Thursday, May 14

I ate a bagel for breakfast at the hotel place and rode the green line and a bus to Joy Enterprises. This is by far my favorite business so far. They teach kids to speak english and I really think I could live in Taiwan and work for them. We got to play little kid games to see some of the ways they teach. When we left we took a train back to Taipei Main Station and ate McDonalds and changed clothes quicker than I've ever done in my life. We took some more trains to the university and did our case study with the Taiwanese students. I only had one Taiwan student in my group and he was extremely intelligent. Some professional Chinese Calligraphists came and let us try to write some things. I got one of the guys to write Emerson for me on a pretty piece of paper for my sister. We took the train to Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world. I ate some Subway in the basement and then we rode the fastest elevator in the world to the 89th floor and walked up some more floors to the outdoor observatory, probably one of the coolest things i've seen. You could see everything in the huge city, but it was extrememly windy out there. We stopped at coldstone and then took a cab home. Tonight I had to shower in jakes room because our bathroom is leaking from above and smells like poop. Then I went to bed.

Wednesday, May 13

I had breakfast at the hotel place and then we walked to the presidential office and took a very long tour. Our tour guide had a very thick accent and was hard to understand, but he was extremely nice. We stopped by McDonalds and ate lunch and went to the top of a coffee shop and discussed the One Laptop Per Child case study. They gave us these kind of thick, sweet drinks that sort of tasted like sweet tea. From there we went to karaoke and had a blast. It was so much fun. We drank beers and sang tons of songs with the whole group that went. We took a train to another night market on the way home and walked quickly through it, then took the train home. We had the ladies at the front desk of the hotel to order us Pizza Hut to the hotel and watched Project Runway and fell asleep.

Tuesday, May 12

Today was amazing. The hotel ordered McDonald's for us for breakfast. I ate a bagel on the bus to Giant bicycle factory. We got to tour the factory and see how the entire assembly line worked. This was really cool. When we were leaving some of us talked to the guy that led our tour and he told us all about living in Taiwan and where he lived and grew up. He was really nice. After that we rode our bus to the Lien Cheng Saxaphone Museum/Store. These were the first saxaphones made in Taiwan. Meghan and the daughter of the store owner played some music for us. We ate lunch at a nice restaurant where we had our private rooms. There was a ton of stuff that I tried to eat and a ton more that I would never even think of trying! There was black chicken with bumps on it! When we finished eating we went to a flower garden that had tons of beautiful orchids and then we went to a winery. They let us taste 2 red wines and 1 white. We bought a bottle to enjoy later. We took the bus to a town with a lot of love motels and ate some KFC. It was really spicy and the chicken was pinkish. They had fries at the KFC too. That was strange. We spent 3 hours in a love motel. This was awesome. There was a big, comfortable bed with a canopy over it, a massaging chair, karaoke, a POOL, a hot tub, a thing you lay on that sprays water with hard pressure on you, and a lot more. It was a lot of fun, but this is where I broke my camera so my pictures end here. After this we took showers and went to Barbados. We had a few drinks and took a taxi home and went ot bed.

Monday, May 11

We had breakfast at the hotel place again and then I ate McDonald's, too! We took a bus to a pottery place about an hour away, but it was closed so we shopped around some pottery stores and then got lessons. We got to do one of those spinning things and make our own clay creation that we'll get to keep. This was really fun. I made a bowl with my name in Chinese on it. We took the bus to the spa and spent the afternoon switching from steaming hot water to freezing cold water to water with super strong, massaging jets. This was amazing and I never wanted to leave. When we left we went back to Lishe and picked out our favorite ten pictures for our photo albums and ordered Pizza Hut here. We took a train to the Main Station and went shopping at the gigantic department store and some other small shops, then got some Subway and brought it back here. Now I'm about to go to sleep :)

Sunday, May 10

Amanda Edden met up with us this morning and spent the day and night here. We had breakfast at the hotel place again and then took a bus for about an hour to a city with a gazillion steps to climb. At the top was a market where we shopped around for a while and I got a cute bracelet that means "fate of change" and then walked around in a really pretty temple. We took the bus another hour to the beach. We hung out and drank Taiwan Beer and played in the ocean and volleyball all day. This was so much fun. I slept on the way back to Taipei the whole way and then fell asleep again when I got home. I woke up at 10:30 pm and got ready to go out. We walked to McDonald's and got some dinner and decided we were too tired to go out so just went back to bed!

Saturday, May 9

I got up early and had a bagel and delicious apple juice at the hotel place. We took a train to Lishe and got Chinese makeovers and photoshoots. We walked around a park for a while and saw Chiang Kai-Shek. We saw some high school girls dancing to Britney Spears' "Circus". We all had lunch together at a Chinese place. The fried rice was really good, but the other stuff was iffy. We toured a museum with an audio guide and watched three girls play a stringed instrument and sing. It was so relaxing I fell asleep. On the way home we stopped by the night market. It was incredibly crowded and smelled funny, but everything was really cheap. I want to go back there and buy some Nikes. I came home around 9 and immediately fell asleep.

Friday, May 8

My days are all messed up, but I slept most of Friday on the plane from Narita to Taipei. We took a bus to Hotel Flowers and I immediately got my room and fell asleep, again!

Thursday, May 7

We left the Charlotte airport around 9 am and I slept the entire way to Dallas. When we got to Dallas I ate some McDonalds and got back on the plane to the Narita airport in Japan. I slept most of the way there, too. TODAY'S MY 21ST BIRTHDAY!!!