Easiest Degree....Ever!

Ha ha ha! Okay, so I just received my Associate of Arts degree from Boise State in the mail today. Kind of funny! I got the degree because Justin and I weren't sure what we were going to do in the future (which is now). There was a time we thought we might be moving before I could finish my degree. SO we decided to have me get my associates so that if we did move I wouldn't have to retake any generals at the new college. When I looked into it, I realized that I had already completed all of the degree requirements to receive an Associate of Arts...all I had to do was hit the "Apply for Graduation" button and then pay the application fee. So I did and here I am, an official Associate of Arts. HA HA HA HA!

Free TV

I love it when I happen to be in the right place at the right time!

One of the agents at work, who happens to be our Realtor, just purchased her husband a new flat screen tv for Father's Day. As a result, they needed to get rid of their existing 8 year old 60" tv. I happened to be sitting in front of my email right when her email went out offering the tv...FOR FREE!

Of course I responded right away saying we would take it! I was the first to respond, so Justin took Adam and Chase to go pick it up.

The tv works great! It's got a slight "Days of our Lives" glow on everything because of some algae that was shaken up in transportation. Justin is going to try to replace that coolant to see if it will get rid of the haze, but you can't go wrong with a free tv!

I will say, however, that a 60" tv in an 1100 sqft homes' living room does look quite large and slightly out of place! Ha ha ha! Oh well!

Taiwan - Travel through Monday, June 8th

Ni Hao!

We're going to try to update this as often as possible while we're in Taiwan. Unfortunately, the internet connections aren't the greatest and can't really be relied upon. But hey, we're here and we're having fun.

Just an update on our travels to even get here. We arrived at the Boise Airport at 7:30am Friday morning, thanks Tony for dropping us off. Once we got all checked in we had some time to kill before our plane left at 9am. We arrived in Salt Lake around 10am and then caught our next flight to Los Angeles at 11am. This flight was also relatively short as we arrived in LA around 12:30pm. We ate lunch before going through security at the LA international airport.

FYI - don't eat Mexican food right before a 14 hour flight :)

And so we got on the plane to Taipei, Taiwan at approximately 3:30pm LA time. THAT WAS THE LONGEST FLIGHT EVER!!! Ha ha ha! I watched four movies, played a video game, and slept. We were fortunate that our row had three seats and Justin and I were the only ones in the row so we were able to stretch out and get some decent sleep.

The flight itself wasn't too terribly bumpy and we only encountered minor turbulence along the way (nothing like the Spokane trip - Mom and Ariel).

The absolute worse part about the flight, besides being prego and gassy, was the food. OH MY GOSH!!! That food was horrible. Seriously! And no, it's not just because my reality of food is skewed right now. It was bad enough that Justin didn't dare touch the second meal. I can't even describe how bad it was.

Our first meal was some sort of space monkey beef stew mix with strange rolls, nasty veggies, and some weird salad thing on the side. The second meal I opted for the "scrambled eggs and sausage" and Justin got "chicken and rice." I put these in quotes because that is what they called them but that is NOT what they served us. Seriously, I would have rather eaten a month of MRE's or even elementary school lunch before touching that stuff. I think we are going to bring along some food for the flight home...cuz that was BAD!!!

So yeah, we went practically 14 hours without eating anything but Gushers, granola bars, and water - I'll get back to the whole eating thing soon.

After arriving in Taiwan, at approximately 8:30pm Saturday night, we had to go through customs in order to get in to the country. They wanted to know what hotel we were staying at. Justin had a friend here set up our hotel room and we didn't know the name of it or where it was. We had to have security call Justin Lin to get the information for the hotel. Luckily he answered and gave a satisfactory answer so we were admitted into the country.

From customs, we went to grab our luggage at the baggage claim. By this time all the other baggage from our flight had been claimed and about 4 pieces of luggage sat next to the conveyor belt waiting for their owners. The problem - only one of those pieces was ours and we had checked 2. I didn't panic too much because we had all of our money and toiletries and things like that in our carry on items, but I still wanted my bag. So we had to go over to the customer service center.

I AM SO GLAD that Justin speaks Chinese :)

We sat there for a few minutes and finally one of the gentlemen helping us informed us that someone else had accidentally grabbed my bag and left but that he was waiting at the front desk with my bag. Everything appeared to be in tact when we met the guy out front and he was really nice. Off to the last leg of our entry trip we went.

Justin Lin, Justin's friend who had arranged our hotel, was meeting us at the bus station in Taichung, about two hours from the airport. So we got to the bus station at the airport and got our tickets for the bus.

The buses here are really funny. The seats sit extra high, like on a second level, because of the storage space under the bus. Also, they have like living room curtains in all the windows. They kind of remind me of Austin Powers style buses. HA HA HA.

Anyway, I crashed on the bus ride in and didn't really see anything but boy did the humidity hit me. By the time we arrived at the bus station in Taichung, it was about midnight and I was already sticky and sweaty.

Justin Lin and his friend Richie picked us up on the corner and took us to our hotel. We stayed in one hotel the first night and then moved to the hotel next door for the remainder of the week because it was cheaper. Granted the more expensive of the two only cost $34 per night. Ha ha.

After getting all checked in to the first hotel, we thanked Justin for his time and then he went home to crash. Keep in mind we hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours. SO, we went for a walk and found some food.

NOTE - prego hungry ladies and stinky tofu BAD MIX.

They have this tofu that seriously smells like crap. Serious. And people eat it. I think the garbage trucks that we have encountered smell better than that stuff.

I was starving but so hungry that nothing sounded good. So we just got some simple fried rice and drinks.

The market we went to was interesting. It reminded me of the fair at night. Lots of little stands with people frying food and trying to get you to come to their stand. I wasn't too impressed with some of the foods they were displaying to eat. They had goose heads and chicken feet just hanging out. Several also had frogs that reminded me of Sophomore biology. Ha ha ha, made me laugh but definitely didn't make me go "yum, let's eat here, they have frogs!" Ha ha!

They also have 7-Elevens on almost every corner that are open 24 hours (isn't 7-Eleven named that because those are their hours?) But the funny thing about these stores is that they are just convenience stores, no gas station.

On the way back to the hotel I noticed some guys working on what appeared to be food of some sort. I noticed that none of them were wearing shirts and they didn't exactly look sanitary. I was a little disgusted by this but just kept telling myself to get over it and that I can't think about sanitation too much while we are here or else I will starve. As we rounded the corner I was able to see what the guys were working on. They were preparing the food for the next day's meat market. And I no longer cared about the fact that they weren't wearing shirts. They were throwing the meat cuts on the ground. Not on a nice clean tarp on the ground even, but directly onto the nasty sidewalk where who knows how many people, animals, etc have ventured recently. THAT WAS SO GROSS!!!

Justin said that that was nothing, during the day time the meat will be covered with all sorts of bugs and smells rotten as it sits out in the sun.

We took our little night adventure home and then crashed for the night since we were planning on going to church at 10:30 the next morning. So Sunday morning came and we took a taxi to church - not sure how that fits in with keeping the Sabbath day holy - but we got to church. We attended the Taichung 1st ward which was part of Justin's second area he served in over here.

I always think its cool when you can go clear across the world and the service is still the same. It was fast Sunday, so of course several members got up to bear their testimonies. I had no idea what exactly they were saying, but I could still feel the spirit. That was pretty cool.

After sacrament, Justin met up with one of the members who used to come to their English classes. Colin was this kid's name. He was really nice and remembered Justin. They talked for quite some time and then Colin gave us a whole bag of Lychee fruit - one of the fruits Justin has been craving since going home 5 years ago. Colin is a travel agent here in Taiwan now. He told us he could get us flights over to Hong Kong, but that they are around $250 each. I think we're probably going to pass on that. Even though it would be fun, I don't think it's worth the money when we have so much to see and do here.

I got pretty sick during church. I think the heat was really starting to get to me at this point. We were invited to a "break the fast" with the English branch right after our sacrament meeting let out. It was fun to go and talk to the members down there and the older couple missionaries, Elder and Sister Dowes, were really nice.

The food was okay, but my tummy was really upset. Justin and I laughed because guess what they served - spaghetti. HA HA HA! I come all the way across the world and people still try to feed me the one thing on my list that I just don't like. Oh well, such is life I guess.

After the potluck, we went outside to wait for Justin Lin to pick us up as he was going to help us get moved into the other hotel. I don't think we really waited that long, but in the heat and with an already upset stomach it was long enough. I ended up throwing up outside, yuck!

Justin and I decided after switching hotels that we were just going to rest the whole rest of the day and try to get our bodies back in line. I went to sleep at 3pm and woke up at 11pm. Around 2am Justin went and got some dinner and some drinks for us. We went back to sleep and slept until about 9am Monday morning. This helped a ton getting our systems in sync with the time zone here.

Monday morning, Justin wanted me to try some traditional Taiwanese breakfasts. I'm game to try anything so I agreed! We went down and had some Dan Bing - it's like a crepe almost with some sort of egg and flavored ham inside. My tummy still wasn't sure what was going on so it took a lot of effort for me to take the first bite. It tasted REALLY good, but that didn't last too long. Justin finished my portion and as we were leaving the little shop I threw up everything into the gutter. :( I was so sad!

We walked and walked and walked looking for place to rent a scooter for the day. When we finally found what we were looking for, Justin tried to rent a scooter.

The first place we went wouldn't rent us one because her boss was not there and she didn't have permission to rent the scooters out.

The second place shocked the heck out of me. They wouldn't rent us a scooter because we were foreigners. The lady told Justin that she didn't trust that he would bring it back. I couldn't believe that they were allowed to do that!

Oh well, we went to another place but they didn't do scooter rentals, just sales.

Finally, we came to a place that agreed to rent us a scooter but he made Justin call Justin Lin and talked to him. We had to put Justin Lin on the list of contacts in case we didn't bring the scooter back. Ha ha, what the heck were we going to do with a 125 cc scooter? Oh well, we got the bike and we were off.

You want to know a very scary experience? Try riding a scooter in downtown Taichung in the middle of the day! It is NUTS! I swear that there are almost no laws. Cars, buses, scooters, etc no one follows any kind of laws.

Did you know that if you put your hazard lights on you can stop your car anywhere in the road and it's okay parking for any amount of time? All of the scooters drive in between the cars and buses because if they don't they'll get squished.

There were only 3 rules that I saw the majority of people following (majority, not all). 1 - red light means stop (if someone else has already stopped), 2 - green light means go (or if you think the light is about to turn green), 3 - if you're on a scooter and want to turn left you go straight across the intersection and then park in front of the cross traffic lane to then go left with traffic (or just ride on the sidewalks all the way around).

I am really glad that we are used to riding a bike and that I trust Justin. There were several times that we came close to getting into a wreck. The funniest part about it is even when it is a REALLY close call everyone just looks around with blank stares like, "what?" Ha ha ha. Riding the bike made the day quite a bit cooler, but when we stopped and walked around I almost instantly overheated.

With a mostly queasy stomach still, I did what any other 23 year old American-Idaho girl would do - I found McDonald's and had some french fries! Guess what, they stayed down and I started to feel better. Ha ha ha, I might not be able to handle some of the funky food they have here but boy I can handle my potatoes :) I felt like such the American stereotype, but oh well.

We also discovered that I can't get hot. If I start to get a little hot I need to get something icy in my hands ASAP otherwise it will take forever for me to cool off. But if we catch it before I get hot, then I feel great.

Did you know that 7-Eleven still has slurpees over here? Nothing cools hands off better than a 7-Eleven Mango slurpee!

Because we just wanted to go and explore, we went to this huge 14 story mall that is near the church house and mission home. The malls here are really strange. The whole thing felt like one giant department store. But really each type of clothing/center was its own separate store but there were no walls dividing them.

We spent a good chunk of time exploring this mall and laughing at the high end, expensive shirts that had horrible English phrases on them. We took a picture of a few, things that you really would NEVER see worn in the states because well, it's just too blatantly inappropriate. Keep in mind, these were the expensive shirts. We haven't even looked at the knock-off stands on the side of the road. It was at the mall that I got my french fries.

Justin also had me try this cool dessert like thing. It it chopped ice with what looked and tasted like liquid brown sugar and topped with Mangos and sweetened condensed milk. It was good, but a bit much on the sugary stuff. I think the mangos and lightly sweetened ice would have been good as well.

After we were done with the mall, we went for a ride over to one of Justin's other areas. He took me to this destination shopping district. We were laughing because it was all imported American stuff. Just knick-knacks and other totally American style collectibles like Mary Moos and things like that. While we were in this area, Justin took me down this street that one of his new members used to live on. We got clear outside her apartment complex and he couldn't remember which one she lived in. He was so upset. I hope we can find her for him as he would really like to see her while we are here.

When we left this little area, we went down by the college. There was this little side street that Justin said he used to eat on almost every meal of every day when he lived down there. He had me try these little funky pancake things that were filled with some sort of custard. They were good, but kind of odd. I'm still not quite sure what to think of them.

We went to college campus which was right around the corner. Justin wanted to show me the funky shaped church that is famous on the island. It really is odd shaped but it's also famous because it is one of the first Christian churches on the island.

Christian Church on College Campus Beautiful Tree on College Campus Trunk of the Same Tree

We tried to go to the National Science Museum on Monday, but that is the one day out of the week that they are closed. We were still able to walk around the botanical gardens and that was beautiful. The grass over here is funky. It's like really think bladed short weedy type grass but it covers the whole lawn and looks beautiful. Not our lush golf course type grass though.

Giant Butterfly outside Natural Science Rainforest

Rainforest Greenhouse at Natural Science Museum

Big Tree at Botanical Gardens

After chilling at the botanical gardens for a good bit we decided that it was time to eat. By this time, my tummy was still doing fine since the french fries so we decided to go to an all-you-can-eat hot pot place. I didn't eat much, but it was really good and for the first time since being in Taiwan, IT STAYED DOWN! Wahoo!

For those of you who don't know, a hot pot is kind of like fondue. You have two types of broth boiling in the center of the table. Then you pick and choose the things you want to cook in it. Let them cook to your preference and then pull them out and eat them. They had really cool glass coke bottles at the restaurant - Justin confiscated one of them to take home. Ha ha.

After dinner we decided to go to the A.Mart to get some milk and cereal for me for the morning so I would have a shot at keeping the food down. When we got there we saw some Elders talking to some people on the side of the street. We went over and chatted with them for a bit, they are both from Utah. The people they were talking to are some of the members of one of their wards.

Anyway, after we chatted with them, we went into the store and got some Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and some milk for me and some mangos and guava for Justin. We went back to the hotel, parked the scooter for the night, and called it a day. Both Justin and I passed out well before 10pm last night, but woke up around 6 this morning. Our bodies still aren't quite used to the time change. We'll probably get used to it by about Saturday and we come home on Sunday.

This morning I had my Frosted Flakes, they're grrrrreat! And Justin and I split a guava. He also went and got another Dan Bing. I had a bite this morning and it was better than yesterday and managed to stay down this time as well!

Right now, Justin is returning our scooter and should be back momentarily. We are planning on going down to Gao Xiong and Kenting Beach. Justin Lin is taking us as he was planning on going that way anyway.

Till the next update I wish you all well!