't seem too happy about it.