The New Year

Gong hay fat choy (Cantonese)! Xi nian kuai le (Mandarin)! Happy Chinese New Year! Chinese New Year is a big deal here in Taiwan, and most businesses are closed for an entire week. Some people take two weeks off of work. Most of the time is spent eating with family and traveling. Our school has given us a week off, which is nice but at the same time it's tough because we are paid hourly.
We decided we needed to do something for our break because we have no idea how much longer we will be here for, and it would be a shame not to see as much as we can. So on Saturday morning we got up very early and met two other teachers, and we took a bus back up to Taipei. I must say, Taipei is cold compared to Taichung. It was probably around 50 degrees fahrenheit, rainy, windy, and humid (which makes it feel much colder).
We had a good time in Taipei. We were supposed to meet the teacher recruiting agency we used (Reach To Teach) for a hiking trip at Yangmingshan Mountain, but when we arrived at the train station the group was nowhere to be found, so we decided to do our own thing. Since Carolyn and I hadn't been to the National Museum we thought it would be a great time to go. We got on the MRT (Taipei subway, very efficient and nice) and rode it to the nearest stop where we got on a bus that brought us the rest of the way to the museum. The museum is quite nice. Apparently when the KMT were fleeing the communists in China they rescued (or plundered depending on how you look at it) all of the artifacts from the Forbidden City. They have a gigantic collection of ancient Chinese artifacts, jewelry, weapons, furniture, religious statues, and paintings. Supposedly the collection is so huge that they rotate the exhibits frequently so there is always something new to look at.
We ended up spending maybe 3 or 4 hours at the museum so we didn't pursue our planned follow-up activity of hiking. Instead we got back on the MRT and rode it out to Danshui, a suburb of Taipei where the Danshui River meets the ocean. Danshui is a nice town with a boardwalk, plenty of restaurants and stores, and a fishball museum. Yes we decided we should visit the fishball museum, but it wasn't nearly as awesome as I thought it would be. Fishballs here are essentially fish and various other ingredients formed into balls and fried. They use many different types of fish, squid, octopus, lobster, crab, and shrimp. The museum itself was rather empty. It only had some pictures, some old equipment used to make fishballs, and some scale models of fishing boats. There were some lonely fishballs in a freezer. I was hoping we could see fishballs being made and on display, but no such luck. It's OK though, I don't like fishballs. Carolyn however was sad.
After the museum we bought some piping hot sausage on the street which was nice considering the temperature. We strolled down to the boardwalk area where our friends played the carnival games for a bit, and then we took some pictures along the river. We were getting very cold by this point so we got back on the MRT and took it all the way back to Taipei. We then got on a shuttle bus and rode to Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world (though I think one somewhere in Dubai may be taller now). We were going to ride the elevator to the top of the building to see the view but we decided against it because it was expensive and dark out so we wouldn't be able to see much. Instead we ate dinner at the food court, got some ice cream, and checked out a nice bookstore.
It was a long day, so by 10p.m. we got back on the bus to Taichung. Since it was Chinese New Year's Eve every city we passed on the way back to Taichung was shooting off fireworks. It was pretty cool to see fireworks at night constantly on the bus ride home.
We don't have much else planned for the week but we are considering going to Tainan, the old capital of Taiwan. We will probably go hiking in Dakeng again and visit a hot spring to relax. I start working again on Monday, February 1st. My Tuesday/Thursday evening class ended so tentatively I work Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday morning for a total of 10 hours :( . I'm still looking for a job in Chicago though and I am still looking for work here so hopefully I find something!
Our friends Matt and Kristin are on a road trip/camping trip in Southern Taiwan for the week, so we are watching their dog. It's technically not their dog, they found it abandoned and are fostering it until they find a home for it. It's a small little white fluffy lap dog that you can imagine Taiwanese women love. It's personality is nice enough, but it smells awful and it must have been trained to urinate on newspaper in an apartment because after every walk when it gets back into our apartment it urinates on the floor. It's not a dog I would want to have but it's fine watching it for just a week (and Carolyn gets to clean up the urine because it was her decision to watch it!).