Adventure to Taichung

The other week I went down to Taichung to visit some of my friends who live down there. I didn't though really get to see a lot of the city because of the time that I arrived and it was also raining.

So I left Nankan around 2pm. I had wanted to leave earlier but it turns out I was waiting on the wrong side of the road for the bus. Also I missed a bus because I'm still not good at flagging buses and taxis (I never had to do that before I moved to Taiwan). Anyway I took the bus to the Taoyuan Airport because of what I could research online it was the easiest to catch a bus down to Taichung. It was pretty easy and cheap. It was only like $250NT but it was also a cheap bus. There were only five other people on the bus and when we arrived in Taichung and it started raining the bus leaked. The important part though was that I made it down there and I was help by several Taiwanese people along the way. 

It took about two hours to get to Taichung but once down there I didn't have to wait long to meet up with my friends. It was really good seeing them. It had only been a few weeks since I saw them but it honestly felt like so much longer... probably since I'm really busy with work and don't get out as much as I would like. Anyway after picking me up we headed out to dinner. We were meeting up with some more people at an American food restaurant  I have to say that I had been really craving bbq sauce and I had a bbq chicken flat-bread pizza. It was amazing. Just writing about it is making me hungry. 

Anyway after dinner we headed out to a swazy joint called the 'Night Owl' that is owned by the one guys friend. I found it really amusing that he also owned the dinner below it call the 'Early Bird'. It was fun we stayed there till really late until we went back to my friend's friend's place. Before we got there we of course stopped at 7Eleven to pick up snacks because there was going to be a video game marathon. Anyway after watching them play video games we finally headed to bed around 4am, but I didn't get to sleep then because I was sharing a bed with my one guy friend. This is not the first time that I've shared my bed with one of my guy friends and it's not going to be the last. Let me put it out there that nothing happened any of those times or this one besides talking and attempting sleeping. This though was the first time that I had someone kick me and roll on top of me in their sleep. For the rest of the morning I spent it on the couch trying to sleep. 

Later that morning when everyone got up we headed out. They dropped me off at a train station instead of a bus station to make my way back up to Taoyuan and then to Nankan. Unfortunatly there were no seats left on the train so I bought a standing ticket. 

Buying a standing ticket probably wasn't the smartest choice on my part considering that it was a 2hr train ride back to Taoyuan. I had also thought 'Hey I could probably just sit down on the floor' but there wasn't even enough room for me to do that until I got like 30min away from my stop. I saw a lot of cool scenery but didn't get the opportunity to take any pictures because there wasn't any room for me to get out my camera and we were moving too fast. 

Once I reached Taoyaun it was really easy to get a cab back home and it didn't cost that much either. 

My Birthday!!!

So after two weeks of training I finally moved to my placement: Nankan. Nankan is about a 40 minute bus ride away from Taipei and a 20 minute ride to Taoyuan. It is a pretty good area for it's location and there is the TaiMall which may be the largest mall in Taiwan.

Anyway, of all the days that I could move I moved on my birthday. I was glad that I moved then because it kept my mind off of my birthday. This was the first time that I was separated on my birthday from my twin sister and I have to say that it was really hard. They day before they had a birthday surprise for everyone in training who had a birthday in July or early August and I lost it. I basically just went into the bathroom and cried. A couple of the girls in my group got really worried at first but understood how I was feeling when I told them about my twin. 

There were four of us heading to Nankan. Since it is relatively close to Taipei they came to pick us up once of the school buses.... which is really just a large van. When they arrived I found out that the school was going on a field trip to go to the local baseball game. Since I had never gone to a baseball game I decided to go. Yeah, it's a little sad that baseball was invented in America and I had to travel around the world to go to my first game. I also went because my other option was to sit at home and miss my sister. 

The team that we were supporting was the Taoyaun Lamigo Monkeys. Before the game started we were able to see them practice and they also gave us a tour of the stadium. It would probably had been more interesting to me if I could have understood what the tour guide was saying but that is basically my life in Taiwan. 

We even got our picture taken with two of the players. 

After the tour we ate dinner which was a packed sandwich from SevenEleven. As we were eating the game started. I had thought that like in America they would sing the national anthem or something but they just walked onto the field and started playing. Another thing that was different from American baseball is that they had cheerleaders and group chants. It was a lot of fun. 

There was also a rainbow over the field.

They gave us these noise makers to bang together during the group chants.

oh look the cheerleaders

We had to leave the game before it was finished since we had around 200 elementary school children that needed to get home and it was probably past their bed time. Lamigo only had one point when we left and that was a homerun. Although our team didn't win it was a really great way to spend my birthday and my first day with my branch.