TGIF!

It's been a pretty intense week of studying for midterms and still managing to squeeze in some fun activities. There's only a month and change left in the awesome country of Taiwan, so even with midterms looming, gotta make the most of every day and see as much of the city as possible!

Tuesday was spent study, study, studying for my midterm on Wednesday. After studying for a majority of the day, Tsay, Chow, Ted, Robert, Tiff, Jenn and I decided to go get dinner at Jay Chou's restaurant in Taipei. Jay Chou, for those of you who don't know (I mean, how could you not?) is pretty much Asia's largest pop star, and hails from Taiwan. He has two restaurants in Taipei; they're both called Mr. J and we went to the "original" one (he opened a second, newer one closer to Taipei 101).

The first thing that struck me about Mr. J is how unassuming it is. You'll find it in a random alley way sort of off the the side from a mildly fancy district. The only thing denoting it as Jay Chou's restaurant is a painting of Jay Chou on the second floor; otherwise, you couldn't guess it was his restaurant if you didn't know.

The front door to Mr. J.

The restaurant is littered with really weird paintings of people, like his lyricist and friends and stuff, but this is the only place you'll see his face in the entire restaurant.

The second thing that struck me is how relatively normal the restaurant is. No Jay Chou music blasting all the time. No Jay Chou song lyrics or Jay Chou song names denoting dishes. It's just a normal French/Italian restaurant. And it's pretty darn good at that. And it's pretty cheap. I was really expecting it to be a grand, epic, expensive restaurant, but it's a simple, cheap and good place to eat.

Wednesday, Jenn and I went to the botanical gardens after our midterms. The Taiwan botanical gardens are famous for their awesome water lilies; unfortunately, when we went, they were all dead. Thus, we walked around the garden getting bit by hella mos-quit-oes but still having a good time. We were lucky we caught the garden on an overcast day, or else it would have been hot!

Imagine how pretty this place would have been if all them lilies were blooming!

Jenn 在呼吸新鮮空氣.

我也在呼吸新鮮空氣.

Afterwards we checked out the Chiang Kai Shek memorial. Jenn has been there but I haven't, and we both haven't checked this place out at night. I'm not sure how cool this place is during the day time, but at night, the CKS memorial is absolutely gorgeous. The lighting, the buildings, everything about the place is grand yet mysterious at night.



Thursday was mostly studying for the hardest midterm of the week, today's. For everyone else, it was time to put together a Halloween costume, so I spent most of the day studying alone. It let me have some Justin time (har har har) which I haven't had for a while here in hectic Taipei. It also let me practice my Chinese skills because I had to go out and get some boxes for my own Halloween costume, which I finished up after owning my midterm today. Tonight is our Halloween party but here's a little sneak peek of how my costume turned out:

Time to put some finishing touches on my creation! Until next time, zai jian!

-Justin

Midterms, Midterms, Midterms.

This week is midterm week for us ICLP students. It feels a lot like a finals week; we don't have classes Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and instead only have midterms on those days. Tuesday and Thursday we still have class though, and so we still have to study and do homework for those days. It feels very rushed and kind of unnecessary; with a midterm looming on Wednesday, do those teachers really think I'm going to be studying for a small quiz tomorrow? I think not!

What have I been up to since last Wednesday? To be perfectly honest, I don't really remember. Friday was the start of the NTU triathalon, which yours truly is taking part in. Friday's event was an obstacle course; one lap around a track with tires, a low crawling section, a section where you have to carry 30 lbs, and a section with hurdles. It doesn't sound that hard but that day, it was sprinkling, so the track was completely smooth. This meant it took about four slippery, wet steps to move the same distance as one dry step. Needless to say, I was beat by the end of the lap!

The obstacle course team from Guo Qing. Pumped up and ready to go! Thanks to Jenn for this pic.

The same day, we got a very, VERY large group out to go clubbing. During David's birthday dinner, we ran into a promoter for Plush. The girls in our group worked their charm and we ended up walking away with like 60 free tickets for Plush. They expire this week, so we decided to use them up last Friday. Plush is a VERY cool club, on the top floor of this mall I like to call the Giant Ball. It is all glass and overlooks the city. It's large, very open, and very nice. We danced the night away. Things I won't want to forget: dancing on that stage, watching Jun do his awesome dance, looking out on the city, listening to Yue Ying rant outside of the 7-11 about class and Sarah-no-the Salah Monster.

Saturday was the swimming portion of the triathalon. I spent pretty much the entire day with the Guo Qing swim team, cheering our group on and taking part in some of my own events. Our relay team got seventh in one event... and that's about it. We were up against NTU swim teams and dudes in really tight speedos, so that we even got ANYTHING out of the race was pretty miraculous. Still, it was a very, very fun day with team Guo Qing.

Guo Qing swim team. Thanks again to Jenn for the pic!

Sunday was all study study study. I got out of the dorms after dinner to meet up with Jenn and her friends. We went to Shilin night market, where I finally got some pictures of the place! We've been here almost 5 times now and every single time I've forgotten my camera; not this time! First, we went to Miramar, which is this really, really swank mall about 10 minutes and a free bus ride from the Shilin night market MRT stop.

This is the ferris wheel at Miramar. I heard that it's the second tallest ferris wheel in the world; it is pretty huge in real life.

View from the top of the ferris wheel. Unfortunately pictures were hard to take in the boxes because the windows were kind of scratched up, and the boxes shook a lot. Pictures don't really convey how spectacular the view was.

Food section of the Shilin night market. They have awesome ji-pai, sausages, and mien mien bing, but I'll get to that later.

The night market portion of the Shilin night market. This night market is huge and crowded; this picture was taken as the street vendors made their escape because the police were on their way. This is a common occurence. Usually the streets are 5x more crowded than what you see here. And this night market is pretty much famous; I'm thinking it's one of the larger ones in Taipei. I can't really describe the scope of how large and convoluted it gets, and how many things there are to do, and places to shop. It's just.. awesome.

Inside the food section of Shilin. They literally took a warehouse and filled it with street food vendors. Awesome.

Ok. So this place's mien mien bing is OUT OF THIS WORLD. The fruit is always fresh, and the shaved ice seriously, and I mean SERIOUSLY, tastes like clouds. If you could eat clouds, this is what it would taste and feel like. Freaking AMAZING.

Future me will be looking at this picture longingly.

So, back to today's midterm. I think it went pretty well, actually! I studied a lot for it over the weekend and I think it paid off. Now it's just keeping the work ethic high and the interesting outings low... the next post will for sure be quite boring I suspect.

A random addition before I end this entry. Shu is a Japanese student who lives across the hall. He said "I suck," and Yue Ying said "That's what she said." And since I am the unofficial "That's what she said" master in Guo Qing, I had to explain "That's what she said" in relation to sucking to a Japanese foreign exchange student. It was pretty legendary.

Back to studying! Until next time, zai jian!

-Justin

Running Out of Novelties.

I've been here a little more than a month and I'm finding myself revisiting the same spots over and over again. The goal of studying abroad is to travel, but I'm finding it harder and harder to find new spots to go with the constraint of homework looming overhead. Thus, generally we're stuck to a certain radius of places we can go to every day after class before we have to start heading back to dorms to do homework. Generally, we go to the same places, so there isn't really anything new to take pictures of and show you guys.

It's been nothing but study, study, study here in Guo Qing dorms. Today I had three tests; one test in every single class. Yesterday, I had three reports due; one report in every single class. It's been busy for me which means late, late nights studying and writing. It also means less outings. Yesterday Cris, David, Nancy, Romin, Jenn, Tiff, Laura and I went back to Xi Men Ding in an effort to find Halloween costumes. Whoever said Taiwanese people are not into Halloween was 100% wrong. There is store after store of Halloween costumes in Xi Men Ding, with really intense costumes. Most of them you have to rent, and originally the plan was for five of us to be Power Rangers, but I simply am not too crazy about shelling out 500NT just to dress up as Blue ranger for a day. Cris says he is not opposed to simply wrapping himself in Christmas wrapping and be a Christmas present for Halloween. We'll figure something out later, I suppose.

Today Jenn and I went to Taipei 101. I heard that in general, Taiwanese people don't really like going to Taipei 101 because it is a tourist trap. They are 100% correct. While the 101 was nice in that it reminded me of home (underneath and beside 101 are very, very westernized malls with the normal stores you'd find in an American mall, like Lacoste or Tommy Hilfiger, etc.) it sort of bummed me out because being reminded of home is exactly NOT what you want in a study abroad experience. Instead, you want to see new things, be immersed in new cultures. Still, it was a change from the normal Taiwanese 小吃 and street vendors. We didn't get to go to the top because it was a largely overcast day; we'll save the top of 101 for a clearer day.

We had the most intense shrimp in the WORLD for dinner. It was raw shrimp with basically two spoonfuls of fresh, raw garlic on top of each one. We had dinner like five hours ago and I can still taste the garlic in my mouth, and feel it burning holes in my stomach. Intense.

I should get some sleep; tomorrow I must find the immigration office in Taipei to get my visa renewed! So until next time, zai jian!

-Justin

Moonlit Walks and Snake Blood Shots.

Hard to believe it's only been a week since we came back from the Green Island, as it seems so far away and so long ago, like it exists in its own alternate dimension or something! The past week has been chill, relaxing and fun.

It starts on the Monday after Green Island. We decided that since we didn't get back from Green Island until 2 in the morning and none of us had prepared or done homework, we deserved another day off. So we took Monday off (don't worry, mom and dad, we are allowed five absences before they start counting against us) and ate some dim sum, and sang some kareoke.

Went to er hu class later in the night, did some moon gazing on the fifth floor. The rest of the week is a bit of a blur but it did involve a lot of bug bites, moon watching, etc. A great deal of Tuesday was spent doing homework indoors to avoid the bugs, but they were out full force again on Wednesday when we decided to go back to Xi Men Ding and walk around the school library a bit to avoid the confines of Guo Qing.

Thursday was the day of the epic tea failure. We decided we wanted to go to some place in Taipei for tea. It was off some stop on the Red Line of the MRT, so off we went after class to find some tea. We missed our stop and decided to go to Shi Ling, where we went last time for the incredible, cloud-like shaved ice. However, when we got there, we decided to just go all the way to Dan Shui (a good 45 minutes away) on a whim, so off to Dan Shui we went.

Thanks to Brian Chow for this very awesome long exposure of Jenn and I at Dan Shui. He tried recreating this picture but it only worked for Jenn and I, cuz we're just that awesome.

There we walked around, bought some fireworks, ate some good, good hot pot, and went nuts with sticky pics. It was a fun, spontaeous night with the "S4" (Jenn, Tiff, Chow De Kai and me = Spontaneous 4, I know right?) And on the way back from Dan Shui, we did, finally, get our shaved ice fix; three whole bowls of it, in fact. We devoured that heavenly goodness. Then we played with some fireworks on the top of Guo Qing. All in all an awesome day!

Two more pictures from the camera of Brian Chow. That mien mien bing place is TO DIE FOR, apparently there's a store in Rowland Heights that sells similar stuff. I am going to that place when I get home.

Friday was the day of the epic ice bar failure. We decided we wanted to go to this so-called "Ice Bar" somewhere in Taipei, where apparently everything, from the seats to the shot glasses, are made of ice. So off we went to get firstly get some food from THE BEST dumpling place I've been to both in Taipei and ever in my life. It's this small, small dumpling place and apparently it's quite famous from all the news articles, plaques and medals on the wall. In my opinion, this place totally deserves all those medals; that place rocked my taste buds.

AWESOME food here. Legendary stuff. I will come here again (if I can find it).

We looked for the ice bar after that. On the way we found about 10 really awesome restaurants because we had to keep asking for directions and everyone pointed us down different alleys and streets. We would keep finding really cool looking restaurants but never the actual ice bar. Finally, we got there, and it was called 'Salt and Bread,' and seriously it was the most depressing ice bar ever. You know that "ice bar" I described, a whole bar with ice seats and ice cups and all that stuff? It's actually just a meat freezer with a bunch of alcohol in it, the size of my closet, and a few metal stools.

Safe to say, we left, depressed, and decided to go to Tiff's favorite ice cream place, Movenpick. However, Movenpick was closed by then (Tiff resolutely freaked out, haha), so we decided to go to Shen Yu Shen, a shaved-ice chain here in Taipei that is pretty darn awesome. And that, my friends, is the story of the ice bar failure.

Today we went to Yi Lian, which is our EAP-sponsored trip. Compared to what last year's EAP group did (river rafting in Hua Lan), Yi Lian was 100% lame; it's basically an old Taiwnese town you sorta saunter around for a day. However, we made the best of our time there and it turned out to be a very relaxing and peaceful (albeit HOT!) day.

Ok so there wasn't much to do there, but there were a bunch of cool posed statues to take pictures with. This one with Laura and Tiff was just one of several.

Our tour guide only spoke Chinese, which was unfortunate for all the people who spoke English, ie me.

We made dolls at the end of the day. A few of them turned out kinda scary. In fact, pretty much all the guys' dolls turned out scary, whereas all the girls' dolls were pretty much perfect. Go figure.

We got back at around 6pm for the start of our MAN DAY. The girls in our group had planned a girls night/day for Saturday night and Sunday morning, so us men decided we had to retaliate with an awesome, awesome Man Day. Tonight we went to an awesome steak place called Ponderosa, and it was the most expensive, but also the most filling meal I have had in Taiwan. I use expensive lightly; the meal was 500 NT, or about 15$. Still, enough to be called the most expensive meal I've had here yet. Afterwards, we went to "Snake Alley" to drink some snake blood.

The white cup is snake venom. The green cup is snake stomach acid. And the red cup is snake blood. The pills are, according to the Lao Ban, for making your skin better. Also, they are anti-venom, but apparently that's just a small side effect to the much more important skin-healing properties. You can imagine the build up to drinking the snake, especially after watching the Lao Ban squeeze the juice out of the snake, but it ended up tasting (and feeling) like very weak alcohol. Still, we were -juiced- up from conquering SNAKE BLOOD on MAN DAY.

Afterwards, we watched Max Payne at the movie theatre. The theatres here are pretty cool in that all the seats are assigned; no bum rushing the theatres or lining up. The other cool thing is that they are freaking HUGE. At least the theatre we were in was... it was seriously IMAX status or something. The movie... not so great, but still sufficiently MANLY.

Today, man day continued with a hike up Yang Mi Shan mountain. Unfortunately we got completely lost so it wasn't until 2:30 we found ourselves at the bottom of Yang Mi Shan mountain looking for a way up. We decided to follow a road, any road, that went in an upward fashion, and took it. Then on the side of the road we found a small and very, very steep stairway, so we took that too. This stairway was seriously dangerous; I didn't take any pictures because I was concentrating on not slipping and falling to my demise. It was covered in moss and was slippery, small, and unmaintained. Regardless, the six of us (Cris, David, Romin, Chow De Kai, Tsay and I) made it to the end of that stairway, where we happened upon a randomly placed temple.

Romin was thirsty, so we decided to go ask the people at the temple if they had anything to drink. They asked us where we were going, and we said to the top of the mountain! They told us they would take us, so they gave us some awesome tea and set off. This guy is 60 years old but he was literally running through the trail and we were seriously struggling to keep up. And he was wearing sandals too: what a man.

We got to the main trail (apparently we had walked past this nice, marked and non-slippery set of stairs that lead you straight to the top) where he said that we didnt' have enough time to go to the top. Given that this man has climbed this mountain several times and we were hardpressed to keep up with him already, we believed him. We wanted to make it down the mountain before the sun set, so we headed back down the mountain. We had some time to kill, so we went to a pagoda that overlooked the view from where we were. It was pretty spectacular.

The guy we met at the temple lived next to Tai Da, so we caught the bus with him back home. We treated him to dinner for taking us around, and made plans to climb Yang Mi Shan, for real, next week. He was an awesome, friendly, and helpful guy, and it's pretty amazing what kind of people you'll find randomly if you just ask around. It's also amazing how friendly Taiwanese people are, and how willing not only he but people around here in general are to help a foreigner out. Good stuff.

Now it's time to soak in a hot, hot shower. Until next time, zai jian!

-Justin

PS
Taiwan Part 十一.
Taiwan Part 十二.
Taiwan Part 十三.

The Green Island.

This past weekend we went to the Green Island, an island 20 miles off the south eastern coast of Taiwan. To put it succinctly, it was an amazing and epic weekend. There is absolutely no way I am going to remember all the awesomeness that occurred on Green Island but I'm going to try my best.

On Thursday we left Guo Qing at 11PM sharp. If you thought red eye flights were bad, try going on a red-eye bus ride. That will mess you up hardcore because it is pretty much impossible to fall asleep on a bus. The road to Green Island would take us about 6 hours which is a long time, but the bus, like everything else that matters in Taiwan, was equipped with a kareoke system. So we spent half the night singing our hearts out, but the kareoke system wasn't especially expansive, so we ran out of songs to sing by 1 or 2 AM. Then it was time to attempt to pass out in the bus.

Simon tearing it up on the mic on the way to Green Island.

I'm not sure what time I ended up waking up but when I did, the bus was stopped by the side of a beach, and there was an absolutely gorgeous sunrise peeking through the clouds. We got out of the bus and walked onto the beach to watch the sunrise.


It was gorgeous but, as most sunrises are, far too early, so we went back to the bus as soon as the sun came out and slept some more. We were nearing the ferry to go to Green Island and very far from Taipei and things changed. The roads are windy and open, the greenery is dense and packed. Here the trees outweigh the people and it is hard to grasp how dense and tropical a place with so much green is.

We finally got to the ferry place and it smelled like STANK over there. This was partially due to the fact that the ferry place doubled as a huge, HUGE fish market. And we got there just in time to see the daily catch come in. I've never seen so many different types of fish in my life before, especially THIS sucker:

The thing was huge and needed to be dragged by four men. But it didn't smell that bad compared to bathrooms that just didn't work. Regardless, we were stuck at the ferry place for two or so hours before we went on the ferry, and it was already feeling like a long, long day but it was actually only 9 in the morning.

The ferry ride to Green Island was glorious. The waters were pretty choppy and the ship was getting thrown all over the place. I heard the inside of the boat we were on was pretty much 100% puke zone, but me and a few other EAP'ers went to the front of the boat to experience the rollercoaster boat ride front and center. It was a glorious, sunny Friday morning and there was no better feeling than feeling the air rush by on the front of that boat.

Over the trip there were a few places I refused to take my camera. The front of this crazy boat was one of them. Thus I will be stealing pictures from various sources. This one came from Laura Jen; thanks in advance Laura!

We got to the Green Island and the first thing I can say about the place (Besides the fact that it is quite green) is that it is SMALL. We would later realize that we could drive around the entire island via scooter in half an hour. This place is tiny!

After disembarking, we went to go get our scooters. This is the part of the weekend where I made an epic fool of myself. Only two out of 18 of us had ridden scooters before but we were all picking it up quite quickly. The owner of the scooter place didn't seem to care as we all drove away. So when it came to be my turn to scooter away, I figured it would be pretty easy. Well, it wasn't. I crashed that sucker into a bunch of other parked scooters right in front of the scooter place owner. Which is to say, nothing broke, I just tipped a few scooters over, but it was enough to have the store owner freak out and force everyone to come back to the scooter place. He demanded all of us show our scooter license which, naturally, none of us had (you don't even need a license for scootering in America, after all). So he asked for our driver's licenses and proceeded to make fun of us with his buddies in Taiwanese, calling us fakers and ABC's, etc. Of course, when a few of us started talking back to him in Chinese and Taiwanese, he quickly sharpened up and realized we weren't just foolish tourists. After an hour of arguing, we got our scooters as planned. Sorry again for the trouble my foolishness caused, guys!!!

Green Island only has ONE gas station on the entire island, so after waiting half an hour for gas, we ate lunch. Green Island really loves their seafood and deer meat, so we sampled a little bit of both. Most restaurants also allow you to write on the walls so we all made our marks on the walls before setting off.

If you feel like this entry is getting a little long, remember that this is just the first out of three days. And yes, it did feel this long. After lunch we were all feeling 100% beat from the entire day, so we all went to the hostel and passed out for an hour or two. Total, we were a group of 26, and we were fitting 18 people into a 10 person room. Accomodations got a little tight, to be frank. I passed out on the floor and never looked back; I must have been tired but that was defintitely the most comfortable floor I have ever lied upon.

Afterwards we split up. Half of us went snorkeling around, but my half (you know, the cool half) was too lazy to go snorkeling, so we went looking for a beach to lounge around at. Beaches here are not your normal kind of beach; there's huge coral reefs right off the shore so if you do try to go out into the water, you'll be standing on coral reef for a quite a while before you drop into the ocean. That said, it is cool because you can walk out and look at the coral reefs and resulting tide pools within them.


I don't think there will be another time in my life where I will get to watch both a sunrise and a sunset at a beach within the same day, but that's what I did on Friday. It was awesome.

After beaching, we went straight to the Green Island hot springs. Apparently the hot springs there are one of the world's best, and one of only three beach-side natural hot springs. While they have the normal assortment of artificial hot springs, you can walk down to the beach, where there are literally three natural hot springs in the middle of the beach. Floating in a hot spring, looking up at a clear, starry sky with the sounds of the ocean crashing a few feet away? Sign me up any day, this place rocks.

After hot springs, we had dinner at a hot pot place which was not filling whatsoever. Thus we went to go look for some more food, but the problem is that our hostel is located across the island from the main part of town with the vendors and the 7-11's. Cris, Jenn and I decided to go around the island the long way and be the first people of our group to go around the island on our scooters. We stopped by a cave temple (apparently there was a rock that looked like a human. In actuality, it looked like, I dunno, a rock) and scoped out some places to check out during the day time. It was a sweet, relaxing ride around a dark, tropical island, until we got a call saying that Brian Chow had gotten into an accident on his scooter.

We rushed back to the hostel to find a large group of people gathered on the outside. Brian had tipped his bike over, cracked his rear view mirror, gauge cluster, and skinned his hand and knee, but otherwise he was ok. We went back to our hostel where, finally, we crashed for the night. And it was only 11:30 PM.

The next day started off slow. Everyone was pretty tired from the ridiculously long day beforehand, but soon enough people got food in them and it was time to go explorin'. We wanted to go cave diving and hiking up a mountain, but we weren't sure where we could get that done. So, we went driving around the island until we saw a cave-like puncture in the island and went in. A few failed miserably, but one went in relatively deep. It's amazing just how DARK the inside of a cave is, there is simply zero light making its way in. We went into the cave until we were blocked by boulders.

Thanks to Linda Hang for this picture of the men jumping in front of the cave entrance.

Then we tried to go climb a mountain. This failed too. We found a path called the Across Mountain Path which, you would think, would take you up a mountain and then back down, but it didn't. Instead it sort of takes you on a leisurely walk though "spider and lizard alley," and then spits you back out the other end. No view, no nada, just a lot of stairs, trees, and spiders. Well, maybe it had an ooookay view about a third of the way in.


Feeling 100% jipped, we went around the island to get lunch. Unlike Taipei, food on the Green Island closes at 2:30 for siesta time, so you'll have to rely on 7-11 or small food vendors to get full after 2:30 PM. Luckily there was a food vendor selling beef noodle soup, so we ate that. We also went to this place called Ice Jail, which is a shaved ice place that uses seaweed flakes in the ice as well. Green Island used to be a prison where all the prisoners of Taiwan got sent to. Now the prison is non operational and a tourist destination, I guess more or less like Alcatraz. Why they would waste such a beautiful island on prisoners I have no idea, but that's the story behind Green Island, and this place called Ice Jail.

After lunch we checked out the light house. The light house was closed but the beautiful coral beaches below it were not, so we stayed there for a while and took some pictures.


After the lighthouse we went driving some more around the island, and ended up at the Sleeping Beauty pagoda. There is a walkway that leads all the way out onto a cliff, on which there are two pagodas where you can see a beautiful view of the ocean and the surrounding beaches and cliff formations.


This day passed by way, way quicker than the previous day. As we headed back from the pagodas the sun was already setting. We headed back to the hostel for some rest before heading back out to dinner. Dinner was at another hostel (our RA was staying at a separate hostel across the island). Then we decided to kill some time before we went back to the hostels once again, so I took a few people to the white beach we had gone to yesterday. This is where I chased Jenn on the coral reef and sliced my foot open, but no worries mom and dad, it's healing itself back up ok. Regardless, I got piggybacked back to the beach's pagoda when Cris came back with 500 NT worth of fireworks. Nursing my wounds with Jenn, we watched the fireworks set off on the beach. One firework went astray, flew sideways, and landed perfectly in Cris' hand before jumping up and blowing up in front of his face, but no worries, he's fine.

We headed back to the hostel for a night of card games and mafia. By 3AM we were all sleeping.

Sunday was our final day in Green Island, and it was legen-wait for it-dary. After moving out of our hostel and packing our stuff up in the van, we had half a day left to kill. We had nothing in particular planned, so we just decided to drive aimlessly. We found a really beautiful rock formation at the end of the island, off the main loop, and stopped there to take some pictures.

I didn't have my camera for ALL of Sunday, so here on out all pictures are yoinked! This came from Tiffany Tseng's camera, and it's Laura doing the "I'm the king of the world!" pose.

The day before during the lame hike, we saw a mountain on the map called "Fire Mountain," so we decided that something called "Fire Mountain" needed tackling. We went around the island to try to find it but instead found an awesome windy road going up to one of Green Island's many peaks. We stopped for a few pictures half way through and realized the top of the road was a military installation, so we turned around before getting shot.

All of them also from Tiffany's camera. The last picture is super bad-ass, Tiff. I thought you were crazy when you were taking that picture from the back of Laura's bike but now I am glad you did!

After that we decided to go back to the lighthouse to throw rocks and stuff. Coral reef rocks are ridiculous; you can skip half-foot-large rocks across the water because they are porous.

Making our way back around the mountain, I pointed at a cliff I had been wanting to walk out on since I got to the island, so we stopped our bikes and walked out to it. It was 42452542403500% epic status. This was the highlight of the trip for me, and I'm pretty sure it was the highlight of everyone else's trip who made it up there with us. The walk there is beautiful, like an old military warzone with bunkers and trenches. It opens up into a completely epic field with huge rocks and mountains sticking out. We climbed the highest one and there was only a flat area that was maybe 5 feet in diameter for the eight of us at the top, before breaking off into a cliff. The view up there was absolutely amazing. I'm talking absolutely gorgeous.

No picture can accurately describe the majesty and awesomeness of this place but this picture from Tiffany's camera came close. It was so awesome that even Cris was dumbstruck by it. That's him on top of the mountain we climbed to see the following view:

This picture is from Laura and is only one of 360 degrees of beautiful view we had from the top of that mountain. It was seriously astounding; pictures really do this place zero justice.

The amazing views had made us half an hour late to lunch. Afterwards Cris and I wanted to do one final lap of the island before saying goodbye to the Green Island, but a quarter of the way in we found Jun and Gladys on the side of the road. They had fallen prey to an oil slick and were pretty badly scratched up, so we rushed them to the hospital, and then it was time to return the bikes, catch the boat, and head back to Taiwan.

The ride back was very long as we said good bye to Green Island. The boat trip was sickening, the bus ride slow. It was difficult to wrap our heads around all the stuff that had happened on that island in just one weekend. It was fun, amazing, exciting, and awesome!

Coming back to class, and reality, is difficult! Time to get back in the zone. Until next time, zai jian!

-Justin

PS The rest of the pictures from the trip can be seen here:
Taiwan Part 九.
Taiwan Part 十.