Aiesec winter explore day 17

Woke up early to go to taroko gorge today! 

Following what the CHT host recommended, we went to Hualien station to take the tourist bus. Basically the bus follows a tight schedule, so you have to plan how long to spend at each station to cover the whole place. That would cost 250NT. Soon after we bought the bus tickets, a taxi driver approached us and offered to drive us around along with another Caucasian couple for 450NT. Was quite hesitant to spend more money cause we very poor but at last we accepted because 10 sing dollars more and we wouldn't have to rush the whole day! So we went to return the bus tickets 1 min after buying it LOL.

Taroko gorge is really pretty and there are many trails for tourists to go to. However, me and Jocelyn made the mistake of wearing city-shoes for trekking. I wore velvety boots and she wore her platform shoes Lol. 

My shoes look destroyed now and Jocelyn experienced literal face plant after tripping over branches and fell into vegetation. Golly...

Just gonna go through a brief description of the places we went. Leave the photo spam to Facebook :)

First we went to the visitor's center.

Great view on the outside!

Miao

Then we went to the Shakadang trail. The Caucasian couple walks super quickly! The girl is around my height and the guy is around 190 I think. We tried catching up to no avail. Trekked there for 1 hr.

Next up was yanzikou (swallow cave?). Recently there were incidents of falling rocks so we needed to wear helmets for this trail!

After that was the huoran pavilion trail, which was the most difficult place to trek yet because the paths are the least man-made and very natural! (Also this was the location where Jocelyn face planted)

There was this pitch black cave that we stumbled through using iPhone torch lol.

Next we went to a mountainous place (can't remember the name) where we trekked to see shrines and Buddhist temples. 

This is the 10 faced Buddha.

Final stop is Qixintan where we'll be able to see the Pacific Ocean! The sea was an awesome shade of blue.

Wind was so strong too! (But still must take pictures HAHA)

Can't resist posting this puff of Jocelyn's wild hair hahaha.

After that the taxi driver sent us back to Hualien railway station and we took it back home! Awesome getaway :) thank God for the great weather! Weather forecast said it would rain but there was only a slight drizzle few times in the day. 

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Oh I forgot to blog that me and Josephina did simple pottery yesterday! We were strolling around because we had 1 hour to spare before next lesson and we saw the art teacher doing pottery by himself! So we barged in and Josephina asked if we could try too. Haha

My product!

Being the creative person I am, I had an "A" inside my cup. Lols

Teacher's product! Very evenly rounded.

Josephina's product!

This looks easy but it's quite difficult because the clay gets dry easily and cracks. Water is used to mend the cracked lines. 

Can't wait for next week where we'll get to colour our cups!

Aiesec winter explore day 16

Was real sleepy today at work but looking forward to after-work!

Jocelyn and I are traveling to Hualien ourselves. Yay for adventure!

Going detail this down for any lost tourist who may google for directions!---

After doing our research, we decided to get the combo ticket from "kamalan bus" which includes a bus ride from Taipei bus station to luodong railway station, and then railway ride from luodong railway station to Hualien railway station.

So first we had to buy the combo tic which is located at Taipei bus station (one building away from Taipei main station) and they will give you the earliest bus ride to luodong. Costed us 222NT each and the ride took slightly over one hour from 4.47pm to 6pm.

Bus stops at wuijie first but alight at the last stop at luodong. Walk a short distance to luodong railway station (just follow the crowd!) and then buy the earliest railway tic to Hualien. (We had to top up 73 each) 

Had 1hr to spare so we decided to buy Maggie mee and chips and yakult! Maggie mee was super shiok in this cold weather. But we had to eat standing up and looking quite pathetic. 

But boy, feeling our gullets warm up with hot Maggie soup was so good~~

At last we board the railway, but with Jocelyn and me, there always has to be some sort of thing that goes wrong. We hid in the staircase from the wind and when down when the railway appeared.

When it finally came we just entered any random door and realized that we were in cabin 8 when we were supposed to be at cabin 2. So we sashayed down the shaky railway while curious passengers stared. ._. 

Even so, reached safely in one piece! Journey from 7.15pm to 8.15pm. With proper planning we could have skipped the 1 hr transition but nvm! 

Our hostel, colorful hostel Taiwan (CHT) is a 10 min walk from Hualien railway station. The host of CHT is super nice! We told her we wanted to go to ziqiang night market and she recommended things to eat there. Also she also gave suggestions on how we can carry out our trip to takoro tmr.

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Night market is 2km away from hostel. Quite a tiring walk. But even though the night market was small, the food really lived up to expectations!

We tried the strawberry-apple fruit juice first! Quite tasty!

Next up, the "coffin bread with curry chicken". Really nice! Curry tastes like sg's.

Then we had "meat on stick"

Erm, this is sotong looking real unappetizing. We can't seem to remember to take the picture when we get the food. OTL

Pork wrapping veggie. 

This is called chun juan, which is like popiah! 

Next up is chocolate crepe. Nice and warm!

And finally this is where we will be sleeping tonight! CTH looking good. :))) 

Aiesec winter explore day 15

Today Josephina almost have me a heart attack because she overslept!! Our first lesson was at 9.30 (although I was already there since 7.30 because I took school bus) but Josephina was exceptionally late today. I just assumed that she was taking her time since lesson wasn't so early and she lives at a stone's throw away distance. When Josephina still wasn't here by 9 I began to panic LOL. I called her and viola! She offed her alarm when it rang ._.

Extraordinarily, she chionged to school within 15min and we still had time to slack a bit. :00 how did she do it will remain a mystery. I need 45 min to leave house haha.

After a long day at school, Josephina invited me to her host place because she was going to cook chicken rice for them!! Of course I obliged ^_^ 

Turns our that Josephina is just as noob as me (maybe slightly better) at cooking. She was giving the host mum instructions while I took care of her child lols. Camwhored with the little kid ~~~

We spent 2 very confusing hours trying to cook. Whenever Josephina asked me stuff like how much salt to add to the soup or if the water needs to be boiled before the chicken goes in, I did my best to guess the answer and lessen the confusion... Hosts were quite shocked at Singaporeans' cooking ability.

Meanwhile, josephina's host dad smiles as he attempted to chop a chicken for the first time. 

Making finishing touches to the soup.

Cucumber and parsley cut, courtesy of host mum. 

At last! The final product came out! Not bad right! The Singapore-made sauces made everything work. 

The only manual work I did was to roll the rice into small balls like those traditional hainanese chicken rice we can find in Malaysia. Quite uneven but doesn't matter! XP Finally, the taste of home! 

Aiesec winter explore day 14

Went out shopping with Josephina today cause no class!

In the morning we went to Zhongshan station (as recommended by suhao laoshi) and it was a big mistake. All the shops selling quite expensive stuff and there were shops like Gucci, coach etc. lol totally out of shopping budget. 

Even the food places were mostly cafés so in the end we went to mod burger for lunch. Josephina told me mos burger was famous for their milk tea and was shocked that I didn't know. (I realize I'm very slow on stuff that are supposedly famous...) oh, for Taiwan's mos burger we need to add the milk ourselves.

After that we went to fuzhong mrt to shop as suggested by another female teacher and viola!! There was good shopping! As expected a female knows about shopping better lol.

Josephina spent around 1000NT and I spent 580NT in the first shop. ( Ahhhhh I'm left with less than half of the money I brought and have more than half of the trip left!!!) must attempt to scrimp abit haha.

After that I went to ximending again cause zhuren suggested that I can go there to buy piano books. Went to dalushudian and was super happy because I saw a whole bookshelf of piano books. On closer inspection they were all classical piano books (Mozart, bart, Schubert) which are super difficult to play and each costs around 700NT!! Nuuu. Where were the cheaper contemporary piano books my piano teacher told me about!!

Was going to leave but I saw a small selection of children's piano books at the side..... and realized that that was what I was looking for LOL. Sigh, learn so long liao still buy children's books. But the book is pretty and have some pictures!! <3 I bought 2 books for 150NT each. Not bad!

Aiesec winter explore day 13

Went through another 4 classes of dancing today (which means 8 rounds of dancing since for each class we needa demo once and dance with them once =.=). On the bright side, I'm getting numb towards the embarrassment lol. 

After class we went for the super raved mala steamboat buffet with free flow Haagen Dazs ice cream! (Ximending branch) Needed to book one day in advance because they are so packed!

Of course the health guru me and newly converted health guru (?) Jocelyn had to eat fruits!

And we finished off with 2 cones of ice cream each!

Total damage was 602 NT. Regret not eating more expensive meat. We wated stomach space on things like crabmeat LOL. 

After that we shopped around in ximending for awhile. Unfortunately it was raining so my shoes were soaked TT soggy feet are no fun. TT

Aiesec winter explore day 12

Brand new work week so we started on our week 2 materials! (Read: starting on ground zero)

Oh wait! One super sweet girl gave me and Josephina handmade bracelets!

Back to lesson!

We planned to teach the song "Singapore Town" to the kids because we showed them many of Singapore's places of attraction which is featured in that song.  

We gave the full mandarin translation and blanked out some words from the English  lyrics and the kids had to fill them in in groups. That worked pretty well for the upper primary kids (also taking into account the large quantity of sweets we prepared for them...) 

However!! For the lower primary, they totally didn't have any clue what we were doing!!! They just stared at us blankly like this>>> 0.0 we decided to change plans and just ask them to repeat the sentences part by part after us and they were still super confused. In the middle one kid even asked what was going on... Lol.

At that moment Josephina had a brilliant solution of creating dance moves for the song to teach to the children. And in 5 min... Deng deng deng... We came out with simple moves for the whole song. We were pretty impressed with ourselves. Haha. 

But we were totally embarrassed dancing in front of all the kids (imagine the spastic smiling face). FELT LIKE HI-5 LIVE. (Have a new-found respect for the enthu hi-5 crew). Half the time me and Josephina just felt like facepalming. Didn't help that the dance moves were so cheesy/ literal and there was a happy teacher snapping photos of us.

The kids seemed to really enjoy it though. They looked as happy as the angmoh kids dancing along to hi-5 songs. Guess little children all over the world are the same...

4 classes down, 9 more hi-5 sessions to go...

Aiesec winter explore day 10

Today I was supposed to have no plans because Josephina went to Taichung with her bf and qianru and Jocelyn was supposed to go with her manager to 卫生局 to watch performances. So I decided to crash Jocelyn's trip. :)

Went to Longshan temple station (where her project is based) and saw her workplace. Her manager is very nice as well! However, for a place that is supposed to mass produce food, it certainly didn't smell very appealing... Lol Jocelyn endure!!

After that the manager brought us to watch performances which included many intervals of prize presentations so we were quite bored. (~_~)

After that the manager suggested for us to take a look at linjiahuayuan 林家花园. I was quite doubtful of how interesting it can be since the performances thingy turned out to be so boring. But the garden is really pretty!

Random husky strolling by~

After that we decided to go Shilin for good food and good shopping. 

Jocelyn the spendthrift spent around 2000TWD lols. 

Really difficult to buy clothes suitable for Singapore weather since they are all very thick!

And as usual our feet were hurting so we decided to sit at a restaurant and slack. Picked this pasta restaurant that had a long queue but the food is mediocre only...

Jocelyn and me have this problem of always forgetting to take pics of the food. We managed to take our soups but not the main course.... Hungry kids will be hungry kids.