Amusement Park, Facials, and Cinnamon Rolls!

On Thursday morning of last week, I got a call from one of my student's parents. She asked me if I would like to go to a park with them that evening. I didn't have anything else going on, so I said yes. When she said park, I thought she meant playground, but it was not just any regular park, it was an amusement park!
Tim, one of my students in my 2A class, his older brother, Danny, and their mom and I went to the amusement park. It was a ton of fun! It was fun to get to know Tim outside of class! He's a cute kid! He's 8 years old, just about the same age as my nephew, Adam.

This is the only picture I got that night from the amusement park! Tim and I.

On Saturday, Kailey and I explored the mountain behind our house! We got facials on top of the mountain. The facial consisted of the lady putting cream on our faces and using this sticky string thingy to pull all of the hair out of our faces. Then she plucked our eyebrows just a little bit! It was a special experience!

After our special facials, we went home and decided to make cinnamon rolls! Normally that wouldn't be a problem, but we don't have an oven. We have a toaster oven, but not an oven. We both really wanted to make them, so we decided to give it a try anyway. We used the recipe on the recipe blog and halved it. It turned out perfectly!

Look how beautiful they look! It was just the perfect amount for us four roommates that night and then for breakfast in the morning!

Kailey and I with our cinnamon rolls!

Sister Dalton and Lotus Lake!

On Sunday we went to church with Tricia in Kaohsiung. We happened to be in the same ward that Sister Elaine Dalton of the Young Women General Presidency was attending! Karyn, Kailey, Liz, Tricia and I got to meet and talk with her. We had a conversation with her and she told us some things that we all needed to hear. It was an amazing experience! I seriously could just feel the love emanating from her.

After church, Tricia dropped us off at Lotus Lake. It's a really cool lake with a bunch of temples and statues around it! Here are some pictures from there!

This was our first stop on our tour of the lake. We didn't go all of the way around, but we saw the main attractions! This is a Confucius Temple! It was beautiful!

I love red doors! This is at the Confucius Temple!

This is a big Buddha statue! I loved this shot with the people sitting on the beach with the big umbrella!

Almost to the big Buddha! It was pretty awesome!

An upclose of one of the statues on the bridge from the picture above!

Pagodas and dragon and tiger! We got to walk through the dragon and tiger!

Me in front of the pagodas!

We went to the top of the left pagoda! I love the view! I really like this walkway!

On top of the pagoda!


Overlooking the walkway!

Watch out, we're being eaten!

This is a carving inside of the dragon! There's a head coming out of his stomach ;)

Inside of the dragon!

I like this pond and bridge and the background!

I hope you notice the lovely dead pig and goat on the tables. Yes they are real. There was some sort of Buddhist celebration going on. We didn't know what at the time, but we heard it might have been a celebration because it's the middle of the year.

This is on the train ride back to Changhua. We bought standing room because there were no seats left and we didn't want to wait for the next train. We stood for quite a while and then some floor space opened up at the front of the car where we sat for a while and then we were able sit on some seats for the last part of the trip. It was a lovely way to end the trip :) Seriously! I enjoyed the train ride!

Once again this day was a lovely day! I am so grateful that we got to meet Sister Dalton and listen to her speak at her fireside that night. I am so grateful that we got to hang out with Tricia and that she was so willing to drive us around. I am so glad that we got to see Lotus Lake and walk through a dragon and tiger :) I am so glad that we got to see Foguanshan and all of its beautifulness!

Kaohsiung, Land of the Beautiful Temples & Sunsets!

This past weekend, Liz, Kailey, Karyn and I decided to make a bigger trip, where we actually spend the whole weekend somewhere. Kaohsiung was our destination.

On Friday night, we sped to the train station on our bikes right after work. We got there with about 15 minutes to spare, where we attempted to go through the ticket line but the machine wouldn't take our tickets. We had no idea why, then it was pointed out to us that the tickets were for the wrong day!

What do we do now? Well we found some really nice people who spoke English and helped us get the situation figured out! We ended up buying new tickets and then getting a partial refund once we got to Kaohsiung. (Even though we bought the tickets at the last minute, we were able to get seats, for which I am grateful! They have tickets for standing room too.)

We arrived in Kaohsiung on Friday night and my friend, Tricia (who I wrote about before) was waiting for us at the train station. She helped us in our quest of getting a refund for our tickets. Then she drove us to our hostel in downtown Kaohsiung. The hostel was really clean and lovely and it was pretty dang cheap! We shared a room with one other girl, who was really friendly!

We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning and Tricia drove us to Foguangshan. Foguangshan is a huge Buddhist complex on a hill about 20 minutes outside of Kaohsiung.

This is the main attraction of Foguangshan! I believe it's the tallest Buddha statue in all of Taiwan! It's 36 meters (118 feet) high! (There are 480 smaller images of the Buddha surrounding the large one.)

Here's some more of the Buddhas surrounding the large one!

Me in front of the statue!

Up close and personal with the statues!

Me in front of the statue again! I just can't get enough pictures :)

Look at that pagoda! This is in the temple complex! It is beautiful!

I loved these little statues! They were everywhere!

I liked this one with no legs! All of these statues were small!

This is the biggest temple on the complex and IT IS HUGE! Seriously!

This is looking inside of the temple! Those Buddhas are also very big!

Inside of the temple! Look how small that person looks at the left of the picture!

All of the walls look like this up close! Literally from about a foot above the floor to the windows up above and from corner to corner, the walls had these statues in the holes!

Some more statues, but these were in a different part of the complex! These all have different poses and faces as opposed to the ones by the tall Buddha statue that all looked the same.

I loved these red gates! I have so many more pictures at Foguangshan, but alas I cannot post them all.

The complex has so much more than what I have pictured! It has a university and museums and more temples and pagodas and statues and souvenir shops and dorms... It is huge!

After Foguangshan, we made our way to the beach. We drove back to Kaohsiung! We took a ferry to get to the beach!

This is a view of the city from the ferry!

Me on the ferry!

Tricia and I at the beach! Liz, Karyn, Kailey and I changed into our swimsuits. Tricia didn't because she had to go somewhere else fairly soon, but she stayed and walked along the beach with us for awhile.

P.S. This was the first time my roommates and I had seen the ocean since we've been on this wonderful island of Taiwan! We've been here exactly two months today!

As we were at the beach we got to witness one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen! I love sunsets! Each one is so different and so marvelous!

Another part of the sunset!

Look at the color of the clouds and the water! I love the light reflecting off of the water!

It was a wonderful time at the beach! The water was warm and shallow, the sun was behind the clouds, the waves were just the right size. I love relaxing at the beach!

After the beach we went back to the place to get on the ferry and the line was super duper long. I think we only waited about an hour or so ;) I know this picture is dark, but this is Kailey, Karyn, and Liz waiting for the ferry.

We ended up going to the night market in Kaohsiung, near our hostel, after the beach on Saturday. That place was huge!

Overall the day was marvelous! I love exploring and seeing new places! One can learn so much by exploring and studying and asking questions.

This is Day 1 of our Kaohsiung trip! More to come soon... :)

Changhua Rocks!

Yesterday was a really good day! We stayed here in our lovely city of Changhua! In the morning, we went to the morning market. We bought the ingredients we needed to make dumplings for that night and we just looked around and took it all in!
They had some pretty interesting things there, like live snakes and frogs and fish in bowls on the ground ready for someone to buy and take home to eat, whole dead plucked chickens (some were white and some were black.) They had a little bit of everything.

Later in the day we went to this awesome Confucius temple in downtown Changhua! It's beautiful! I believe it was built in the 1700s. It's been renovated a little bit, but it is old.

Look at that bell! It didn't actually have a ringer in it, but I liked it! It is heavy; if that would have fallen on top of me, it would've hurt ;)

Some details of the temple! I really love how colorful the temples are here!

Look at this shot! It took quite a few times for me to get all of us in the shot. All of us took turns taking the picture and each time we would switch spots in the background :) It was great fun!

Look at these doors! They are old and beautiful!

Me in front of the temple!

Educational notes in the temple! They have these cards that you can write on and write your educational hopes on them and then hang them up. For example someone wrote that they hope that all of their English students will learn English well! You can write whatever you want that has to do with education. I didn't write one. Maybe next time.

I loved this shot with the tree and the temple in the background! The trees here are so beautiful!

After we toured the temple, we headed to the grocery store for a few more ingredients for our dinner and then we went home and rested. Then we made our meal of dumplings and egg drop soup. The dumplings were a success! But the egg drop soup not so much ;) But it was a good time!

Later that night we had a little dance party with loud music and glow sticks! It was so much fun to let off some energy and just dance and not care that I do not know how to dance at all. Afterward we decided to calm down by watching a movie. The movie was hilarious!

Yesterday was a good day! Friday was a good day! Today was a good day!

Happy Friday the 13th!

Today was a good day! Classes went pretty smoothly! It had its moments, but overall it was a happy day for me!

After school today, Karyn, Liz, Kailey, Amy and I went to Costco! It's about a 20-minute train ride and then a 30-minute walk. How can I describe the awesomeness that was Costco?! I do not know. It's seriously just like a Costco in America. The only difference is there's a bunch of Taiwanese people and a few crazy foreigners :)

It was a madhouse! When I say madhouse, I mean insanely busy, like I've never seen a Costco in America that busy and that's saying a lot (having been in Costcos in Utah and Virginia)

After the shopping trip in which I bought trailmix (yay!), shampoo, and real sharp cheddar cheese (yay again!), we ate at Costco, where I had a really good bacon cheeseburger and soda!

I'm in Taiwan! Sometimes, I just sit here and think I'm in Taiwan! What's up with that?! How cool is that?! I can't believe it! It's crazy awesome! Happy Friday the 13th!