What I love most about being a normal adult again, I don't teach on Saturday's for the second half of the year, is that I get real weekends. Since I get two full days off, I took full advantage of it this weekend. A friend of mine and I hopped a bus bound for Taipei City!
Even though I have been here for a year and a half already, I still have not seen Taipei...at all. It is sad, I know, so I did something to change it. We left school right away on Friday and got to our hotel at about 8 that evening. Not much time for anything but a little BBQ and some Taiwan Beers. A good Friday night if you ask me!
Saturday we were up early and to the National Palace Museum by midmorning to beat the crowds. The National Palace Museum in Taipei has more original Chinese artifacts than the Beijing museum because a lot of it was smuggled out of the country for safe keeping when Mao took over in the early 1940's. So it's a really cool experience to have and we quite appropriately spent over 3 hours there. Time for a late lunch, rest time, and then dinner at a Mexican restaurant. A drink at a bar and then it was time for us dorky teachers to hit the sack.
Sunday we took a short MTR trip to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (Chiang Kai-shek was the first leader of Taiwan after they separated from China) which is very impressive. It didn't hurt that it was a beautiful day in February, so it was a good end to our weekend. A short bus ride back brings us back to reality, but it was a really great weekend away. And I finally got to see Taipei! A very nice Asian city, and a nice modern place in Taiwan...
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