baby steps

I would never be able to survive driving in Taipei I think. No one follows the dotted lines and everyone drives in such close proximity to each other. I marvel even more at how the buses can maneuver just as much as cars on the roads too. Wow.

I visited the Chiang Kai-Shek [蔣中正] Memorial Hall. For those of you that don't know, Chiang Kai-shek was the first President of the Republic of China, aka Taiwan. Anyway, the whole place is HUGE. I thought it would be like, a garden, or a museum type thing, but it's a palace almost. Not only is it a museum for C.K.S., but they have other exhibits like a dinosaur exhibit and a DaVinci exhibit too. Kekeke the dinosaurs at the entrance move and make dinosaur sounds hehehe.

the ceiling tiles have "C.K.S. Memorial [中正紀念堂]" written on them

At the C.K.S. museum, they had a lot of miscellaneous things such as his wedding suit and invitation,

his bulletproof car,

and his not bulletproof car.

They were shiny…

like a mirror

He used Larousse haha =)

the president and his wife at his inauguration.

some soldiers marching in the hall

Chiang Kai-Shek in his office

The memorial building with his actual statue was pretty nice too. The layout is pretty similar to the Lincoln Memorial with the supersize sitting statue inside;



the only difference is that there are some soldiers that stand guard there unmoving. I had to stare a long time before I decided they were real people; that's how little they moved.

The flora there were pretty too. Very pink.

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cool-looking tree =D

view from the top =O

Next, my mom and I took the train to Qidu, where my grandpa used to live.

Mom playing games on the train to Qidu

The train station changed so much since the last time we went!!! It used to be a nice old fashioned little train station that had a small outdoorsy platform, but now, the station is all modernized with escalators and a more subway feeling.

Sighh. At least the tunnel leading there is still the same.

There, we went shopping in the marketplace,

and bought some sticky rice cakes [年糕] for the new lunar new year and stopped for some radish cakes (?) [蘿蔔糕], egg pancakes [抓餅加蛋], and milk tea~ (with another "cold" joke: Which street does it not rain? Sesame Street. …'cause it's imaginary…ha…ha………). On the way back, we got some pastry things stuffed with red bean yum!


Nighttime was the time for the night market [夜市] shopping! Good stuff =) I had some papaya milk ^_______^. yum yum yum yum.


Since I didn't update yesterday, I put two days into one entry.

Today:
First step into the windy city of Hsinchu!

I went visited campus for a bit and realized that there are a lot of things that are taken for granted at CMU. Like a good campus map T_T… The dorms here are pretty convenient though and there's a costco 5 minutes away by car O.O yay yay!

Afterwards, my mom and I went to eat lunch with mom's middle school and high school friend and her godson. Soon after, we returned to Taipei - mom decided to show me around her old college campus a little bit. That was when I started to appreciate CMU's small campus hahahaha!

double-racked bikes!! O.O

directions haha!

National Taiwan University (NTU) is known for its "forest of coconut trees" because of this road that's lined with coconut trees. They even have signs that say "beware of falling coconuts" =). Lolly lol.

look at that long road of coconut trees..... and the dog; he's sad that this is the end of the entry.