Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Hiking, the Taipei Temple, & the 101 Tower



Here is where I hope to spend a lot of time over the next 6 months in order to replace the gorgeous desert hiking in Arizona for something more green and tropical. And just like in Arizona where I couldn't go far without running into other hikers every few minutes, these trails were full of people. At the top of the trail there were hula hoops and ropes and other makeshift "work-out" equipment there for people to use.


Although it's close to where we live, the bike ride up hill to the trailhead is a little steep, so we rode a scooter. I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy a scooter while I'm here since we're kind of limited to where we can go with only bikes to ride. This is a view from the trail of Feng Yuan and Tai Chung (I think). We live in Feng Yuan and we take a 40 minute bus ride to Tai Chung to attend church each week. Once I get a scooter, the commute to Tai Chung will probably only be 25-30 minutes.

After the hike, we came home and some wonderful cleaning ladies were there scrubbing our bathroom, kitchen, and floors! I think they'll be coming once a week! Yay!

Our branch rented a bus for our trip to Taipei. We each paid about $10 or 350NT to help cover the cost of the rental. People love to Karaoke here and our bus was a Karaoke bus that came equipped with dvd players, microphones, and tv screens.

No karaoke-ing here....just a church video...maybe next time...

After two hours, we arrived in Taipei.


Here is the Taipei Temple. We were given earphones that translated the session into English.
The building on the right side of the temple has a distribution center and a stake center inside.


My first glimpse of the 101 Tower!

Since it was a cloudy day, we decided not to waste the 350NT it costs to go to the top. We'll wait and go on our next trip to Taipei when there are clearer skies.

At the base of the 101 Tower is a huge mall. We went to the food court and saw a woman ordering these huge crepes filled with pork, corn, cabbage, mayo, and curry. It looked good, so we just pointed to hers and ordered more. They wrapped it up into a cone shape and we ate it kind of like an icecream cone.





Stephenie Meyer! 'Nuff said.



2008 heart Taiwan!

2 comments:

AimeeTheSuperMom said...

I was so excited to see your blog. I've wondered how things are going at the school. I taught for Frances about ten years ago when the school was still across the street from her house. I so miss Taiwan. And, I know what you mean about the McDonald's there. Three stories is nuts. Have you been to the one in the basement of the mall yet? And have you had a teriyaki burger or corn soup? Yummers!!

There used to be an LDS church building in Feng Yuan. Is it gone? It was a pretty big ward. One of my favorite members was Round Round. Is she still there? If she is, tell her that Aimee who gave her a CTR ring ten years ago says hello.

Be sure and keep this blog going. Those of us who have taught before you still wonder about the school and how it's doing. Will you post pics of the school?

Tell Frances hello. She didn't send us a Christmas card this year, so that means I don't have any updates from her.

Oh! I'm Aimee. I used to be Aimee Pelletier. She'll know who I am. Enjoy your stay in Taiwan. It's such an amazing place.

Sara said...

Hi Aimee...I hope you see this! I will definitely tell Frances hello for you. If you want to see pictures of the new school, I think there are some in one of my first blogs on here. There is still a really nice church building in Feng Yuan but they recently moved the English branch to Tai Chung. Thanks for writing!