The "Real Taiwanese Experience" started after that. I chose to go with the 11th grade students on their afternoon trip even though I wasn't on duty this weekend. Why, you ask? Well, my friend Kate was on duty and assigned to that trip so I would be with her. Also, all my other friends were required to work with seniors on college applications that afternoon so I had no one else to hang out with. AND the 11th graders were going to Lukang, the coolest Saturday trip we do!
Lukang is a small fishing village about an hour and a half from Taichung. I guess it is sort of a tourist trap but it's actually pretty nice for foreigners because it has some historical buildings lining the main streets and great little shops that you don't really find in Taiwan too ofton. So all in all, a pretty nice place to experience some of the charm of Taiwan.
Last year I had been to Lukang once while on duty but I was pretty excited to go again because you can also buy some delicious food there! So Kate and I walked around the narrow, winding streets of Lukang on Saturday afternoon and had some of our favorite 11th grade students guiding us around. I really like to take advantage of opportunities like this because it completely turns the tables on my usual teacher-student relationships; it's a really cool way to let the students teach us something about their country and culture.
After a fried oyster pancake, traditional peanut "candy" (not like candy really, it was like a weird wispy almost cotton-candy-esk wrapping around a pocket of peanut powder/paste....sounds weird, but it was pretty delicious), and a cup of the self-proclaimed best iced jasmine milk tea in Taiwan, we boarded the bus again. Kate and I got a good chance to catch up on the bus ride, so all around it was a very nice afternoon.
That evening a group of us teachers decided to go out to dinner then. There were quite a few of us which I always enjoy because then we really have a great gang of Americans on scooters driving around the city! When this happens, we both intrigue and terrify the locals. It is awesome.
Last night we weren't heading into Taichung though, we were heading out and up. With one of the new teachers riding on the back of my scooter, our gang traveled up the mountains surrounding Taichung for about 45 minutes to a restaurant on top of a super high ridge overlooking the city lights. There we had dinner at the Mushroom Palace. Now we're not really sure what the name of this place actually is, but since they serve any and all kinds of mushrooms that are grown on that mountainside, we thought that would be an appropriate name for the place.
After a wonderful dinner of traditional mushroom hotpot, we decided to check out a pseudo-underground bar that we had been hearing about for a while. In the same area of the city, out in the foothills of the mountains around Taichung, there is an abandoned amusement park. This is the site that a few crazy foreigners have created some sort of hippy cooperative including a bar called The Refuge. This is were we went.
To say it was bizarre is probably the understatement of the year. The actual bar is pretty normal, big on the inside with your standard bar stools and pool tables. I mean, its pretty weird to be in a room with almost all foreigners and be able to understand the conversations around you, but you get used to that. It really gets odd when you start exploring the grounds because you can walk in the dried out lazy river, check out the old zip lines (not go on them, I'm pretty sure that would be certain death), or go explore in the odd African safari themed statues. It has a creepy, scene-from-a-horror-film feel to it, and all the while I was concerned that I would run into one of the seven poisonous snakes in Taiwan. Have no fear, we didn't see any wildlife besides the bugs out there!
It's weekends like this one that really reinvigorates my love of Taiwan. It is easy to forget you are living in a foreign country when you teach all day and come home at night only to grade more, plan more, and go to bed. It's the weekends that remind me how cool of an experience this is, and I still love it!
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