for the next couple of blogs i will be taking it back and reminiscing all the good and bad times I had in taiwan and japan. :)
So I am starting for block one, day 1 May 9
It was pretty insane that I, Fatima, was in Taiwan. So random... so we hit the ground running in Taiwan we didnt waste a minute. The first thing was the weather. Wow.. I mean the humidity was almost
unbearable and i wasnt expecting it to be this hot and sticky. Becasue of the jet lag we were up and ready at 8am and we headed to Taipei 101. To me it looked like a bunch of chinese take out boxes all stacked up. :) nonetheless beautiful. This is were it all started.. group pictures with the M flag. I didnt realize then that it was going to be staple in every picture and the position you took then would would define where you would stand in all the group pictures. (there was a lot riding on this :D). we got on the fasted elevator-- which was pretty cool--and we arrived on the 86th floor. We were each handed a English headset and told to meet back at here in one hour. I attempted to listen to the headset but got bored and decided just to look around :) hahha yeah i know---me Lauren and Brain went to the observation deck and the view was astonishing. you should see everything. to prevent suicide there was like wire ropes all the way around. So naturally to get a good picture i stuck my camera through the wires and starting snapping away. to my surprise that was against the rules and i was told by the gurad. To make matter a litte more interesting I actually had the SOM camera and so the little dilemma was all caught on tape. We roamed around at the top for a bit and headed back inside. The coolest part was the damper. This device that would help support the structure in case of an earthquake. (pretty good thinking). to make it kid friendly they made a cartoon "Damper Baby". cute looking aliens characters were located throughout the viewing areas. So of course some pictures were taken with them.We went downstairs to get lunch, wow that was a true culture chock. I mean I wanted to order but it I couldn’t use my mouth it was a game of charades pointing,, nodding, shaking my head was the way of communicating. I ordered traditional Taiwanese food. Yeah not my best decision. I mean to me eggs and oyster do not go together and the rice and vegetables were just there. Yeah I was still so hungry after. We went to a night market in the evening. So basically this is a whole lot of stores in a 2 miles radius. People are everywhere and you can barely here yourself think because of all the music and loud sales people. At first I was with the group all 11 of us were together, within moments me and Lauren got separated from the group. At the moment we didn’t think it was that big of deal thinking we will definitely run into someone we know. So we walked and walked and walked we couldnt feel out feet t anymore. From a distance we see a street we assume it was the street where we started off from. We head towards it once we get there we look both ways and realize we were truly lost. In complete frustration we decide lets just end back and with out handy dandy badges we can ask a local to show us the way. As soon as we make a turn low and behold we find other classmates. WOW the sigh of relief that we saw some familiar faces. I could not have been happier. Come to realize they were lost to and were looking for the other classmates as well. Since it was a night market we continue to shop and browse through the stores. The best part was the illegal shops. They were set up in the middle of the road on nothing but a blanket or small cart. Once a cop came it was like a fire drill; each person did a specific task so the shop would be closed in less then 1 minute. From what we saw; 3 cycles of laying out their product to closing it back up within 2 hours. It was quite entertaining because it was no time to say excuse me. We were getting trampled and pushed by everyone. I cant count how many times I kicked, stepping or nudged a person in that market.
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