Just a Good Old Saturday Outing

Early last Saturday morning, Susan, Erin (fellow co-teachers) and I all headed out with alacrity for a day trip to a small town south of our local Feng Yuan. The three of us are the minority that don't have to teach on Saturday mornings and believe me, we have no qualms about it!



After some re-planning and a splash of spontaneity after we couldn't see what we originally planned for until later, we went further south and added the town of Ji Ji to our itinerary. It's a quaint town void of the urbanization we see in most places. Cobble stone streets, flora and fauna scenery on the back roads, no electronic machines near or at the train station, and of course with any Taiwan town-friendly people.





On our quick stop to this town, a kind teenager escorted us on the back roads to get us to a beautiful temple that was destroyed in the 1999 Taiwan earthquake.



Random Taiwanese enjoy getting their picture taken with us (in front of the earthquake temple).



We then headed to Ershuei where we planned to see some wild monkeys. We couldn't see them earlier in the day because they were supposedly napping, but they sure were awake when we stopped by.





We had rented these bikes from the "So Funny" bike company for the day and we used them to explore. No matter the town, Taiwan is good for finding yourself some blended Daoist-Buddhist temples.





We found these:

I had Susan snap a photo of me jumping off the stairs. On this particular attempt at a 'jump' photo, she used her skilled knowledge to count to three in Chinese. It caught me off guard and this is the photo that resulted:



After climbing a treacherous hill with our bikes in the hot sun, we entered this beautiful temple. The temple hosts were so sweet to give us the traditional winter drink...steaming hot water. We appeared to look appreciative when we dumped the water in our empty water bottles when they weren't looking.



That night a group of us saw Alice in Wonderland in 3D at the theatre (my 2nd 3D movie in Taiwan). We always listen keenly to the private tutorial we get about their particular and precious 3D glasses....we of course don't understand a thing.



The movie is a Tim Burton production. If you know his style or seen the movie you know the dialogue, acting and cinematography can be a bit wacky. We (us Americans) wonder how the movie was perceived after Chinese translation.

Coming out of an American movie in Taiwan can always be a self-esteem booster; I literally had a line of people that wanted to take a photo with me and a few others in front of the Alice In Wonderland poster boards. Here's a shot we snapped quickly: