Tour week! D-2

Monday- morning call at 6. went to Wenwu Temple (big and pretty). only a few of our group was religious and we prayed a bit (alongside some of the counselors) 

Drove to a paper-making factory and we each made a paper fan...interesting, messy experience. 

lunch.

Jiji Train station- cute, quaint, little old train station.

went to Sitou Devil Village, modeled after some of Spirited Away's monsters. it was cute :D 

Tuesday- Lukang Old Street for some shopping.

Feng Jia Night Market (about the same as any other night market, just bigger. I got bored and spent most of the time chatting and sharing a watermelon juice with my counselor who was on duty).

Wednesday- Shengxing Train Station (another old train station that was pretty quaint)

Drove up to TAIPEI (YAYY) to go to Danshui, a riverside shopping place. I’ve been several times so I spent more time visiting favorite places then shopping. Also bargained with a guy selling this type of candy my sister and I bought 6 bags of last time. got NT$50 off :D

At night, we had the TALENT SHOW- a competition between the buses. by this time we also had met up with the other tour group, the Southern Tour. 10 buses, 10 different performances. after about the 4^th, people were falling asleep and only Bus E (my bus!) was involved and dancing and clapping. our bus went last- and apparently we were super good because people woke up and got involved and laughed (a lot). Debby jie jie, our counselor from the first week, videotaped some of it so I’ll get it from her J my group, the Step Crew, did REALLY good and we got a great response :D the counselors also performed a dance- it was really good, the choreography was way too sexy O_o and apparently they practiced when we all went to bed. so while we're complaining about lack of sleep, we forget that they get even less.

Today- we went to Yehliu Geopark ßcoast side rock park. we saw rock formations formed by weathering. long lines. no shade. security man screaming at us not to cross the line. The rule in the official AID Summer rulebook about not being able to touch ANY bodies of water.

it was hellish. But poor counselors are not allowed to wear sunglasses or hold umbrellas for shade AND they have to wear pants (for uniformity and so we can recognize them) so they were ROASTING. so a few of us took turns walking with them and holding umbrellas for them (we felt SO bad for them. it was ridiculously hot).

Afternoon, we drove down to central Taipei and went to Eslite bookstore by Taipei 101 (multilevel bookstore with music, books, café, stationary, etc etc. been there before :P

but my daddy met me there! :D its been 5 ½ weeks since I’ve seen him. we ran off to a nearby mall to buy fruit for me and my roomies (we’ve somewhat dubbed ourselves the Fruit Ninjas because we crave so much). by the way, on a side note, Debby jie jie has multiple times bought us mangoes :’) she’s so sweet. she asked me what we all really thought of them counselors and wouldn’t believe me when I said we thought they were all freaking adorable XD

anyways, then we went to Taipei 101, just to shop around the bottom few floors because it was too hard to organize going to the top. been there before…but a few of us ate at Din Tai Feng, a super famous dumpling restaurant. TARO DUMPLINGS. AHHHH SO GOOD.

tonight, we are all back at Jiantan, where we spent our first week. so glad! however, the wifi is no better than last time. we are all huddled in the one corner where it works.

and it just cut out. so we are spreading out to different floors to try. “wait, Rae, go to the right because I’m going to the left!”

pictures will come later.