Jean in South Korea

After a year in Korea, I’m leaving in two days. I am sad about this to a point, but more than anything overjoyed. I really miss home, I miss my friends, my family, the English language, etc. I am not happy to be leaving Korea, but happy to be going home.

A little over a year ago, Korea felt like a giant black hole – not ominous or fatal, just unknown. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and I was a little scared. Now, a good portion of the world is less of a mystery than it was a year ago. I’m so happy I came to Korea, and I’m so happy that I traveled as much as I did, but now I’m just exhausted.

At the moment, I’m ready to get back into my life. In Korea, to a point, it’s a borrowed life because out here I had very few of the same commitments or responsibilities that I have back home. But now, I’m looking forward to it. Especially after Larry’s passing, I’m just so ready to be home. I feel a deep love for my friends and family and I want to be with them. I needed to get away and this temporary life where everything has a time limit was good, probably necessary, but I need a bit more permanence.

My mom is throwing a family party on October 9th and October 10th I’m getting together with friends and it’s going to be amazing. It’s awesome to think that in 3 days I’ll be at my kitchen table eating pizza with my parents and Heather and Joe, and that this weekend I’ll be at Kayla’s apartment.

I still have an update about Vietnam coming, I’ve started it, but it  was such a big trip that it’s going to take me awhile to finish.

See you all stateside!

Almost everyday at lunch I feel like a rockstar. I walk into the cafeteria and within a few minutes I hear, “Hello, Jean-Teachah!” at least five or six times. More so since I started teaching the 3rd grade and an after school 1st grade and 2nd&3rd grade class, because it’s still cool to like your teacher when you’re 8 and under. I love it.

The other day I was telling my mom how when I first came to Korea I was thinking about becoming a teacher, and then after about a month or two I decided that after this year I would never teach again; it was so frustrating. I never slacked off and I always worked my hardest and I always did well, but it wasn’t something I enjoyed. I started to think about other career paths and other things that I could do, engrossing myself in other futures and plans. I had a list of graduate schools to apply to and the things I had to do to get there. I was starting to warm up to my job in Korea a lot more as this process was going on. I was toying with the idea of being a teacher when I got back, but that was only in the back of my mind and I had no intentions on actually doing it. Part of my aversion is that it is the cliche career for females, and I thought that if I followed that path it would be because it’s definitely one of the most encouraged paths for females and because of the security it offers.

In Taiwan I had a lot of alone time on the train inbetween the two cities I visited and it gave me time to reflect on everything and realize that the other plans I had were things that I actually wasn’t sure if I wanted to do. They were complicated and involved an extremely messy and tenuous path to get to a career that I wasn’t sure if I wanted. And then I realized that I really like teaching, that it really makes me happy. On top of that, it’s a career that is stable and accessible with great benefits. But that’s not what’s drawing me to it. I think that the perks of being a teacher, stability, accessibility, benefits, and summer vacation, should only be perks and shouldn’t be what draws someone to teaching. Unlike a lot of other jobs, when you’re teaching you’re in an extremely influential position influencing extremely impressionable people. And it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of preparation, but for the presentation side of things you have to be positive, energetic yet calm, in control, able to react, etc. You have to love it to do it well for an extended period of time, and honestly, while you’re at work, doing it well (and caring that you know how to do it well) has to be your number one priority.

I didn’t want to be a teacher 3 months ago, despite the perks, but then after reflection I realized why fight it? I love doing it, I love my students, I love being responsible for their growth, and I love influencing them. The perks are awesome, but they’re just perks. Teaching grew on me and I love being Jean-Teachah.

I thought I’d update on what I’ve been up to. The two most exciting things (Vietnam and the Philippines) I’ll leave for last.

Last weekend I went to Sue’s house. It was so nice, I hung out with her and her family. We watched the Netherlands win against Brazil on Friday night which was pretty awesome and then on Saturday we went shopping in Anyang. Sue lives in Gunpo, a suburb of Incheon, and it was nice to be in a Korean suburb. Most people live in apartments, but the streets are much less busy and there are far fewer businesses than in a typical Incheon neighborhood. It’s basically apartment buildings, schools, and some small shops and restaurants with lots of open space. It’s pretty nice. Also, Sue’s parents’ apartment is so nice. I think beause all Korean live in apartments, the apartments they do have a much nicer, and also much less expensive, that apartments in the United States.

This upcoming weekend I’m going with Alischa to Busan, South Korea. Busan is the second largest city in Korea, next to Seoul, and is in the south of the country. It’s apparently a really nice, big city that’s on the water. If the weather cooperates, all I want to do is chill out on the beach.

Next weekend I’m going to Boryeong to this thing called MudFest. It’s basically a party and music fest in the mud. I have no idea what to expect, but I’ve heard from everyone who has gone that it is awesome.

Then, at the end of the month I’m going to Vietnam for 2 weeks! I’m so excited! I’m flying in to Ho Chi Minh City and out through Hanoi. What I do in between is still up in the air, but will probably include Hoi An, Hue, Sapa, and Halong, and possibly also Dalat and/or Nha Treng. We’ll see. I want to enjoy my time places and experience the cities instead of going to as many as possible, but I also want to see a lot.

So then I’ll come back from Vietnam and then a month later is Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok) and I have off of work for 1 week. During that month I’ll probably go to Jeju Island in Korea and if I haven’t gone to Suwon yet by that point, I’ll go to Suwon too.  But that week of Chuseok I’m going to the Philippines! I just worked out the tickets today. I was originally going to Shanghai for the vacation, however it’s tricky getting a Chinese visa. There’s some brand new law that says that if you have a Korean work visa, you have to have at least 6 mos left on the visa to get a Chinese visa. It’s weird, this isn’t a Korean law, but a Chinese law (I think.) But I’m more excited about the Philippines anyways. Shanghai I’m sure is really nice, but it’s probably more similar to Korea than the Philippines are. So my plan is to fly into Manila, but immediately go to an island and stay there for the week.

I’ll come back from the Philippines on my last Saturday in Korea, and then I’ll finish work on Tuesday and fly out on Wednesday. Thanks to Connecticut being 13 hours behind Korea, I’ll land in the United States on Wednesday evening Eastern Time. A lot of people travel on their way out of Korea, but I’ve already been to Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan and I will be going to Vietnam and the Philippines.

The next 2 1/2 months or so will be intense, but by that I mean awesome and then after I’ll be home and that’ll be refreshing. A year away is a long time, and while I would not take back this decision to come here and I’m so happy that I made it, and my entire life is better for it, I’m looking forward to going home and a year is a long time.

In the meantime, I’ll be traveling and teaching quite a bit.

Life’s a sweet fruit.

In about a month I’ll be leaving for Vietnam for two weeks – I’ll be into Ho Chi Minh City and out of Hanoi, seeing multiple cities in between. And before then, I’ll be going to Busan, South Korea with my friend Alischa and Boryeong, South Korea for a festival that is called MudFest. I’m stoked.

And then one of my last weeks in Korea is Korean Thanksgiving – Chuseok and I have the entire week off. I’m going to Shanghai from Saturday to Saturday that week!!! Then, I come back to my Korean apartment, hang out on Sunday, go to work Monday and Tuesday and then fly out back home the next day. And somewhere before leaving I have to make it out to Jeju Island, one of the loveliest islands in Korea I’m told.

I’m so excited for everything: for Busan, for Boryeong, for Vietnam (!!!!), for Shanghai, for the rest of my time in South Korea, and for my (triumphant) return home.

It’s interesting how the American media focuses on the threat of North Korea more than the Korean news, I don’t really hear about it too much and the South Koreans don’t seem too concerned about it, or at least not any more than they have for the past 5 decades.

I also like that while Kim Jong Il is the the American news, more and more South Korean pop stars are becoming more popular in America. I just found out a little while ago that Rain, a very popular Korean singer/actor, won the “Biggest Badass” award at the American MTV Movie Awards. It’s interesting and makes me happy.  I just watched the newest Wonder Girls music video in English, “Two Different Tears,” and it definitely has potential to be a hit in the United States, if it isn’t already. I was shocked when I found out that Rain won the award because I didn’t know that Ninja Assassin was even popular in America and that Rain was becoming popular.

A few weeks ago I was reading an article in The Korean Times about how the South Korean ice skater, Yu-Na Kim, was going to start doing international promotional work for a company that makes and distributes Korean food. Maybe there will be a Korean restaurant on the East coast of the United States sooner rather than later. Which makes me happy because to be quite honest, a life without tteok pok ki, bibimbop, and kimbop is one not worth living.

Before  Lost premiered there had never been a scene with an Asian man kissing a woman on American television. Now, 5 years later or so, Rain is winning Biggest Badass and journalists are commenting on how so many American women find him attractive and the male in Shakira’s music video, “Did it Again,” is of Asian descent. I’m sure there are way more examples of this shift in Western perceptions of Asian men, which is pretty cool.

A few days ago my dad sent me a link to a BBC news piece about schools in Finland.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8601207.stm

The piece discusses that even though Finnish students spend the least amount of time in school out of all of the countries in the industrialized world, Finnish schools are among the best in the world, often having the best test scores on international tests, or the second best to South Korea. Koreans, however, spend the most amount of time in school in the world and the Korean government wants to revamp the education system, according to another BBC piece (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8605789.stm). They want to make it less about memorization, creating “exam machines,” and more so about fostering imagination and ingenuity. I hope that happens. I really really hope that happens. I have students in the 3rd and 4th grade who are so creative and funny, along with being smart, and it’s sad to think that for some of them, that ingenuity may leave them as they spend more and more time studying over the next decade.

I really liked that the Korean government is taking this seriously, but I was disturbed by a similarity between the BBC piece on Korea and that on Finland. In both pieces, especially the one on Finland, the journalist placed an emphasis on education as a means of fostering a stronger economy in both countries. I understand that that is a goal of a country’s education system, but it shouldn’t be the only goal. I remember watching a lecture by British historian and comedian, Mark Steele, about the French Revolution. He said that one of the most radical ideas was that everyone had the right to be educated, and for no extrinsic purpose, like to better the national economy, but for the intrinsic benefit of knowledge and education; that everyone had the right to be educated because it gives people a fuller and richer life and human experience. Shouldn’t that be the purpose of education: to improve the overall quality of life? I understand that economic factors play into this, but the BBC piece didn’t say that a better education leads to better politicians, more informed voters, better doctors and teachers, a stronger sense of culture, more advanced science and literature, better music – it only talked about it’s benefit to the economy.

My bachelor’s is in history and without any other credentials, it doesn’t necessarily help me economically. I can get a job that requires that the applicant have a bachelor’s degree, but very few jobs are specifically looking for history majors. However, despite it’s lack of economic viability, I’m very satisfied with my degree. Through obtaining it, I learned so much about my own culture and society and Latin America’s. Because of my four years of studying history in college, I now have a better sense as to why the world is as it is today and I feel less disoriented than I would without those four years and that I feel made the four years of hard work worth it. And now that I’m out of college, what I learned will help me in any future career that I choose and I’ll be more equipped than if I didn’t have it.

I feel as though the purpose of school and knowledge should be to give the student more insight into the world around him or her and to encourage him or her to build on that knowledge. Yes, a country needs to consider economic concerns, but that shouldn’t be the only concern when said country is educating its youth.

So, it turns out that Japan is awesome.

Last Friday was a national holiday in Korea for Buddha’s Birthday and about a month or two beforehand, my friend Lauren and I thought why not go to Japan? We left last Thursday night after work and came back yesterday, Sunday, in the evening, and it turns out that Japan is pretty awesome.

Heeding the advice of many people, we stayed mostly in Kyoto, which was an excellent decision, but that’s not where this story starts, so we’ll get to Kyoto when we get there.

Before leaving, Lauren and I got a ton of awesome advice about Japan. My friend Danielle who studied abroad there and speaks Japanese sent me a 4 page e-mail that helped us to get around Japan, my friend Jose who was there for 2 weeks gave us a few recommendations, and different people who we know in Korea gave us bits and pieces that were extremely helpful. Almost everyone recommended Kyoto, saying that it’s an extremely historical city and most people’s image of Japan in based on Kyoto.

We arrived on Thursday night to the Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan and headed over to our hostel in Osaka that we were staying in for the first night. We got dinner from the convenience store, as it was late and there were no restaurants around that were still opened. We probably went to sleep somewhere between midnight and 1am, only to wake up around 6:30 to get ready to meet my friend in the city of Fuji. Two weeks ago in Taiwan I met a mountain guide from Tokyo named Tomo and Lauren and I met up with him and two of his friends in Fuji. They then drove us to Mount Ashitaka, a mountain right next to Mt Fuji – this time of year Mt. Fuji is still relatively snowy and only recommended for very experienced hikers, so Tomo took us to Mt. Ashitaka instead and it was really gorgeous. It was a clear day and the path, while occasionally steep, was a lot of fun.

Afterwards we walked around the park that the mountain is located in and then around 5:30 or so we parted ways and Lauren and I took the bus to Kyoto.

We found and checked into our hostel around 9 or 10PM and got dinner at a local restaurant. The food was amazing, though the portions were a little small. Lauren had sushi and I had vegetable and tofu tempura – tempura is essentially deep-fried food. After dinner we made it back to the hostel and crashed after making tentative plans for the next day.

The next morning we woke up early and had breakfast in the hostel. There we met a girl, Eunice, who was traveling alone. She had graduated from college in California the week before and was traveling throughout Japan until the next week when she would meet her family in Korea. Her parents are immigrants from Korea and her father works in California, but for the Korean company, Samsung. He was going to be given an award the following week in Korea and her entire family was going to Seoul for the ceremony, but she wanted to explore Japan first.

We invited Eunice to come along with us while we explored Kyoto. First we walked to two Buddhist temples near the hostel. The first one is famous because it features 1,000 hand carved statues of Buddha that are all about 5 feet and five inches, as well as an 11 foot statue of Buddha. It was incredible. Most of the statues were carved in the 13th century and they were so detailed. All of the statues had 42 arms. Each pair of arms were in different positions or holding different items, to represent the different ideas and beliefs of Buddhism.

Afterwards we walked to a temple that my friend recommended. This friend, Danielle, studied abroad in Japan a few years ago and she recommended that we go to the Kiyomizu Temple. To get there we had to walk through a mausoleum that was essentially a giant grave yard, but it was interesting because all of the tombstones were interesting and intricate. When we got there, we understood why Danielle recommended it – out of all of the Buddhist temples I have been to in Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, the Kiyomizu Temple so far has been my favorite. There are multiple buildings and they are all beautiful, intricate and pretty large. The temple features a few gardens and several shrines. While we were there, we saw a short play that was based on ancient Japanese Buddhist rituals and the people participating in it were wearing traditional Japanese clothing and a few of the men held kitana swords.

Lauren and I noticed that while Korean Buddhist temples are usually either darker colors or are blue and pink, Japanese temples are often bright orange. It’s interesting to see how one religion developed differently in so many different countries – not just in terms of the color of the temples, but what the temples emphasize and how the culture of each country influenced how Buddhism was practiced in that country.

After spending a couple of hours between the two temples, we felt “templed out” and took the subway to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens. My dad recommended this because a friend of his who was a landscaper based a lot of his ideas on the gardens he saw in Kyoto and I can see why. The garden we went to was huge and featured traditional Japanese and European style gardens. A lot of the flowers were in bloom fortunately and it was really beautiful.

Afterwards, we took the subway to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is a Shinto shrine in Kyoto that is made up of 10,000 bright orange arches. All of the arches have Japanese inscriptions on them and are well maintained, though several are very old. We couldn’t walk through all 10,000 of them, but we got through a lot of them and along the way saw multiple Shinto shrines.

After this, we decided to go to downtown Kyoto for dinner. The area was nice, though oddly enough Lauren really wanted sushi and we had trouble finding a sushi restaurant, which you wouldn’t expect in Japan. We wound up finding a restaurant eventually and I got tempura again, and it was quite delicious.

Unfortunately, after dinner Eunice was feeling tired so she returned to the hostel and Lauren and I walked around for a bit longer. We sat near the subway station for awhile because a street band was performing there. Then we walked around and walked towards what looked like another temple, but it turned out it was a park. There, we met four or five graduate students from New Orleans who were on a school trip to Japan for two weeks. We hung out with them for about two hours and left just in time to catch the last subway back to the hostel.

The next morning Lauren and I woke up and decided to spend the morning in Kyoto Station. We had to catch the airport bus in the morning and another friend of mine who had been to Japan recommended spending some time in the station because the architecture is amazing, and it really is. The building looks modern and efficient, but not cold and spiritless either. It’s a huge and really interesting station. We got breakfast at a restaurant there and walked around for awhile. It worked out especially because while it had been sunny every other day we were in Japan, it was pouring on Sunday morning.

Later on, we got on the airport bus and got on the plane back home. It was an amazing trip, but it was nice getting home. It’s interesting to see how Korea and Japan are similar, yet different. I felt that from what I saw, Koreans are a little more anxious than Japanese people and it was nice not getting pushed while getting in and off of the subway, like in Seoul. Lauren and I realized that we were comparing Japan and Korea and that most of these comparisons were in Japan’s favor, but then again we realized that we have been in Korea for eight months and we only spent three days in Japan; we’ve had much much more time to learn about Korea and have a more complex understanding of Korean culture than we do about Japanese culture obviously. Neither of the two cultures is better or worse than the other, just different and it was cool to experience the differences, along with the similarities.

At times the amount of material my co-teacher and I are supposed to cover in a single period feels overwhelming. Last semester, we had to use a text book for every class, now we use both a text book and a work book. I think that it helps most of the 6th grade classes we teach, and possibly 5th grade ones too, who were often bored, but it definitely makes the 4th grade classes feel overwhelming. I don’t think it’s too much knowledge for a single 40-minute increment, but that it is too many activities to complete in that amount of time. I often feel that while it may be helping the best students in the classes, it is just really hurting those who aren’t as good at English, putting them further behind and making them more confused as we have to spend less time on each individual activity in order to make time for all of them.

Definitely as of now, my 3rd grade classes are my favorite. I think that’s partially my own temperment, but partially because I feel as though the standards are the most reasonable. We don’t have to get through an overwhelming amount of activities, like with the 4th graders and the kids don’t feel as overwhelmed, and the activities are all age appropriate. I really don’t like the fact that the format for the 3rd-6th graders is identical, just with different material. A good portion of the periods consist of a dialogue with the new vocabulary, a listen and repeat section with some of the new vocabulary or expressions, sometimes a song or chant (the 5th and 6th graders, and often the 4th graders, are way way way too old for this), and a game.

Just to give some background information, English elementary school teachers in Korea have to follow a curriculum set up by the government for every single day of the class – there is no flexibility at all. The curriculum often seems to assume that the kids are perfect and well-behaved, when really they are 8-12 year olds, so of course they’re not. Speaking of which, today my co-teacher  was complaining about the 3rd graders talking a lot and I wanted to say, “Yeah, they were acting like a bunch of 8 year olds.”

There are a lot of great things in Korean schools and a lot of what I’m complaining about I think are also problems in the United States, but I really don’t know because I’ve never worked in an American school. One big difference is the value placed on education in Korea and how parents often make their childrens’ education their number one financial priority. It’s hard to imagine Korean parents fighting to lower their school budget, like what often happens in America. It’s not a coincidence that the countries that have shown staggering economic improvement highly value public education. In the years since many of these countries that value education have seen their economies expand dramatically, public schools in the United States have often seen budget cuts.

Many Americans completely disbelieve that maybe one day, possibly one day in our lifetimes, the United States won’t be the world power, even though it’s happening as we speak. We completely don’t believe it, while cutting back public education, both K-12 and public universities. The Korean education system is not perfect, but maybe Koreans are concerned about the educational system here and are voicing their concerns and one day that will change, but what won’t change is the value that the society places on education.

Two weekends ago I went to the countryside with Lauren, Liz, and Yaeyoung, three friends of mine in Korea. We went to the largest public garden in Korea, Morning Calm, and that night we stayed in a cabin that Yaeyoung rented for us. Following a night of soju and chilling out in the cabin, we went to another town, walked along a river, did a very mini-hike and got a ton of Korean traditional food, before heading back to the city.

I’m not giving too many details here, but it was an awesome weekend. It was awesome to get out of the city and into the countryside; there are so many things that Liz, Lauren, and I, three people from the New England suburbs, didn’t realize that we missed: seeing stars, seeing rivers, very limited noise or light pollution, not being in an overcrowded city, seeing rock formations, hearing birds, etc. Of course, come this Fall, I’ll get back to Connecticut and miss everything about Korea and living in a city. Instead of missing starry nights, I’ll miss being able to go out at night – only the FoodBag is opened past 10PM in East Hampton, and probably also that bar near the Chinese Restaurant. Instead of missing personal space, I’ll miss seeing people and constantly meeting new people. There’s also so much to do in Korea, for often way cheaper than in Connecticut.

I’m happy that I have another 4 and a half months in Korea. I’m also happy that for the last half of my trip here, it’s Spring and Summer, so I can actually go out and do stuff. Hopefully my pro-go out and do stuff attitude will come with me to Connecticut, it probably will.

I have another 4 and a half months left, and about 4 months into my stay here, I realized that reverse culture shock is going to hit me when I get back. I will have changed, CT will have changed (a little), my friends will have changed and their lives will have changed. And that’s okay and as long as I go into things knowing all that, I’ll be okay. I’m a lot more awesome than I gave myself credit for, as evidenced by the fact that two weeks ago I was in Taiwan and now tonight, I’m flying out to Japan with the amazing Lauren. When I came here I told myself I want to do 1 weekend trip a month and while at first I definitely didn’t reach that goal, I’m more than making up for it this month.

I’m out to meet up with Lauren to jet off to Japan.

Today I just got back from probably one of the best trips of my life.

Wednesday, May 5 was Children’s Day in Korea, which is a national holiday and all of the schools were closed that day and some either the two days before or the two days after. My school was closed from May 5 until today (May 10), and I was in Taiwan from May 5 to May 9.

On Wednesday afternoon I left Incheon and boarded a plane that landed in Taiwan around 7 or so. After finagling my way to my hostel in Taipei, I made it there around 9 or 10. The woman running the hostel, Vanessa, was one of the friendliest and most engaging hostel-owners I’ve ever met and she runs the entire hostel alone: she does all of the cleaning, the administrative work, and she greets and checks out guests.

After checking in and getting shown around, I placed my giant backpack on my bed and started talking with one of the other guests, Brad. Brad is also from the United States, but he’s spent lots of time abroad and recently moved to Taiwan. Brad, myself, and another backpacker staying in our hostel, Jung Won, went to the nearby nightmarket for dinner. Taipei is known for its nightmarkets where you can buy some clothing, shoes, souvenirs, but mostly food. There were so many carts and stands with food being prepared – different meats, vegetables, tofu, and lots of noodles and rice. I have never seen so much skewered tofu so readily available, and so delicious.

Afterwards, we got back to the hostel and I decided that I would go to the Taroko Gorge. Before I left for Taiwan, my friends Renee and Chris recommended that I go to the Taroko Gorge because I had 5 days in Taiwan. I was debating spending my whole trip in Taipei, but then after dinner Brad told me that everyone who had gone to the Gorge who he has met loved it, so I booked a hostel in Hualien, a small city 2 or 3 hours away from Taipei, and woke up early to take the train there.

I woke up around 7 to get the train to Hualien. Hualien is the nearest city to the Gorge and I arrived to my hostel around 1PM, after stopping to get lunch at a small stand. I checked into the hostel and immediately met a woman from Switzerland named Sybil. Sybil was planning on going to the beach nearby and the Gorge the following day. After speaking with the woman at the front desk, I decided to go with Sybil to the beach and the Gorge the next day, so I could spend an entire day there, instead of an afternoon.

Sybil and I walked around Hualien, got some dumplings and tried to make it to the beach, but unfortunately massive construction work is being done there; it was hard to tell what, but it looked as though they were trying to curtail the eroding beach. I remember one of the few things that I learned in geology class last year is that this is a bad idea: nature will always win, and billions of dollars will be wasted in a losing battle against nature. Anyways, after much walking, we were able to find a small slot of beach to sit on. It was nice to lie on the beach for a bit, even though it was cloudy.

After returning to the hostel, I showered and walked around Hualien looking for food. I found a small restaurant that had a vegetarian Taiwanese soup served with rice, which was delicious. Two years ago when I met my friend Lynn, from Taiwan, she told me that if I ever go to Taiwan, to just eat my way through the country and she was completely right. The food is delicious and light, it doesn’t leave you with a heavy feeling afterwards. After I ate, I walked around a bit and found a tourist attraction the woman at my hostel recommended. In a courtyard about a 20 or 30 minute walk away from the hostel was a free outdoors traditional Taiwanese dance show. I’m sure the word traditional is being used loosely, and it’s more for tourists than to maintain any tradition, but it was really cool. The dancers were extremely skilled and agile and looked like they were really enjoying themselves.

I walked back to the hostel afterwards and went to sleep to wake up early to go to the Taroko Gorge. After waking up at 7, getting dressed, and eating breakfast I left for the train and bus station. I bought my train ticket to return to Taipei that night and then looked for the bus for the Gorge. I wasn’t sure where it was, but after looking around for a bit, I saw Sybil in the distance waiting for a bus, bought a ticket for it, and joined her for the 1 hour bus trip to the Taroko Gorge.

Sybil and I got off at different parts of the gorge and 10 minutes after she got off the bus, I arrived near the Swallow Grotto bridge. It was one of the most gorgeous sites I’ve ever seen. I honestly don’t know how to describe it, beyond gorgeous, and huge, and beautiful. I walked up it for awhile until I arrived at a point where only cars could get through. Most tourists to the Taroko Gorge are from Taiwan, so most of the people who go there have cars. The road going through the Gorge is about 20 kilometers long and it’s common to drive through it and park at the various hiking trails that are in the gorge. Apparently due to increased tourism in the past few years, it’s not very walker-friendly as there are very few sidewalks and the roads often have large tour buses running through them, so I had to be careful when meandering around. I was able to walk around a lot of the Gorge and made it to the Buluowan Trail on my own, which had a beautiful view from the top.

After that, I started walking back down to the entrance of the Gorge, which I had figured would take a little under 2 hours. However, maybe about an hour of walking and manipulating my way through the occassional tourist bus, a man driving a car pulled over and offered me a ride. This is apparently very common in the Gorge and I accepted and he and his 2 young sons drove me to a trail near the entrance called the Shakang Trail. The water along it was bright blue and the view was great. I feel like I’m being very repetitive, but I don’t know if there are any words that fully can convey how beautiful the Gorge was.

So after some walking around the trail and back to the entrance where the bus would pick me up to go back to Hualien, I decided to just sit, chill out, and enjoy the scenery. While I was waiting, I met a volunteer tour guide who was probably in his 60s who spoke perfect English. He showed me some flowers around the main entrance and asked me to look over his English tour script. After chatting, the bus came and about an hour later I got back to my hostel, grabbed my bags, then I headed over to the train station to get back to Taipei.

I arrived at the hostel in Taipei around 10PM, grabbed dinner at the night market, and went to sleep to wake up the next morning. On Saturday I woke up and as I was getting things in my bag ready for the day in the common room, and the woman who ran the hostel, Vanessa, came out of her room and inivted me and the other guy in the common room, Albert from Singapore, to get breakfast with her at the market. We went and after getting some coffee, we got fresh spring rolls – it was vegetables wrapped in a rice sheet and was delicious, like most Taiwanese food.

After breakfast I headed over to the National Palace Museum which apparently has one of the largest collections of Chinese art in the world. The collection was amazing, as was the architecture of the buildings. One of the buildings had calligraphy, traditional Chinese paintings, and some of the most intricate sculptures I’ve ever seen. The second building was housing an exhibit called “Gold and Glory.” The exhibit was bronze and gold work done throughout China and had several masks, pendants and parts of old horse saddles.

When I left the museum, I took the bus over to the subway stop and stopped and got some lunch – I had some dish that’s an egg cooked with vegetables with a yummy red/pinkish sauce over it and some bubble tea. Bubble tea, or pearl tea, is originally from Taiwan and is so delicious. I finished eating and headed over to the Longshan Temple, which was recommended by my guide book as one of the best in Taipei. I spent about one or two hours there and saw several people praying to the different shrines with incense. That, as well as the architecture, was all pretty amazing – the temple had so many intricate sculptures of different animals and dragons. Many of the pillars featured these sculptures and were beautiful.

I mentioned before that two years ago in Brazil I met a girl named Lynn who was originally from Taipei. At the time she was living in New York, but on a trip to South America. A few weeks ago I found her on facebook and I was able to meet up with her on Saturday night for dinner and some sightseeing. It was awesome seeing her after all of that time; we met in our hostel in Sao Paulo and spent a day or two together then. After dinner we walked over to Taipei 101 and she told me a bit about Taiwanese culture and about the things that we were passing. Taipei 101 is one of the biggest buildings in the world and we went to the Observation Floor, then to the Observation deck and the view of Taipei at night was pretty spectacular.

After that, we went over to a bookstore, got some Taiwanese tea, and talked for a bit. Shortly thereafter we had to go and we parted ways on the subway. While it was sad to leave her, it was so great seeing her.

Before I got off at my subway stop, Lynn recommended that I go to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall the following morning before leaving. I got to my hostel with every intention of going to sleep early so I could do that, but then I wound up staying up until 3:30AM talking with several of the people staying there. There were two guys from Indonesia, one from Australia who is also a teacher in Korea, a guy from Japan, and the American, Brad, who I had dinner with my first night in Taipei. We talked about our experiences in Taiwan, Korea, and one of the Indonesians was currently living in Japan and the other one in Singapore, and they talked a bit about that. It was awesome. With the exception of seeing Lynn, I really didn’t have many conversations outside of the basic travellers’ talks, that consist of: 1) where are you from; 2) what have you done in X place; 3) what will you do. So, it was really really refreshing talking with people for a few hours.

On Sunday morning, the next morning, on 3 or 4 hours of sleep, I woke up and went to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Inside of it is a theater, so I couldn’t go inside, but it’s a massive building that was built as a memorial to Sun Yat-Sen’s successor (I think.)

At around 9 I left the memorial and walked to the bus station to get to the airport bus. I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough time, but in the end, I wound up waiting at my airport gate for about 1 hour or so.

After my flight, going through health and security checkpoints in the Incheon Airport, and exchanging money, I boarded the Incheon City Bus home. I had a phenomenal trip – I did so much, met a bunch of great people, I had a lot of fun, I got to see an old friend, and saw and tasted so many wonderful things – but at the same time it was nice getting home, taking off my backpack and putting away my passport… for another 2 weeks until I go to Japan with Lauren!