a random assortment of updates

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Whew I'm finding it hard to keep this updated.  Since my last update I've had three extremely busy, but fun weekends.  First we went to Kaohsiung to visit with Deb and her family.  We got to see some really cool sites around the city the night we got in thanks to our super groovy tour guide, Mike.  Saturday we met up with Deb and her family and headed to Fridays for some fantastic American food.  Then we got to go to the "Dream Mall" with its 7 floors, I believe it was, of food and shopping with a ginormous ferris wheel on top.  After the mall we went to get tattoos and piercings =D  Deb and Staycie got tattoos.  Cassandra, Jacqueline, and I weren't real keen on permanently inking our bodies so Cassandra Jacqueline got their ears pierced and I re-pierced my nose!  Later Saturday night we got to have a girls night out and walk to a little bar near our hostel.  OH, speaking of our hostel, that was my first time staying in one and it was sooo nice.  I'm pretty certain that's not normal for a hostel but ours was like renting out someone's apt.  Our night out at the bar was full of fun and laughing, lots of laughing!

Halloween weekend, we went to Taipei.  Cassandra's aunt had invited us to go to a parade with her on Saturday so we decided to go up for the weekend and visit with our Taipei friends also.  Saturday night we got to dress up and go out for Halloween!  Turns out Halloween is a huge celebration in the city.  I was a hippie because it was cheap and easy to put together with stuff I already had, haha.  We had a great time as always in Taipei.

This weekend there was a marathon in Hualien.  People came from all over the island and even from as far as Kenya to participate in the race.  Our Taipei friends Staycie, Karin, and Monica came as well as Eileen and Eric.  We had an early night Friday night because of the early race time.  Those participating had to leave at 4:30am!  The rest of us were supposed to be on a 7:20am train BUT, true to form,  I overslept =)  I missed the train because my alarm was set for "Mon-Fri" therefore did not go off even though I had set it the night before.  I decided instead of driving over to the train station to find out what time the next train would be, I might as well just make use of my own transportation and ride my scooter.  It was my first long ride on the scooter.  It took about 40 mins to get there and I got to test out driving with a little more speed... I got up to 65 (that's only about 40 mph lol).  At the race it was really cool to see so many people from all over.  Also, after the race we took our visiting friends on a walk through the gorge to see some of the beauty of Hualien.  We mainly just rested and chatted all afternoon and then went out to entertain ourselves in the city for the evening.  We went to the golden bear (it was our first time even though we live here) which is this huge casino looking place with all kinds of video games.  We played a few games in Chinese and then went to get some dumplings for dinner.  Lastly, we went to crazy bar!  Let me explain that we (and by we I mean Karin, haha jk) have been talking about going to crazy bar ever since the first time the Taipei crew were down in Hualien.  Well I will not give the all the details of the evening but I will say that Crazy Bar definitely lived up to its name in many ways.  It was fun, exciting, embarrassing, mortifying, and hilarious all rolled up into one.  Today we got up and went to Country Mama's (also a first for us even though we live here) to have some yummy western breakfast before taking the girls to the train station.

Wow, these last few weeks have been exhausting!  I think November is going to be the month to rest and regroup.