Hello from Taiwan!

Wow, we've been here about 2 and half days and this is my first blog! There has just been so much to do, so i'm going to try to update you on everything so far, but there has been soo much!

So i'll just go through each day, Wednesday we got in early afternoon, There was a sweet old lady on our plane from south korea to taiwan, she spoke english very well so we talked with her while getting our bags in taiwan. She actually lived in Chicago but i think was from Taiwan cause she had a house here and was spending the weekend there, anyways that was fun to talk to her. I officially have a stamp in my passport!! When i got it i turned around and looked at my dad and he thought something went wrong while i was at customs. So after that we went tot he hotel, and let me tell you taxi's are CRAZY! Basically they don't follow any driving rules and they go as fast as they can, I don't think i've ever done that before, kind of terrifying! Especially if your on a narrow winding road like tonight. So we got to our hotel and got settled in and surprisingly it's been pretty easy to make all the arrangements and everything because the majority of people speak english. It's so nice but after a while i was like i want to practice my chinese so i talked to them in chinese or what little i know anyways. lol It is such a unique culture, the first two days was just kind of taking it all in. I'm not even sure how to describe it yet,... I still need to think about it. lol So that afternoon we went down to the basement floor of the hotel and it took us to the MRT, or subway, it can get you pretty much anywhere, it's so fun you swipe your card and try to figure out which direction to which color line and which way. There are at least 5 different colors and each goes 2 ways, we're always lost but thank goodness the signs are in english and chinese! lol It seems we are always going a different way, but it's so fun to ride. So we took the MRT to a couple close malls and we walked in and they had every brand name store you could think of! And i mean designer, expensive brands, Gucci, Dolce, Channel,... everything! So we ended up walking and only looking in that mall :) Then we headed to Taipei 101 tower, which is the 2nd tallest tower in the world. We took the elevator, which is the fastest elevator in the world, all the way to the top look out floor. It was really neat to see the whole city at night, it's huge! And it's beautiful, all light up and surrounded by mountains, pictures will come to the blog soon! (hopefully) Then after that we went down to a restaurant in the middle of the building that was supposed to be really good. It ended up being a really nice 7 course place where you choose 1 of 2 entrees and the rest they just bring out. So it got interesting. We didn't know what we were eating but it started out with vegetables, fruit, and some seafood like shrimp, scallop and abalone. I like it all but the abalone...it was like eating cold rubber :p bleh. Then came this really yummy broth soup, it was SHARK soup. :O Yes, I ate shark, even after i knew what it was because surprisingly it tasted really good! The meat part was like eating pork, as long as we avoided the rubbery other parts. Then we had fish, beef and next came desert. It was fruit and some bread stuff and this sweet soup that tasted like maple syrup. It had these white clumps of something in it that were interesting, sweet but kind of jello-y. So we asked what it was, the guy looked at us funny and said well...it's an old medicinal thing, it's believed to be good for the health of women...most people don't want to know what it is... we laughed and said ok well what is it (we shouldn't have)... he goes well it's frog jelly... EWWWW! I couldn't finish it, it really tasted fine but after that i just couldn't. So that made for some good firsts. lol And that pretty much sums up that day!

I'll finish going through thursday and friday tomorrow hopefully. Tomorrow we are headed to south Taiwan to Kenting beach for a relaxing day, so i should have plenty more time to blog. Hope ya'll are having a wonderful day! Love you all!!