down south

Being a resident in the middle of Taiwan (Taichung, Feng Yuan), I was told I must visit the southern regions of Taiwan to experience a change of pace and to see some beautiful sites, and that I did!

KAOHSIUNG

Amy and I departed on a rainy Saturday morning at 6:30AM to head to Kaohsiung. We planned to meet up with a couchsurfer who would be hosting us for one night in her city. We were excited when Christina (our host) and her friend wanted to tour around the city with us. 

They took us to a beautiful college which sat on a small hill overlooking the Taiwan Strait.

We then zipped to Chichin Island on a quick ferry ride. 

We picked out our lunch from this array of fresh seafood (some even alive) just outside the restaurant. 

 I touched the ocean for the first time while on the island. Brandon met up with us and we all slept, read our books, and watched surfers while lounging on these rock slabs. 

We smacked down on this ice, ice cream and fruit dish, and we finished our dinner off with chocolate popcorn. 

We absolutely fell in love with The Love River back on mainland Taiwan as we took an hour ferry ride through the entire port. 

 

KENTING 

The next morning was a complete downpour but we were determined to take the two hour bus south to Kenting.

We had a rainy first day but it was endurable as we made a tour on our scooters down the most southern roads in Taiwan. Stunning scenery kept us captivated as the lush mountains were on one side and the sandy beaches on the other.

Our first stop on our ride was this gigantic rock in the ocean. Brandon felt the need to cliff jump just as non-Taiwanese tourists have most likely done before him.

We made it to the most southern point of the island where the downpour stopped just in time for some photos. 

Squinty-eyed, big smile and peace signs hunched over the most southern Taiwan plaque.

 

Our scooter ride led us up the east coast of Taiwan where the empty country roads and cliff views of the oceans made the scenery unbelievable. 

We had a few small dinners that night. One of them being at this famous Thai restaurant where all the guests sat outside under small pavilions. 

And no town stop is complete without checking out it's night market. We shopped the Kenting streets (after realizing it's like everywhere else) where we found this incredibly unusual large ceramic woman. 

The next day, Brandon left early to make it back to teach while Amy and I hiked around Kenting National Park all morning long. 

The coral gorges were full of crabs and lizards a plenty. 

We made for some relaxing at the beach and it's at this spot that I dropped my camera in the sand and it hasn't worked again since. 

Later that day we met up with Jamy, a couchsurfer, in Wu Chuan which is just 20 minutes north of Kenting. We had a wonderful night, without a camera, as he took us to five or so west coast beaches, dined with us at some of his favorite places, and then gave us a history tour of his town.

That night we slept at his place on his spare wood bed. 

 The next morning the sun was out and shining. It was the perfect day to hit up snorkeling and a boat ride in the ocean that included a banana raft ride. 

Here we are outfitted in our gear. At the beach, we were given lifejackets, a life preserver and a lifeguard just so we could snorkel in the 4-5 ft. deep water. We saw some great coral and a variety of fish in all different shapes and colors. Out of just the six or seven times I've been before, I think this was some of the best snorkeling I've done. 

After a refreshing morning, we made some empty stomachs very happy with this Thai food. 

We then did a whole lot of this until we had to pack our bags and head back to 'real life' in Feng Yuan.

me speak-a chinese-a

Donghai Daxue (Univeristy) has unique architecture designed from the Qing Dynasty period

I've been studying at Donghai University in Taichung, Taiwan for 4 months now and I can't believe it's time to say goodbye. Susan and I have had (good) memories: missing/barely making transportation; dedicating 5 hours every Thursday (3 hours for bus and train rides, 2 hours for class); our teacher telling us that 'he's too kind' (in Chinese) b/c he tells us we speak well (in essence, we don't speak as well as he gives us credit for). 

Susan and I soaking in all the Chinese we can in class with Lin Laoshi (Lin teacher). 

Susan and I are the only students during our 2 hour class. In February, we decided we'd focus on learning how to speak Mandarin rather than be overwhelmed by reading and writing characters. One of the tricky parts about the language is that it's written language (traditional characters) has no phonetic equivalence. So, you can't look at a character and sound out a word. This is one of the reasons why Taiwanese and Chinese students spend many hours in school, because they have an unbelievable amount of characters to memorize. It even comes down to the stroke order of the character. My students complain about being teased if they write their characters with the wrong strokes.

The University was founded by Methodists missionaries in 1955 (which is unique because most Taiwanese are Buddhists/Daoists). The beautiful Luce Memorial Chapel, designed by the noted architect I.M. Pei, lies in the middle of campus. 

This language is challenging! To help, Taiwan has developed a national writing system that allows for phonetic pronunciation called ba, pa, ma, fa (looks like this: ㄅㄆㄇㄈ). Yep, I didn't learn that either but my fellow Donghai colleagues, Amy and Whitney, did and they enjoy it. I chose to learn pīnyīn, which is used in Taiwan and China. This is the phonetic spelling of the sounded word but this still isn't easy. For example: the pīnyīn letter x (which is used often) sounds like the English "ch" as in "church", but without the "t"-sound at the beginning. It's pronounced with the tip of the tongue close to or touching the back of the upper front teeth. All of the words have a difficult Roman phonetic spelling, which is different from what English speakers are used to. 

And goodness, I haven't even talked about tones yet! All I have to say is that's the hardest factor about speaking Mandarin. You can have the word right but if you say it with the wrong intonation (tone), the locals do not understand. 

It's interesting to be a small part of the campus life in Taiwan. 

I've had a great time trying to speak to the Taiwanese people. Of course there have been some slips while out on the streets like: saying pee instead of thank you, I want dumplings instead of I want sleep, or a curse word instead of the verb 'to look'. But, I've appreciated the locals patience to listen and try to understand; they are special people!

Donghai's architecture looks similar to Japanese style because of the Qing Dynasty's influence.

 It feels like I am just starting to get the hang of Mandarin just as my time is coming to an end. I hope to use it again someday, but for now, my next goal will be mastering the Slavic language, Russian!

More photos of my beautiful campus in Taichung, Taiwan: 

跆拳道 tái quán dào

跆拳道 tái quán dào Tae Kwon Do

A quick background on the sport: Taekwondo originated in Korea and currently stands as their national sport. With loose translation, it means "the way of the foot and fist" or "the way of kicking and punching." The sport highly emphasizes kicking techniques, which distinguishes it from other martial arts. The Koreans think the leg is the longest and strongest weapon and historically they thought the hands were too valuable to be used in combat.  

I've been studying Tae Kwon Do in Feng Yuan, Taiwan just over two months now. Susan and I take class with children ranging from ages 7 to 18 for 4.5 hours 3x a week (we're just so blessed to always be around children). We've had a great time learning different forms and kicks, and harassing the Taiwanese students, but one of the most humorous parts of class is the language barrier between us and our coaches.  

We tested in front of judges a few weeks ago in hopes we could earn our yellow belt. It can be a bit confusing to be given directions in Chinese, but we felt confident with the test. In fact after performing a series of kicks and forms, our coaches had Bai Die (Susan) and Shi Lian Yin (me) stand up and be recognized in front of 50+ students. We're only assuming and hoping he said positive things but it's always hard to tell without knowing Mandarin.

It was just the other day that we finally were able to tie our yellow belts around our white uniforms. 

Now that we have those, we are seemingly never satisfied and are now hoping to earn our blue belts before we leave in a month.             

air-popped

I remember that air popper we had around our kitchen when I was young, but as soon as my mother and sisters found their true love (microwave popcorn), who knows where that device disappeared to.

Well, in the depths of this Taiwanese school some air-poppers have been discovered. Some of the teachers started using them and I thought I'd give it a try. Low and behold, I have fallen in love with this inexpensive snack not only because I am living on a meager wage but also because air-popped popcorn is nutritionally sound.

As most people know: plain popcorn and slightly seasoned popcorn are both low in calories (approximately 30 calories for three cups). Since I've forgotten from my college nutrition classes, I wanted to research what popcorn offers besides the low calories.

Well, USDA is always encouraging us to get more whole grain foods; popcorn is one of those! Popcorn is a great choice of a carbohydrate serving while also being high in fiber. Americans rarely get enough of the recommended amount of fiber in their diets (20-35g).

Popcorn makes up one serving of the starches recommended by the American Dietetic Association, and you might be surprised to know that it's serving size fairly generous. Three cups of popped popcorn is the equivalent of one slice of bread, 1/2 cup of cooked pasta, and one cup of cereal. I don't know about you but I think three cups of food sounds better than just one.

So, if you don't have an air-popper (it's okay to admit that you do) popping kernels is easy to do on the stove. Just make sure you have a pot with a lid, a few tbsp. of healthy oils and kernels.

May the healthy popping begin!

for all you chocolate cake lovers

More birthdays = trying new recipes

Chocolate Chocolate Cake

After finally finding cake mixes in Taiwan, I've been excited to use one of the cake doctor's recipes. This recipe book is a guide to making any ordinary cake into an extraordinary cake! (The author probably uses that tag line somewhere but I don't care to find it. )

CAKE:

I sort of followed this recipe and it was delicious but many substitutions had to be made.

-Chocolate cake mix: I had to use the only vanilla cake mix we could find in Taiwan. I added a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder and a few extra tablespoons of sugar as a substitute.

-Sour cream: I had to use vanilla yogurt (can't find plain yogurt) because sour cream is ridiculously expensive in Taiwan.

-Instant chocolate pudding: I had to use non-instant egg custard pudding and added cocoa powder to make it chocolate. 

FILLING:

Getting some tips from Martha, I made a buttercream filling for the center by following this recipe.

CHOCOLATE GLAZE: 

I had to picky about which of the many online chocolate glazes I could choose from because of my lack of ingredients (cocoa powder and confectioner's sugar). But I lucked out because this recipe made a glaze that is similar to my mother's infamous boston cream pie chocolate glaze (a favorite).  

A happy pseudo-birthday to Erin and Amy! 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

This is one decadent cake recipe. But after looking at the pictures and celebrating the birthday of a peanut butter lover, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try this cake. 

CAKE:

This cake gave me a few minor headaches in the wee hours of the morning. The batter is very runny and it never really set up well. The three separate cake layers stuck to the pan and all inverted when placed on a plate. It was my roommate Sunny who saved the 'look' by suggesting I serve the cake on a frisbee. 

FROSTING:

The recipe calls for a lot of cream cheese and we don't have the budget to buy more than 8 oz. I ended up trying to compensate with more peanut butter. The frosting ended up looking like cookie dough (I in fact had too much of this 'frosting' so I added flour and made some candy pb cookies with the extra). To moisten the pb frosting, I added a cup of vanilla yogurt and a few tbsp. of milk. 

GLAZE:

Looking at this cake you can already tell it's going to have a lot of flavor. I only did 1/2 of the amount of glaze that it called for because I only wanted it for decorating. Of course like all the others, I had to do all sorts of substituting to make up for the lack of ingredients. 

 -Semisweet chocolate chips: (the closest place to find those is 45 min. away at Costco), so I had to use their waxy, less flavorful chocolate baking chunks. 

-Corn syrup:  I substituted with liquid fructose flavoring. 

 -Half and half: I used this substitution recipe. 

With all of these adaptions it didn't quite turn out like the original images. My glaze was more of a shell around the cake. 

In aggregate, the cake was delicious but very intense. It needs ice cream or milk. It had a nice blend of different consistencies between the moist cake, creamy frosting and crisp shell. Peanut butter cups would have been nice to decorate with but when you don't have them, snicker bar chunks taste great too. 

A happy 23rd birthday for our one and only Brandon!

I have to admit I am looking forward to baking with normal ingredients when I live a normal life. 

365

Snapping a photo every single day for 365 days was definitely not my original idea. But how many times do we actually do things that have never been done before? not many.

So, here is to the next 365 days entering my 25th year of life. check it out @http://notmyoriginalidea.blogspot.com.

up north

A trip up north to Taipei and surrounding areas has been on my list to do for quite some time (yes, vacations and the planning of them are often on my list to do, but you'd do the same if you were here). 

I used the handy networking system couchsurfing to find Susan and me free places to stay while up in the capital. This was basically the only detail of our trip that was arranged; everything else was going to be finalized and configured as we went.

Just 45 min. south of Taipei, we visited the Wulai scenic park. 

We didn't expect our transportation to the scenic area to be these small child-like trains. 

The majestic images we saw in our guide books look a little different than the rather unsubstantial falls I'm in front of. 

We took a short tram ride up and over the waterfall to the top of the mountain. Of course, just like any other mountain top, there are activities awaiting (mini amusement park rides, hotel, unused swimming pool, 'lost boy' in neverland activities, etc.)

Susan and I took our own sweet time to do as we pleased at the top of Wulai. 

Cute Asian kids wearing matching outfits

Finding more waterfalls in this overdeveloped 'natural area'

After Wulai, we were able to meet up with our local Feng Yuan friend Lily in her college town Sanxia just outside of Taipei. We spent the night climbing up a mountain looking at fireflies.

We also climbed up one of the biggest Buddhist temples along the mountain, seeing this famous 60 ft. statue as we made our ascent. 

Susan, Lily and I are at the top of the temple overlooking the entire Taipei city valley. 

Just giving the Taipei 101 (world's 2nd tallest building) a small pinch

The next day Lily gave us a tour of her National Taipei University campus. 

Then we shopped till we dropped. (shopping seriously wears me out more than a full day of exercising)

We tried on hats, clothes, and accessories. 

 

The antique Sanxia village was perfect for finding the souvenirs we've been needing. 

Who knows why, but I was the only one who walked away with a purchased hat. 

That evening we met up with some more friends- Taiwanese and Japanese, ate Korean food, and talked about Thailand and southeast Asia. After dinner, my brain was slightly muddled to where my current geographical location was. 

This photo was with our last couchsurfing host. She made for one interesting night. 

Thank you Taipei county for keeping us entertained.