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Turns out I was seriously neglecting my YouTube account and hadn't added any videos since like January.

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Tainan: Day 2

On Sunday, we woke up to a wonderful home-cooked breakfast ala Mary Ann =) Then we took a walk around their little village, to Mary Ann's school, and out to the coast to see the Oysters. (btw, the truck you see with a bunch of lumpy lookin' brown stuff, all Oysters, it was crazy!)

We also found this random temple hidden away in their village (that's not unusual here, you can find one in most neighborhoods or villages no matter how small, especially in Tainan which houses the most Temples in Taiwan.)
After our late morning stroll, we grabbed a taxi and headed out to the Anping district.
Our first stop was Fort Zeelandia where I decided to thoroughly inspect the cannons =)
When we crossed the bridge coming back out of the fort, we looked down into the water and saw Jellyfish! It was really strange to see this tiny mote with Jellyfish in it.

Then we looked straight down and found this little guy hangin' out on the bridge watching the jellyfish too haha

Next stop, Anping tree house. LOVED this place. I can't explain what was so cool about it. I felt like a Bernstein Bear lol

Our final stop for the day was in a great Market/Alley in the Anping district where Mary Ann and John introduced us to a great shrimp dumpling place. We did some browsing through the market stalls and then hailed a taxi to take us back to the HSR station.
It was a fantastic weekend with Karin, as always, and especially thanks to our incredible hosts! I would definitely say Tainan is worth the stop when deciding where to travel in Taiwan (If you have a good tour guide, I could see the hundreds of temples getting boring after awhile if that's all you did).

Tainan: Day 1

So I've spent a lot of time on this entry and would loooove some feedback/comments (is it too long and boring? not enough info? just perfect?)...k thanks =)

This past weekend I traveled up to Taipei on Friday night and met up with Karin. We went to a small pub for a few drinks and met the absolute craziest guy ever, which needs to be a post all by itself so that'll be the next one. Anyway, on Saturday we got up early and took the High Speed Train (my first time on it....it's great but expensive) down to Tainan to spend the weekend with Mary Ann and John, a couple from San Francisco who we met at orientation (We bonded over our Finkster connection just like Karin, Eileen, and I did).

Mary Ann and John were incredible hosts and showed us around to all the best places in Tainan. It is the oldest city in Taiwan and used to be the capital so it has a lot of great history and tons of temples. First thing first, it was a hot day and we stopped for some oh so "famous" Mango Ice...delicious. They were all surprised to hear that Mango Ice was something I had not yet experienced in Taiwan.

So after we were rested and cooled, they took us to the first must-see Tainan site, Koxinga Shrine. This is the shrine dedicated to the man who conquered the Dutch inhabiting Taiwan in the 1600s

Across the street from the Koxinga Shrine we took a quick peak in the Women's Temple. Everything was so intricate! It's hard to take in all the details.

Afterward we grabbed some lunch at a neat little place Mary Ann and John like to go. You walk up pick out what food you want BBQ'd and then take it to a table. When you're done with your sticks (All the food is Kabob style) you put them in the vase in the center of the table. When you're finished the woman counts up your sticks and tells you you're total. It's a pretty interesting method and even though it looked like we had a crap ton of sticks, it only cost us $200NT for 4 people to eat lunch (that's like $6 US).
After lunch we headed to the "famous" Confucius Temple.

Across the street from the temple they showed us this really
unique restaurant. We had already eaten but they said we just had to see the entrance of it.

Next we traveled over to the Chihkan Towers. They have these massive stone tablets there with a lot of great history. On one, the person carving out the characters messed up and so just turned the whole slab around and started over. On another, the slab has Chinese on one side and Japanese on the other and as Taiwan switched between the two countries reigning hands, the other side was flip-flopped back and forth in the wall until finally it was pulled out and set in away from the wall for both sides to be viewable. A third story was of one of the turtles holding the tablets being found in the ocean by a man blind in one eye. He got water from the turtle in his eye and was miraculously cured, turning that turtle into an item to be worshiped.

Our final stop before dinner was at this tiny store where a man and his daughter embroider these gorgeous clothes for various ceremonies. , It doesn't look like anything special from the outside but their work is incredible and we even saw one of their pieces in a museum the next day.

For dinner we decided on a Greek restaurant which ended up being a superb choice. They were again astonished to hear I had also never had Greek food haha. I will definitely be eating Greek again at the next opportunity =) In the evening we headed back to John and Mary Ann's home, a small village in the South District of Tainan. We had great conversation and a couple of fun games (Dutch Blitz and Skip-Bo) before bed time.

Paragliding in Hualien!

Sooo, 2 weekends ago we went paragliding! Actually, 3 weekends ago we attempted to go paragliding but got rained out. Another FET Adora was planning on visiting us so we asked her if that was something she'd be interested in and scheduled a retry. We ended up having 3 more FET's from Taipei come along for the excitement! We drove about an hour south of Hualien City into the East Rift Valley, met up with our coach at his house, and then rode in their 20 yr old van up a frighteningly steep mountain road. The drive up was enough to already get my "nervous bladder" going. When you finally get to the top, it's this incredible view to take in... until you realize that you're about to jump/run off of it!

We decided while Jacque tried to sneak off to take care of the nervous bladder problem that we would volunteer her to go first. So here's the process of the coach getting the parachute ready, getting fastened in, and then 1, 2, 3, RUN!

I decided to go third, wanted to get it over with before my fear built up too much. He kept asking me if I was ready, and I kept saying no, haha. Finally I had to say, "I'm never going to be ready just start the count down!"

Of course once we got off the ground it was great. Incredible view, incredible experience.

As we were nearing the ground, the coach was trying to tell me something about "wind" and some Chinese. I was like, "uh huh, ya it's great!" Then he pointed to the landing spot over to our left and tried to tell me something else... "ooh, yes, I see Jacque and Monica down there"

(notice how far we are from that grassing clearing in the middle of the trees?)
THEN, he point to the field on our right and repeated "no wind" That's when it finally clicked. We did have enough wind to get to the landing spot and he was landing us in a field. I looked on in horror as we rapidly approached a cement road, a rock wall, etc wondering if he was going to be able to land us someplace safe. Well, he did...a rice field. (visual of a rice field included below....it's pure mud) You're supposed to keep running on the touchdown so that you don't fall over but as soon as my feet hit the field I just fell face first with the coach on top of me. As you can see, I was drenched in mud from the knees down with lots of other fun splatters here and there....but hey, I didn't get hurt, and that's really something for me =)

It was great time with a great group of people and we were even treated to lunch at the Coach's house after =) If you're in Taiwan and interested in doing some scenic paragliding you should definitely contact this guy oh his yahoo blog or on facebook