Sun Moon Lake

Last weekend our branch took a trip over to Sun Moon Lake and enjoyed a day of relaxation while the rest of the country had the opportunity to decide on our next president. As you can see the date was March 22nd. Being foreigners and all we didn't really had much of a chance to participate and as such we opted to do something a little more productive, hence the trip to the lake. The lake:

While the lake was the main attraction on our journey we also made some other exciting stops on the way there. The first was to the largest monastery in Asia, or at least that is what people are telling me. It looked to have about twenty or so stories and it really was beautiful. There were Buddha's all over the place so the monks and nuns could meditate and receive their own needed inspiration. They didn't allow us to take pictures in the actual monastery but they sent us home with a pamphlet and a DVD. So when I get home we can all crowd around my laptop and watch the tour once again. This shot was taken from the road leading up to the monastary. If having to wait will kill you then you can check out the official website of the monastery And yes the monastary is the enourmous building in the foreground.

After the tour our guide led us to the flower offerings and we were able to offer some flowers to one of the Buddha's. In Buddhism there seems to be quite a number of Buddhas all serve different purposes and the nun that was showing us around was trying to teach us all about the functions of each one. Either way, this is a picture of Joseph immediately before he offered his flower. As you can see Tailee was in the background, I don't think that she was overly impressed.

The lake was the second stop on our tour. When we finally arrived I decided to become a real tourist and buy some things instead of taking hundreds of thousands of pictures. I bought a cool Taiwanese keychain and a pair of random wooden pigs. For those of you wondering I am not the year of the pig but the year of the dog. But they were only 500 NT or about $15 USD so I decided to not pass up the offer. One of the cool things about the lake was the steps leading down to the water. There were 365 or 366, I don't recall, but the purpose is to hang a birthday wish on the wall near your birthday. I am not exactly sure what the significance is but even if I wanted to know I couldn't because it was written in Chinese. But the temple was pretty cool especially the enterance. The interesting thing about the temples is that most of them seem to be open pavillions. I don't know that there is any significance to this but I certainly makes it easier to get a better view of the entire temple complex.

After the short trip to the lake we got back onto our bus and head to a large pagoda to gong the gong. We got to climb up the eight stories in order to do it but it was well worth the wait. Also, if a person was unable to make the climb then they could just stand on a platform near the pagoda and jump up to smack another large drum.

This is when I finally decided to make the long trek to the top of the building. I am pleased to admit that I didn't throw the gonger at the gong like some others did. And I won't mention names as to how did it. Again I don't understand why it is important for us to gong it, maybe it has something to do with our ancient ancestors or something along those lines.

Well, by this time in the evening we were getting to be a little hungary. Our branch president had reserved a spot for us at a restaurant and so we sat down to a meal of wonderful Asian food. Plenty of shrimp, rice, pork, fish and greens for us to feast upon. Of course the most unusual part of the meal came near the end. This is a drink made of seeds from some kind of a fruit. It was an ineteresting drink and I'll admit probably not my favorite. As you can see it looks less like a fruit drink and more like frog eyes. Power to the teacher who wanted to drink a ton of it though.

As I have mentioned previously the day ended with the closing of the polls and the Taiwanese electing a new president. Ma Ying-jeou claimed victory last week. Taiwan will be governed by a Harvard educated man, just like I'm sure all of you were hoping for. We found out this news while traveling back home on the bus. It isn't a very job picture but you get the idea. It happened to be a landslide victory.

Overall it was quite a nice day off. We spent the entire day with native English speakers and didn't have to do anything productive but still got to see a little of Taiwan. I can't wait til next weekend, we'll be chilling in Taipei.

Just another day.

I thought I would add a few pictures, simply because I can and I wanted to see some new ones. The first is the picture I walked in on during kindergarten this morning. I will give whoever can identify all four kids $20NT. (All entries must be made online in the comment section. This is mostly so that I can appear to have more friends.)

The second picture contains all of the afternoon KBR classes being taught at the Old School this semester. We get to go out for a break everyday and today they made us take pictures. I'm not quite sure what Jasper is doing or Tony for that matter. We all have fun though. Just prior to taking the picture we were running around being chased by the little ones. I am getting a workout teaching these kids and also trying to have a little fun while I am at it. Someday I'll be a professionial dad, mostly cause I 've had practice raising someone else's kids and teaching them all sorts of important things. Mostly I teach the KBR class about snails because that is all that they care about. Well a few care about birds and flowers but snails seem to hold universal appeal. If only life were that simple again. But alas. . .

Feathers!

Last week I had a wonderful idea to help the kids in my Basic Reading class make paper dragons. The plan is to fold a few strips of paper together in such a fashion as to create an enlongated body. Then we shall attach each end to a chopstick and they can swing them around. Writing this blog makes me realize what a crazy idea this is. I'm sure that the children will end up poking their eyes out. So we will also be using feathers as the tail of the dragon, or the fire they breathe out, we haven't yet decided. However, yesterday I let each child pick out a feather for them to use for their dragon. They were quite excited about it. Their were so many colors to choose from and luckily they were of a decent quality. My feather on the other hand was a little bottom heavy so I couldn't be much with it. Anyways, after I had handed out the feathers we decided to blow them around a little bit. As you can see from the video below we had quite a bit of fun. It is amazing that children can have so much fun playing with simple objects like feathers. It gives me hope that as a parent someday I might be even a little entertaining.

I hope that you all find as much joy watching these video's of my students because there will probably be more. Since I don't have a wallet to pull kids pictures out like every other parent, I guess that my blog will have to do. Just be grateful I don't have you trapped in a corner at a family party talking nonstop about me kids. If you have forgotten who any of these children are you can check out the profiles previously created.

Family Picnic

A few weeks ago some of the girls in our apartment decided that our family needed to have a picnic along the bike path. I decided that since I am a member of the family I should probably go and enjoy the ride. We started off with a lunch at the park benches. We brought along our own meals of sandwiches and shrimp fried rice, well I brought along the shrimp fried rice. Joseph choose to bring along a sandwich as you can see.

We had to conclude our meal with a little song and dance number. Sara, Joseph and I all had to perform the song and dance routine and you can access the amazing video on Joseph's blog. But if you prefer to not take the time you can simple gaze at the picture below. This was inbetween numbers, actually it might have even been the finale of one of the songs.

We soon got bored of the song and dance routines and proceeded on our merry little way. Be ye warned of the next few pictures you are about to see. Apparently in Taiwan a person shouldn't be taking pictures in the cemetary, but we pulled a few strings and snapped a few shoots anyways. The picture below is from one of the graves or rather headstones I suppose. It is quite elaborate and kind of puts the the American graves to shame. You can really see the awesome little dragon creatures on the front of the graves. If anyone knows what these graves translate to be please let me know.

While we were in the middle of the cemetary we decided to pose with our Taiwanese man bags. I am ashamed to say that we have had them for almost two months now and this might be the only picture I have of the bag. The bags are quite convinient, I suppose that I am beginning to understand why the Europeans travel around with the bags. In America we have cars to carry around our stuff, but since we use the scooters and buses as transportation we need a bag, or rather a manpurse. You'll also might notice the flowers in our hair that we were given by the ladies.

While leaving the cemetary Joseph got a little tired and so Emily Joy had to give him a lift over to his bike. Miraculously Joseph recovered his strength when he returned to his bike and was able to return home safely. Joseph actually has more pictures like this than you would imagine. Hopefully you're imagining more than one.

Following the trip in the cemetary we stopped for some Taiwanese ice cream. Sara got really excited and accidentally dropped her ice cream into the little stream. Rather than making her fish it out of the stream the man was kind enough to give her another scoop. Luckily I have my camera pretty much everywhere I go so I was able to capture this moment.

The day ended with a beautiful sunset over the polluted canal. Everyone went home with a great smile on their face and we all felt a little bit more relaxed and ready to teach on Monday morning. I am beginning to understand why people love to get away for the weekends. Even our little day trips around town tend to give us all the energy we need to continue teaching. We certainly do not get enough sleep to give us the energy so we have to find it some other way.

Engagement

This is my youngest sister Lindsey. It sounds like I have millions of sisters but in reality I have two younger sisters. Natalie is just younger than me and Lindsey is twenty. We have become pretty good friends over the last couple of years since I got back from my mission. Well the time has come for me to say good-bye to my sister, at least from the standpoint of a single guy. Lindesy and Tyler were engaged on Saturday night. I'm excited to have another brother-in-law and hope to eventually add a sister-in-law to the mix. No that is not a preview of things to happen in the near future. But I should be home in time for the wedding, after I visit Thailand and maybe another Asian country. Love you Linds! And I suppose I should say the same to Tyler.

Blue Taiwan

Unbeknownst to me I named my blog Green Taiwan simply because green is my favorite color and Taiwan is the place I knew that I would be blogging most about. Well, it turns out that Green Taiwan actually means something over here. Recently, as in yesterday, we had the presidential elections. There is the Green party 1 and the Blue party 2. I'm sure they have different names but that is the colors they choose. Pictured below you can see the Green party. Basically from what I have gathered they support breaking from China officially and allowing Taiwan to become their own independent country. The man on the left is the presidential candidate and the one on the right I believe is the VP candidate. Other than that I can't give you any more information because I don't speak enough Chinese to know what is going on.

Below you can see the presidential candidate for the Blue party. No idea what his name is but apparently he is hard at work doing something important. The Blue party wants better relations with the mainland and my knowledge ends there, so I'll stop.

One thing that I did find fascinating is the way they choose to campaign. Of course there are banners on every street corner, banners every way you turn really. I have never seen anything like that in the United States, but apparently they are a little freer here. They do love putting up these signs everywhere. Green is on the right and blue on the left. This was in the countryside on the way to the Buddhist monastary we went to recently.

Then of course you have the mass political rallies everywhere that people love attending. Last week after church on the way to the bus we had to walk through a great crowd up people supporting the Green party and I took a video of the madness. If it ever finishes uploading then I will post it, otherwise I'll have to forgo the video.

But people are crazy over here. The top picture was taken on our way home from Costco Friday night and the street were packed like crazy. I believe it was the Blue party that was going crazy that night. There was a huge concert in the park, or rather rally in the park. I wanted to go inside but I didn't want to press my luck and we had important food to carry home like chocolate muffins and rolls. We have also had random parades which I don't know that they have anything to do with the election, but they didn't really make sense either way. Well I suppose I should get back to the title of the blog so I can end it. The Blue party swept the elections gathering up nearly 60% of the vote. That means we probably won't be going to war with China. I thought about renaming my blog, that I figured I'd continue to root for the underdog. U.N. for Taiwan!

The reason we choose teaching kindergarten over elementary.

This is Dream. She is the youngest child in our morning kindergarten class. Lately she has come to enjoy kindergarten and will actually talk to the teachers. She is trying to say, "Attention, salute, let's go!" It is the phrase we use after we get a drink and proceed to our classes. Apparently our system is working because she is picking up a little of the English language. I just thought you all would get a kick out of this video.

Digression of a Singer

In no way do I consider myself a professional singer, but I have come to enjoy it. But I have found that living in Taiwan has been compromising my abilities. I use to enjoy learning difficult pieces in choirs but now I find myself harmonizing to such songs as "She'll be Coming Around the Mountain" and "It's Raining, It's Pouring." I have gotton much better at the whole harmonizing thing and I find myself singing these songs wherever I go, even on picnics with eight other adults. But it entertains me nonetheless. When I moved to Taiwan the song which continually ran through my head was one by Michael Buble. Now I ride my bike down the street singing "She'll be Coming Around the Mountain." I'm just grateful that it isn't the ABC's. At least the people here in Taiwan don't really understand what we are singing about when I am riding my bike so I still have a little dignity left.

Not only has the song selection greatly been diminished but the venue is not quite as exciting as it was before. I once performed in the Assembly Hall in Salt Lake and my parents were there to tell me I did a good job.

However, now I get to perform with three of my friends in more of a concert venue. Joseph, Laura and I perform the main vocals and then the children attempt to echo the words we are spraying from our mouths. All in all I would have to admit that I prefer the performances in the gym room during kindergarten though. It is much more exciting, it doesn't matter if I mess up because the kids aren't really listening and couldn't tell me I sound terrible because they don't know enough words to hurt me yet. They also don't quite have the ability to laugh at me when I act like an idiot, which happens nearly everyday. In fact I was singing and dancing in morning kindergarten and one of the Taiwanese Secretaries joined in. Her coworkers peeked in the window and started laughing at her. At that point I remembered that I probably look like a dork but I'm doing it for the children so somehow that makes it okay.

My activities between performances have also greatly changed. Before moving to Taiwan I was given an awesome dressing room to change and relax in. We had ten minutes inbetween performances with nothing to do but sit and stare at a camera.

Now I find myself getting stared at inbetween performances. Dream, our youngest kindergartener only likes to participate during the last few minutes of my activities and spend the rest of the time either running room the gym floor or staring at me. I'm sure she is thinking "This guy is nuts, why are all the other kids listening to him?" She gets away with a lot, probably because she is only two years old, but if you looked like this too you could probably get away with anything. Maybe she is really internalizing my lessons though and pondering upon there truer, deeper meaning. Somehow I don't really believe that but she doesn't yet know enough English to her me her thoughts yet. She's probably thinking about how excited she is to go to Mr. Joseph's class in only five minutes.

But I do have a few adoring fans here in kindergarten. Sometimes a few kids inspired to come up and give me hugs. It's like they're saying, "Yes, you are crazy and your performances aren't what they use to be but we don't care. Just keep coming back everyday and we'll still love you." Sometimes the kids will just walk up to me thinking that and other times someone must knock them to the ground before they feel inspired to walk up to me and hug me. I believe this picture happened out of free will.

Even though the songs are much easier to learn and the audience is much smaller, I perfer the kindergarten crowd to paying adults. They pay you with real love not empty words. So if you are still interested to hearing exactly where it is that I digressed from, watch the clip below. It's long, I don't plan on watching it again, but you might get a kick out of it.

So the real video I was planning on downloading took an hour and a half and I still had nothing had I decided to stop and upload the preceeding video instead. Not me really singing but attempting to dance and sing to a more exciting song.

More Than Just Nine Friends

Recently, meaning about one or even one and a half months ago, I was sitting in the lounge in our apartment and I made a comment about having only nine friends. I believe that my exact words were something along the lines of how easy my life is here in Taiwan and that I have nine friends and I don't have to worry about making anymore. Well, that was a lie and I should have just kept my mouth shut, but I'm a guy and I make mistakes. I do have more friends than that and today I would like to spotlight one of them, my own cousin Juli Housholder. Well she is really my second cousin but nonetheless she is still one of the coolest people that I know.

We haven't always been friends. If I remember the story correctly we both thought that one another's families were weird and I am sure there was truth to both sides. But then one night Juli's family invited us over for New Year's Eve and we played Monopoly and then found out we weren't quite that different. We got along and even hung out once in a while. During the past few years she has been suffering from cancer but that hasn't stopped her from changing lives. She always has a smile on her face and she never complains, if only I could be as awesome as she is.

I just wanted to say that she's awesome even though it has nothing to do with my adventures in Taiwan. Juli if you ever happen to read this know that you're awesome and a great example. Hopefully we will never have to make another countdown chain for chemo treatments anymore. Hope that you had a great birthday and I'll talk to you in a few months.

Challenges of Learning the ABC's

I must start off this blog by admitting that I have been sitting on my bed for the last hour trying to get motivated to find a picture and write a blog about it, but it hasn't happened so I decided to upload some videos instead. Today in KBR I decided that we could break the class up into teams and have a race to find out which team could organize the alphabet the fastest. One of the groups consisting of William, Ray, Jellen and Jasper were a little bit more excited about the prospect of the competition and beat the other team quite quickly. I thought it would be exciting to see the dynamics of the teams for yourself though. I think it presents their personality in a much better light than I ever could.

The team above was handpicked by Tony, who is on the far left. Other team members include Melody, Bairt and Michael. I had to cheat in order to allow both teams to win and I think that they enjoyed the competition. It was nice to not have to participate and get to watch them attempt to work as a team. Although after I had made sure that each team won I raced them. Of course I lost because ESL kids are so much better at the English language than I am. I suppose I never understood the joys of losing until I started teaching KBR and got to see how excited they were to win.

It turns out that the best part of Friday's class really was the game. I had planned an activity to bake sugar cookies and I wanted the kids to help mix all of the ingredients together. Turns out that is not the world's best idea. They ran around screaming the entire class period and then every time we had to add a new ingredient all of the kids would yell at me telling me it was their turn to add or mix. All in all it was a disaster but I guess I am allowed a bad day every now and again. At least I get to sleep in tomorrow.

A Week in KBR

So a person might begin to wonder exactly what it is that I do all day during my KBR class. On a normal day we start the day off correcting homework. I try to play music that I think they might enjoy but they just tell me it's yucky. So after a little while of correcting homework I want to pull my hair out and then I regain my mental capacities and begin with the hard-core learning. We are currently on the second set of consanants: R,N,G,P,H. We have been working on them for about a week now and I think that we will be moving on soon. We practice making the sounds and writing, not drawing as they like to say, the letters. Here we have Bairt working hard on his letters. Probably the best student in the class.

After we have practiced the letters for a little while we read a story, or rather I tell them a story from a book with lots of pictures. It is suppose to build their language skill. By this time we have been in class for about one hour and we really need a break and this is where the real fun begins. On Monday I only had six of my eight students because Melody, my one girl, was in Korea and William was sick. While on our break the subject of girls came up. The boys began teasing each other about who they liked and I was surprised that most of the boys confessed their true love. I suppose that I was quite surprised that they would all admit as to who it was they are crushing on but I guess girls are still cool. I think this picture was taken immediately prior to our uplifting discussion about girls. I tried to get the guys to pick a girl for me to like but they were thoroughly disinterested.

I also discovered a great game last week that I played on Friday and left me quite entertained. Joseph had taught kindergarten in the morning in my classroom and had forgotten to erase the board. I erased almost everything except a man's head he had drawn and then I got an idea. I could ask the children what it is they wanted me to draw for them. I drew a circle body, candy bar legs, spider arms, horns and an elephant nose. Then he needed a way to get around so he acquired a scooter with a pet dinosaur. The story could go on and I suppose if you are truly interested you can inquire but if not just enjoy my interpretation of their ideas.

However, class today is what truly inspired me to blog. The first hour was simple enough but then break got a little interesting. Ray found a book that he enjoys looking at and can almost read all of the words, or has them memorized. You can see Ray below with the book that started all the action.

He came up to me today and decided to sit on my lap. Then Jasper came over and wanted to sit down and because I have two knees it was no problem. Well pretty soon four kids wanted on and I decided I needed a picture. One of my students offered to take the picture but I declined and asked him to get a secretary to take the picture. Sometimes I forget that these are just little kids and they just need a little lovin' every once in a while.

After our break we practiced reading letters and making the proper sounds. They did surprisingly well so I was pleased. Then we got to go outside and put bugs and other random things into our bug catchers. It started off kind of boring at the beginning, just finding snails and the occasional dead bug.

But then the grand daddy appeared. I am told by my students that it was not Michael that discovered the artifact but some other boy. We discovered a rat skull that had been there so long that the body had wasted away. Of course everyone had to touch the skeleton and hold it. I refused to do so, probably because I was afraid that I'd acquire rabies. After we finished our search for random items around the yard I made Michael throw the skull over the fence so that no one would be tempted to play with it.

We also had to wash our hands with mounds of soap. The activity turned out pretty well. It was followed up by our counting tokens (when they speak English we give them tokens to incourage them to speak) and handing out stickers ( I bribe my kids to behave by giving or taking stars away based upon made up criteria). We ended class and I raced to the post office to mail a letter home.

McDonald's

Prior to moving to the wonderful country of Taiwan I was one of the many Americans who told himself that he would never choose to eat at a McDonald's. Something about the meat that I thought tasted like cardboard or the fact that McDonald's and Wal-Mart are trying to take over the world. But things change when you move to a foreign country and all of your ice cream options either contain too much water or the closest Cold Stone's happen to be 2.5 hours away by bus. So McDonald's has become the cool place to be whenever us Berhaners happen to drop by.

The question now becomes what is it that we do at McDonald's? Pretty much everything. I celebrated my 25th birthday there complete with a cake provided by my roommate Joseph and a present from the girls. It wasn't until tonight though that I noticed the sign on the front door that said no pictures and no outside food. Oh well.

Another favorite thing to do is talk about our lives back home. Sometimes the details can get a little gushy but what can you do? I would love to expound upon what it is we are discussing in this picture, but I know I'd get hung out to dry.

The real reason I find myself attending McDonald's at least once a week is for the ice cream. As many of you know I love ice cream and probably eat too much of it. I believe that the ice cream actually tastes a bit normal, well better than the average ice cream available. I have also discovered the joy of peanut butter in ice cream and have managed to introduce it in most of the diet of my fellow teachers. It might not be the prettiest sight to see but it sure tastes great.

The food we don't continue to come back for includes the chicken wings complete with bone and all as well as the chicken burgers with a rice bun instead of the normal bread bun as found in most American McDonald's. Taiwan also seems to have a strange obsession with sesame seeds on bread products. I won't pretend to understand but I don't always enjoy it.

No visit to the McDonald's would be complete without a trip to the garbage can. For some reason I imagined that because McDonald's was well, McDonald's, they wouldn't have to recycle like everywhere else in Taiwan. But that was not to be so. We are required to seperate our trash prior to throwing it away. Gratefully we don't have to wash it first but the first time we went to throw our stuff away we had to pull trash out of cups and unwrap the hamburger wrapper. So next time you attend McDonald's don't think of corporate America, think of us foreigners living it up on soft serve ice cream sundaes.

Especially For Youth

During this past week I found out that I will working as an EFY counselor for a few weeks when I return home from Taiwan. So what exactly does this entail? I will be a counselor over a group of eight to twelve young men between the ages of 14-15 or 16-18. I basically give devotionals every night and then I hang out with them everyday. It is nice to be cool for a week. The group below was one of my favorites, Thou Shalt Medidate. We were the smallest group at the session but we won the award for the most spirit and unity.

Although most of the kids attending EFY are excited to be there it is not always true. One of my kids pictured below wasn't interested in being there at all but after the first day his attitude got a lot better. It turned out that although he didn't always obey every rule he progressed and he ended up being one of my favorite kids to work with.

Another given at EFY is that the kids will attempt to set you up with any girl counselor they find attractive. During my last week of EFY they decided that I needed to hook up with one of my co-conselors. I attempted to ask her out but in the end it never happened. Maybe this year I'll get lucky and met the girl that I'm suppose to marry. One can only hope.

During EFY every counselor hopes that he can avoid seeing the health counselors too often but with me it was never to be so. During the first week the boy pictured below jumped down a small set of stairs and ended up landing wrong on the bottom steps. He ended up braking a part of his ankle and we had to take him to the hospital.

The next week one of my boys came up from behind one of my girls and pushed her locked knees. Usually people just buckle over but she ended up dislocating her knee and we sent her to the doctor too. Also that week I had one of my kids get a headache bad enough that he had to skip out on some events. The finally injury happened my third week when one of my boys was playing around and was going to hit another guys shoulder but instead hit his nose. Still don't know that it was really an accident but we let him get away with it. The last two week of EFY were uneventful in that regard. Hopefully this year I will be able to avoid all injuries, but that remains unforseen at this time.

228 Peace Memorial Day

In Taiwan there tends to be a lot of holidays which I don't quite understand but I still love them anyways. On Thursday we had Peace Memorial Day. It was a welcome relief and a much needed day off. Although we did have the pleasure of catching a train at 7:30 in the morning which I wasn't real excited about but at least we got started on our day early. Mary really enjoyed her trip on the train, as she had a little extra time to catch up on her reading of love poems. We finally got to Taipei about 10 and got the day started.

We first went to the 228 park which included the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial as well as a few temple and a grand enterance as seen below.

Not only did we get to see the memorial but the best part of the park and really the day turned out to be the concert rehersal which we saw while wandering around the park. The concert was being directed by a man from Hungary and the orchestra was joined by a thousand-voice choir. It was really awesome and relaxing to just stand and listen to the music. I think that all of us would have liked to stay for the concert but it would not be until 7:30 that evening. I did think it was strange that there were no security guards to monitor the people watching what was going on. But seeing as Taiwan doesn't allow guns in the country it might not be such a large problem after all.

This is Chiang Kai-Shek surrounded by kites. I don't know why the kites are important but Fong Chuei means kite in Taiwanese and wind blows in mandrain. It symbolizes freedom and democracy as the poster told us. I am unsure of whether or not the jack-o-lantern is always there but it did strike me as a little strange. But then again we went into a clothing store and heard Christmas music playing.

Following our visit to the park we went out for Korean food for Katie's birthday and it was pretty good. Joseph and I did a little exploring prior to being seated and found the second story ready for service but with the lights turned off. Turns out that the pictures we took better represents what the restaurant then the pictures of us eating. We cooked all of our food on these B-B-Q's and then wrapped our food in leaves, not sure what kind but at least they were edible.

After the Korean restaurant the main attraction included going to Cold Stone and getting a mint ice cream bowl with brownies and caramel. After which Jessica, Joseph and I wandered off by ourselves and explored a park, went window shopping and when to an Italian restaurant and French pastry shop. The pastries had no hint of the normal Taiwanese flavor, which we were extremely grateful for. Initially we had planned on saving some for the train ride home, but after one bite we were done for.

All told it was a relaxing day and we were grateful to catch the 9:10 train home instead of catching an 11 o'clock train.