Our long anticipated Chinese New Year trip to Hualien has come and gone and it's going to take me forever to get it all posted on this blog. I'm starting with day one of our trip as we walk to the train station in Fung Yuan. The ten of us walking down the street with all our bags brought on some stares but we're getting used to it by now.
In order to get seats on a train during Chinese New Year, you have to purchase tickets online two weeks in advance. Everything is booked this time of year and since I didn't know we could buy them online and I can't read the Chinese website anyway...the tickets did not get purchased in time to get seats. So we were not looking forward to a 5 hour train ride standing or sitting in any nooks and cranny's we could find on the train. Our group split up to increase our chances of finding space and Laura, Lish and I found a little doorway to sit in for the first leg of the trip.
A really cool Taiwanese guy named Lester started talking to us and answered some of our questions. Here is a video of him teaching us how to say 'Do you speak English?'.
I'm not sure why we asked him to teach us this phrase since if you ask someone if they speak English- you're pretty much going to get your answer whether you ask them in English or Chinese...but whatev. He also taught us how to say 'Happy New Year' and we used that phrase a lot.
Somewhere around Taipei, the train got really crowded and there was barely enough room to stand, but once we passed Taipei, seats became available and we were able to sit down for the last leg of our trip.
Sometimes I find myself staring at the chinese characters on these signs until I get a headache trying to see if I can decipher anything it says. I showed my students this video and they told me it just says that if you have any questions, you can ask the train conductor. That's helpful.
We finally reached Hualien sometime around 7:00pm and walked the short distance to our hostel. It was a really cute place and I wish I had taken more pictures of it. The owners, Chi and Tim were very helpful and friendly.
We found out people close up their restaurants for family dinner until 9pm on New Year's Eve so we set off into town to find something that was open. This is where we ended up eating.
Lish bought some barbecued squid.
Here she is eating a squid tentacle...I tried some since I love calamari, but I'm a pansy and can't get past the fact that it wasn't disguised in deep-fried, breaded goodness.
I thought there was going to be some big count down at midnight and a huge fireworks show put on by the city or something, but in Taiwan, everyone kind of just does their own thing. There was a boardwalk along the coast where families were randomly setting off fireworks the whole evening. But midnight came and went with very little fanfare.
We met up with everyone back at the hostel and settled down for the night. Staying at a hostel is a weird experience. With all the bunk beds, it felt like girls camp except for the fact that we weren't all girls. The first night we had our own room but the following nights there were other travelers that stayed in our room as well. Here's pretty much the only picture I have of our room...
So that concludes Day One. Stay tuned for an exciting day two, an even more exciting day three, and a knock-down, drag-out crazy day four (actually my camera battery died by day four so it probably won't be that exciting but oh, the stories I have to tell...).
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