YAY FOR SPRING BREAK~ Wheeee!!! KTV! I got up a little late and I was the last one to arrive at the meeting spot T_T bad me. Anyway, the place was pretty nice; not a huge selection of English songs though!! So sad. I only got to pick and sing 2 English songs during the 5ish hours we were there hahaha. The Taiwanese people that I went with loved singing too much and picked five thousand songs at a time T_T. It was ok though because I improved my Chinese reading ability!!! Maybe. =P
lalala.....~
Shih-Min and Hsiou-Hsiou!
me and Jalf =D
"stop stealing my mic...." "but I want to sing!!"
superstar dandan has an adoring fan =P
Afterwards, some of us went to get ready for our trip to Smangus [司馬庫斯] - an Aboriginal Taiwanese village near Hsinchu. I met some new people and rode a nice 2 hours to the village from the school on scooters - it was very windy and bumpy. I rode with Carbon (cool name?) for the duration of the trip - forgive me for always smacking my helmet into yours!
We stopped at Neiwan [內灣] for a lunch break.
lunch at 7-Eleven
munch munch
What did the guys buy? Some Abso……lut. Lol. I wonder. Anyway, we took off for Smangus on the little scooters, and I'm impressed at their endurances. Some of the mountain roads we took were super steep - like 45 degrees at one point. The poor scooter had to work harder than it ever had to in its lifetime. Carbon's breaks also protested the steep downhill slopes and turns. It kept going "GII GII GII" which translates roughly to "STOP DOING THIS TO ME" in machine talk. Every time a kilometer marker appeared, we would both go get so excited and get super motivated because the turns were killing us. Believe it or not, sitting on a scooter is just as difficult as driving it because you have to stay on - there's no relaxing or else you'll fly off the seat T_T.
the guardrails had mosaics and artwork on them!
Smangus ahead!
at the gas station filling up their tanks to prepare for the 2-hour ride!
me and Carbon!
me and Hsiou-Hsiou
a purple bridge~
Smangus's Big Bridge
jump!
the bridge was on the way to the village, and we went down to play in the stream =) =)
say cheeeese!
the water was cold!!
the guys decided to start skipping rocks, and started throwing large stones in too haha. This one was only rolling down xD.
he threw that one really far xD
rocky road o_O
10 out of 16 km to Smangus!
yay arrived!! look at the bottom left of the picture: 16 / 16km!!
We arrived at the village, and checked into our room, then went hiking to go see…a cliffside that's shaped like a crow's beak. Yay for exercise! Afterwards, we had dinner of … lots of food!
our little wooden cabin
I can't really read it, but.. "crow's beak rock" and "heavenly beauty"?
crow's beak rock
and.. heavenly beauty
sunset =O
Carbon is dead tired
no Hsiou-Hsiou... no. xD
the young 23-year-old boss of the store =O =O
dinner om nom nom
resting in the room
Next was a walk to look at the stars (the North Star was hidden by the mountains =( what if someone gets lost in the mountains??) and picture-taking. Finally, we ended the night with an Absolutly ramen and snack-filled finish and some card games to go with it. M-hway us ba-lay ("many thanks" in the Aboriginal language [泰雅語]).
learning how to speak Aboriginal language from the brochure haha!
AND. Happy April Fool's. I did actually go to Smangus though.
April 2nd, 2010
The next day, I woke up way too early. I woke up with the rooster at 6am =_=. I took some pictures of the place and waited around for half an hour waiting for the rest of the group to wake up.
everyone is still sleeping...
Smangus
"5 more minutes....."
little kids had singing and dancing class outside our room!
the planner of the trip!
beautiful scenery
After breakfast, off to the Old Forest [巨木群] where there were many old trees that lived many many years [巨木 or 神木].
=P
Whoo! I haven't hiked in a long time! But 5+5km both ways wasn't so bad. There was an especially dangerous little bit of path that had no guardrails and a million mile drop if you fall....
at the entrance
alex is happy to be hiking!
the million-mile drop O_O
passing by said million-mile drop
we arrived at the Old Tree Forest! this is a map of where all the trees are
old tree 7: look at how little the people are!!
towering over humanity...
the Old Tree Forest
Unfortunately, one of the people in our group got blisters on her feet because of the boots she was wearing =(. On the way back, some of the guys gave her a piggy-back ride XD. Aren't Taiwanese boys nice people? Haha. Fun fun!
resting on the way down
one of the girls - Fido - had a 20-year-old Nikon camera that used film!!! so professional!
me and Hsiou are attempting to fold our bodies in half like the girl in the middle O_O
group pic!
on the way back~
my motorcycle partner Carbon!
and.. our nice boys helping to carry our injured traveler =]
the uber dangerous place with no guard rails... and the million-mile drop. again.
Then, time to move out back to Hsinchu! The ride back down the mountain slopes was a lot better, though the Mr. Motorcycle still decided to complain as much as it could every time the breaks were applied. What happened on the road? It started to fog up! Which meant on with our raincoats and gloves and scarves. But I did not bring one T_T so I had to steal another classmate's for the ride back. Driving through the fog in a car isn't so bad besides the visibility, but on a motorcycle, you become cold from all the moisture T_T. And your glasses fog up xD.
Anyway, we arrived back safely and had dinner together. I think our table was ready to fall asleep at the table though =_=. One of the waiters took his half-finished dinner away but he was too out of it to protest T_T. Another guy at our table - nicknamed Subworld - was so tired that he asked his friend "如果我閉上眼睛的話，那個圓圓的，切成一塊一塊的，看起來很好吃的蛋糕，會出現在我桌子上嗎？" [If I close my eyes, will that round, yummy-looking cake that's cut into many pieces suddenly appear in front of me on the table?] T___T. It was an interesting night.
cake?
would you like me to feed you cake? xD
I got back to my dorm room, and there was not a soul in sight. Both my roommates were gone for the break, and I was almost dying of boredom. I had to nap first - waking up at 6 takes its toll after a while, especially if you add the food-coma effect. So what did I do? Went to play card games of course! Uno and Bang! I kind of failed at Bang! though. Haha. I did learn the beginning of a new song on the guitar though - Romance. Yayy~ I could not finish this entry after I got back though - way too tired. I wish pictures will appear in this entry magically without me having to upload it….
edit: yay for stealing other people's pictures! Some are mine though!
upload pics!! XD
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