It's so cold! It's glacial!

I spent this whole last weekend with Brian and his family celebrating Taiwan's Moon Festival. It's basically equivalent to our July 4th. One thing that's really popular to eat are moon cakes, which are apparently what fortune cookies are based on. I've been told that fortune cookies are an American invention. Moon cakes are similar in the sense that they're sweet, but they don't have paper inside. They usually have a bean paste or rice filling. They're pretty good. Anyway, the Taiwanese people celebrate the Moon Festival by barbecuing a lot and shooting off a lot of fireworks. So on Saturday, very very early, Brian and his family picked me up to head toward Frank's parents' house. Frank is Brian's dad. On our drive down, we stopped by Sun Moon Lake. It was gorgeous! It's the most well-known lake in Northern Taiwan and a very popular destination for tourists as well as the locals. I couldn't quite figure out what you're supposed to do there exactly, like if you spend a few days there, but it was at least fun for the few hours we spent there. I posted a bunch of pictures of it so check those out to get a better idea of what it's like. We had breakfast there, and then did a short hike. Then we drove to the other side of the lake where we did a half-hour long hike to a really cool temple/pagoda on top of a mountain overlooking the lake. This was very cool! Again, check the pics!

After Sun Moon Lake, we drove through some various Taiwanese towns I had never heard of. On our drive, we went by a large river where the big typhoon last month did some serious damage. A quarter-mile long section of road had completely collapsed into the river. That was pretty crazy to see. After that, we drove through the city of Jiji which was struck very hard by a large earthquake in Taiwan about 10 years ago. We saw a temple that had completely collapsed during that earthquake and it has yet to be re-built. There's a picture of that too on Flickr. Anyway, after a bunch of driving, we finally arrived in Changhua, where Frank's parents live. His parents were really nice and lived in a pretty cool 4-story house, one floor of which I had to myself for our night's stay. We had a nice dinner consisting of traditional Taiwanese foods. After, we sang some KTV as a family, which was really family. They are all obsessed with Michael Jackson here. It's really funny. After that, we went to a night market and played little arcade games which the kids really enjoyed. I did too! The go-carts were the highlight. They had part of a parking lot blocked off with little go-carts inside that you put a 10NT coin in and they drove around for about 90 seconds. It was pretty unsafe, especially for little kids, but oh well. Our group made it out unscathed. That night, after we got back, I was sitting and watching TV when the mother came in and said "ok, here's your towel and soap for your shower." I was thinking, "um, ok, I didn't ask to take one but what the heck..."...so I learned another thing about Taiwanese culture at that moment...they bathe right before they go to bed every night. When I do that, I wake up and have a huge afro.

The next morning, we went on 12-km bike ride which was a lot of fun. We went to a little farmer's market where they clearly hadn't seen a foreigner in a long time and I had all the salesman coming up to me and giving me free fruit. Now that I think about it, I only saw 3 foreigners the whole weekend. We went to some pretty remote places farther South where English teaching is not nearly as common and thus, foreigners aren't really necessary in those parts. Anyway, the bike ride was a lot of fun. We went back and had another big meal before hitting the road to Lugang. This is a famous town in Central Taiwan that plays hosts to a massive temple that's at least 100 years old. It was the most ornate and detailed temple I've seen so far in Taiwan. There were a ton of people there worshipping away and this was a real joy to see. See pics! Then we drove back to Linkou via frontage roads that took a long, long time but we made it back safe. The main highway was completely backed up, probably for the entire length of Taiwan, due to the Moon Festival. It was quite the weekend!