"never leave home without Betty & Pansy"!

Sorry for the lack of communication over the past few days... Maybe it hasn't been that long. *shrug* Who knows really. I've felt a little overwhelmed. Nothing major of course. Commuting to teach is a bit of a time sucker, plus being away for three days (which is nothing to complain about!!!), being tired, messy house, piles of laundry, no reading (what's up with that?!). Just feeling the pressure of time... not enough of it where I am awake and ready to blog, email and communicate with the other side of the world. Which is too bad, because I feel like I have TONS of things to tell you guys! So let's see if I can do it in a super great thorough yet concise manner. It's the blog challenge.

Alright. Where to begin? Five of us (Ryan, Elisa, Monique, Jonny and myself) decided spontaneously to go to the southern most tip of Taiwan. Where the beaches are beachy, the sun sunnier and the ocean... oceanier? Sure. We bought our tickets for the following morning. Met at the train station and hopped on the train we thought was the right one. SURPRISE! It wasn't the right one. Which of course is a hilarious yet frightening thing, considering we don't speak Mandarin and not very many people understand English. We ended up getting off the train after a couple stops, attempting to communicate with train folk and calling William (SPACE manager) to translate. After a two hour wait, filled with yoga on the platform, granola, throwing banana peels to mystery garbage cans and much debate and conversation, we got on the right train. This train (of course) being the LONG run and taking an extra two hours due to stopping at every little town. But we were on our way!

How to sum up the rest of that day?

• We could only wrangle 4 seats for the 5 of us, so had to squish, rotate, stand, etc. throughout the 7+ hour journey to Koushoung (town where we would have to hop on a bus for 2 hours to get to the beach town of Ken ting).
• Jonny is in love with Ashtanga yoga and debates the merit of all other forms. Definately a topic of heated discussion and eventually running jokes and much hilarious hilarity.
• Apparently it was the weekend of SPRING SCREAM in Ken ting (where we were headed), so there were no available hotel rooms (at all), nevermind ones that were affordable and interested in housing 5 yogis.
• After many hours of riding a full train down the coast of Taiwan, we decided to get a cheap hotel (1400 NT) in Koushoung and continue the journey to the beach the next morning. The hotel room was hilarious and Jonny had to sleep on the floor.

Whew! The next day we hopped on the bus to Ken ting. NOTE: I bravely used the bus bathroom, which was literally a toilet in a closet. There was two feet of space above the toilet seat and no room on either side. When you closed the door it touched your knees. AND there was no light. Yet I BRAVED IT!!!

In Ken ting, we had no idea where the beach was, how to get around, where to stay, where to eat or what the hell was going on at all. We took a cab to one side where we had seen a beach. Found a hotel and asked for a room. They said every hotel in the town was booked solid. Screwed. Then an angel (or a British girl named Cat) came over, spoke to a guy in Mandarin who then took us in his jeep (yes, 5 of us with packs squished in a jeep with a stranger) to a hotel his parents were building. One half of the hotel was finished and the other was unfinished. We got a room in the unfinished half, for all 5 of us, for a grand total of 3500 NT!

The rest of the journey was all beaches, sunshine, mexican taiwan restaurants, capuccinos, cappucino pants, night markets, rides in mystery vans back to Koushoung, ambiguous train rides home, jokes and hilarity. 4 out of 5 of us got sunburnt. I saw a friend of a friend randomly in a restaurant. I like to think we were living (Jonny-style) like rockstars - flying by the seat of our pants. All in all, nothing was planned, we had no idea what was going on moment to moment, yet we all got along great and had fun! I wouldn't have changed a thing. Even the small earthquake and the cockroach in our room.

And that, my friends, is that. I'm sure Ryan will blog soon enough about the same experiences... so anything that I absent-mindedly left out will be described by him (more efficient than I).
BIG LOVE. -n.

p.s. ---> I have figured out a way to post ALL of our Taiwan pictures... so check out this page. If this link doesn't work, then let me know. I will try to figure out. I'm not sure at the moment if I have the correct link... though it will definately work if you're signed into a hotmail email address. xo.