the bathroom problem

Sad day today-we had to leave kenting and one of the prettiest hotels i've ever been to in my life. Like I said before, I thought they were just playing a sick joke on us when we pulled up to the Fullon resort. After exploring the indoor pool and showering we got our rooms. My jaw dropped when we opened the door: two HUGE fluffy beds, a great view, a fabulous shower, and no icky bugs. We all got drink vouchers so we had a pre-dinner toast "gan bei" and headed to a thai restaurant for dinner.

Our waiter looked very feminine and later I put two and two together that that he probably had a secdond job when the restaurant closed its curtains and put on "live shows"!
We walked around a bit and then all met up for some group bonding (refer to the previous post) and then went shopping again. While walking back to the resort we stumbled upon a random bar on the side of the road that would give you free drinks if you could ride a tiny tricyle in a circle three times-nobody could do it. Rachel did try though.


After the best night sleep I've had in like 2.5 weeks, we woke up for breakfast. Hooray buffet! There were a lot of traditional chinese foods, but the most exciting things were the waffles, cereals, and fresh fruit.
Megan, Hannah, Gina, and I headed down to the workout room where we experimented with new workout equipment (except for Megan who stuck to the treadmill). After our very strenuous workout, we went back and napped until checkout.

We had taiwanese food for lunch today and it was really tasty. There were some green mountain vegetables, fried fish in a sweet and sour sauce, a squid dish, some soups, fried squid balls, and a couple of other dishes. I was still full from breakfast so I only had a few bites of each, but it was so good!
We visited the National Sport Training Center where they train athletes for the olympics and Asian games. It was interesting to me because my main goal is to be an AT for a national team, but overall it was pretty boring. After that we went to Lotus Lake where there were two towers-one is a tiger and one was a dragon. We also went to a beautiful buddhist temple across the street and bought some fresh fruit from a street vendor.



On the bullet train back I studied a little bit on a coke and special k bar induced energy blast and then took the rest of the i to reflect on what I like to call "the bathroom problem".

Taiwan is not conducive to pooping. This has been the topic of many a conversation because NONE OF US CAN POOP!! it doesn't matter if we eat a lot or a little, poop just doesn't happen. And even if by some stroke of luck we did have to go, there's the issue of "squatties". Yes, our bedrooms have normal toilets, but the classroom buildings, restrooms, etc.. have some glorified holes in the ground. Think of a toilet bowl embedded into a platform and you get squatties. It's hard enough to go #1 in that thing let alone #2!! I just don't get it. Needless to say, I need out of this country!!

Not Toppers

hokay so. just got back from a night in "downtown" kenting. bars are pretty much non existent, however fun fact: ordinary dinner restaurants, including the amazing thai place we ate at tonight, turn into strip clubs once the sun goes down. curiosity got the best of us and we paid our cover charge at went 'sploring. First of all...out of the three "girls", one was a man. There was one actual male stripper with a batman mask and hot shorts on. cute...second of all, they select members of the audience to participate in the show....third of all, americans are apparently a hot commodity here. They take picture of us candidly, ask us to pose with them for pictures, and pull us up from our seats to participate in aforementioned "live show". ALSO it is common place to take babies and small children into these venues. um excuse me? baby's first transvestite experience is probably frowned upon in the states. NOT toppers.

On a completely separate note, our hotel is freaking insane. Our rooms have two of the biggest beds I've ever seen...the rooms our huge...our view in overlooking the ocean. Be jealous.



Beach day tomorrow-send me sunny vibes!!!

don't pee in the wetsuit!

woke up bright and early to be out the door at six thirty. We once again had a bakery box for breakfast which consissted of a cheese and mayo sandwich (pass), 3 cream puffs (had one and pawned the rest of to heidi), a swiss roll (one bite and then trash) and a piece of strawberry cake that I ate the strawberry off of. At the train station I decided I was better suited with a breakfast of iced coffee (starbucks!), a special K bar, and a banana. Yes starbucks is still overpriced and no they don't accept giftcards-it was worth a shot though. Despite a grande coffee's worth of caffeine in my body, I fell asleep almost instanly on the bullet train and stayed that way for the ramined of the 2 hour trip. So long intentions of studying, see you about a day before the final exam. It was pouring when we got off the bullet train and after a frenzied run to our tour bus (which does not have freaky gypsy curtains and tassels) and much debate, we headed to kenting because apparently the weather there was not as bad.
Lunch today was at this huge open restaurant. There were a few different meat dishes where I employed the 3 bite rule and my personal favorite-sweet potato leave in which i employed the 3 bowl rule. Ok just kidding, I had like one bowl...Megan was happy that there was chicken and Hannah figured out a way to blend in with the adventerous diners
While we were eating, the skys opened and it started to monsoon. After a sprint to the bus we were conmpletely soaked. Thank god for dry fit.
The monsoon reduced to a drizzle and we decided to "stay the course" and go ahead with our water activities. WE suited up in wet suits and water booties, piled into a creepy seatless van and headed to the beach.

We snorkled towards a little boat. Half of us got onto the banana boat (or as dr. cooper calls it, a water weiny) and got towed around until we flipped. I gave Gina a bloody nose and she gave me a mild concussion-figures. We also fell inside the boat a few times and the toothless captain prodded us with his big walking stick.

Once we recovered we went tubing in pairs behind a jetski. Nobody flipped but I definitly thought we were going to. After everyone had a turn (and team grab-a-heiny had two!), we snorkled back.

The fish were ok, but I think snorkeling in Hawaii has spoiled me forever.
We got back on the bus in our towels and headed to the hotel. I thought it was a joke when we pulled up because all we saw was this HUGE pool with slides and lots of buildings. Not a joke, this is where we're staying. Bad news: our rooms weren't ready and we looked liked stupid americans walking around this really nice lobby in towels and bikinis holding our luggage. good news: we used the showers downstairs and played in the indoor pool, hot tub, and steam room. Big thumbs up. Our room is ready now, so I think I'm going to check that out. We're going out tonight :) :)

the one where Gina almost got in a fight

another long day today (I feel like I say this everyday). We started off the morning with McDonald's breakfast, which I quickly gave to Megan and Hannah, and bussed it to the national palace museum. Long story short, there is a very different view of personal space here, we all got body checked by tiny asian women atleast three times, and Gina resorted to screaming "rude" at them. Since we obviously don't appreciate art and culture, we high-tailed it to the children's part of the museum where we had the most fun of the whole museum experience.
After entirely too much time in the museum we went to lunch at this dumpling place that was pretty good. I just had a few bites because I wanted to take it light, megan and hannah ate nothing, and everyone else liked it.
The Cheng Kai Shek memorial was eerily like the Lincoln Memorial, with a big statue sitting in a memorial and looking down on all the visitors. What was NOT like the Lincoln memorial was the fact that there were two guards (thing the guys in London that NEVER move) guarding him. We watched the changing of the guards which was pretty cool, but strangely reminicent of Nazis, took some pictures, and headed over to Taipei 101.

We traveled to the top of the world's second highest building, took pictures, got pushed around by people that don't respect personal space, yada yada yada. After we got on the bus everyone passed out until dinner.
We went to a Mongolian BBQ place where we picked out our meats, veggies, and sauce and the people cooked it in front of us. Just like O-house stir fry! It was nice to have chicken which apparently is rare here, and it was also nice to know exactly what I was eating for once.
A short bus trip away was a cross between a night market and a mall where we bummed around, shopped (aka bought myself more shoes), and then we headed back to NTSU.

I'll add pictures, videos, and info to this later, but I have to pack for Kenting and start working on my paper. Hey procrastination!

oh the irony

dear faithful followers, this is gina... the infamous roommate who contributes to the chaos of team awesome and enjoys napping on gabi's shoulder. i just wanted to inform you that gabi is not only nauseated but also just threw up and continues to insist on providing you with a synopsis of our taiwandering adventures... she says, you're welcome. so i encourage you to READ ON. love, gina

so tonight will be a short blog, obviously. today was such a long day, however I will cover it all with the following list:
class
judo championship
mcdonalds
rain
track and field meet
more rain
public transportation
ew
night market
candied strawberries (and cherry tomatoes?)
hot
bubble tea
fried mushrooms
presents for people I like
found luggage
still hot
bumpy ride
head ache
still really hot
puke
hooray

i love you all, but mostly my parents, gina, and the rest of team awesome.

goodnight

(also, i feel the need to mention Megan because she gets cranky if she doesn't make my daily blogs)

**while reading over this later, I realized I never explained the irony of my life. While trying to figure out what made me puke, Gina and I realized that the only thing we BOTH didn't eat was a McDonalds salad. While everyone else was craving fries, I was craving a salad...so with all the crazy food that i've eaten, McDonald's was my downfall. awesome.

this one's for Jaden!

Soooo yoga didn't exactly go as planned...our teacher spoke about five words of english and sounded like a cross between a dinosaur, a dying cat, and the noise the water cooler makes (turn up the volume when you watch the video...you'll see). Anyhow, as soon as she turns on the music, we realize something is wrong. It's poppy, up-beat, and so not yoga like at all. And cue aerobic dance. I think the following pictures can describe our experience far better than my explanation ever could. and here is team awesome in our full glory
and last but not least Megan, Gina, and I dancing, wait 'til the end to see me breaking it down

That wasn't the end of my sweet moves though. Outside our room were three guys breakdancing. Eager to show off the hip hop routine Jaden has been teaching me for the past month or so, Candice and I asked if we could join the fun. We did. I did the macarena...but then redeemed myself my teaching them the worm. They couldn't do it-who's laughing now? Worm+Jaden's hip hop dance=bow to my dancing greatness. Of course then Candice showed me up with her Dance Dawg routine...but hey, you can't win them all.

This would have been posted last night, but the internet wasn't working so I finished outlining my paper and went to sleep. Today we're going to class, some Judo championship and then another night market? Yay shopping!

"your hands are stupid"

Rainy day today :( For some reason we slept in a little later today, met in the lobby (Cooper's here now, not Dr. Brown), and walked over to eat breakfast. Breakfast today was a big box of potstickers. I wasn't hungry, so I just tried a bite, but it tasted just like the ones we'd order in the states.

Tasty? yes. But a special K bar was a much better choice.
Class today had something to do with Chi again, which meant I understood a total of 1% of the lesson. Instead of paying attention, we spent our time doing massage trains and falling asleep standing up. Very productive. The only thing I gathered is that our chi is weak and we have stupid hands. By the time lunch rolled around, I was starving. We ate at the NTSU cafeteria today which made everyone happy. I had the same problem I have when I eat off the Earthfare hot bar-I can't decide what to choose and get a little bit of everything. And there really was everything.

Like I said, everyone was happy. Megan loved the fact that there were chicken fingers and hashbrown cakes, and I was happy that there was an abundance of vegetables. sidenote: I did not eat everything on my plate by any means. I had bites of everything, but the only things I finished were the veggies. Eggplant=so good. Gina and I bonded with Dr. Cooper over lunch and our walk back to our rooms. In response to our whining about the lack of shopping time he responded "don't worry, Daddy's here". He will make a welcome addition to team "grab a heiny".
The rest of the day has been pretty uneventful. Just did clinicals in the AT room and tried to do some research for my paper. We did get pizza hut pizza and fried chicken tonight for dinner which was amazing. I didn't think I was hungry until I tried a bite and then realized I was ravenous. I had my fair share of pizza but didn't try the chicken. Pat ate about 1 1/2 chickens total, so I'm guessing it was good. We have yoga later..10 bucks says I'll pass out again.

option one? or option two?

Another long day today. Got up early to run, but never actually made it out. Instead, I attempted to be a responsible student and start working on my final paper. We then walked to breakfast which was some sort of meat ball, noodles, and a fried egg. I also tried one of the spiciest sauces I've ever tasted (it's the red stuff in the little packet)..seriously one tip of my chopstick lit my entire tongue on fire.

After breakfast we had class where we learned about herbal medicine and prepared Ru Yi Jin Huang San, which is a mixture of herbs that when combined with water and spread on some gauze makes a pretty good pain patch. It kind of smells like curry and tea tree oil, and looks like baby poop. I think the term "doody pie" describes them accurately.

Today we switched it up a little bit and instead of going to lunch and clinical after our first class, we grabbed a box lunch and hopped on a bus to take a day trip. Everyone was delighted to see that our lunch was another bakery box.


Today it was filled with a cranberry tea, some sort of sandwich, pound cake, a chocolate/orange peel, and some sort of cheesecake tart. And I wonder why I'm getting fat! Ha Ha

I'm not exactly sure how long the bus ride was because I have developed bus induced narcolepsy and passed out soon after we took off. I woke up to find us at the Beitou Hot Spring Museum which reminded me of a place we'd go on a middle school field trip. It was an old public bath house that was turned into a museum. We alotted WAY too much time to spend there, so after the tour Gina, Megan, and I walked to the 7 eleven to get something to drink and explore for a bit. We boarded the bus again and surprisingly I stayed awake on this leg of the trip. Gina, however, did not. She fell asleep and somehow found her way to my shoulder. Yeahhh we're cute. We stopped again in some Yang-Ming Mountain national park which seemed like a huge garden on the side of a mountain with lots of stairs and some gazebos. Megan, Gina, Hannah, and I plopped down in a gazebo and chilled for a while until we heard a voice over the loud speaker telling all the uga students to meet at the bus. We found out way back and were relieved that we weren't the last people back for once. After a few more minutes when a group of 3 or 4 people still hadn't come back we made the announcement again....split up and searched for them....announced again....looked for them...this whole process went on for an hour until they finally came back. We took a quick poll and decided nobody was hungry for dinner yet so we'd go to the hot spring first.
Last night we were told that we had two options for the hot springs. 1-unlimited time in the public hot spring. The catch is they don't allow swim suits in it. 2-choose a partner and get 50 minutes in a private bath with them. Picking number 2 was a no brainer for me, Gina, and the rest of our little posse, but everyone else seemed pretty excited to sit in the buff in a huge hot bath with a bunch of naked strangers. Turns out there was no need for us to choose between option 1 and 2 because the ladies' public hot spring was broken so we all got to soak in private. I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting our private hot spring room to look like, but it was the size of a walk in closet and looked like a hotel bath tub.

After soaking in the sulfur water we had dinner at the rooftop restaurant. It was so good! It was too dark to take pictures of the food, but (most of) it was great! We had peking short ribs, an amazing seafood "salad", some chicken dish, a seafood and bean sprout dish,a whole steamed fish with the head still on and two different soups. One of the soups had pork intestine in it. I debated trying it for about 10 minutes, but against my best judgement ended up trying a bite. After promptly spitting it out, I decided that maybe from now on I should take it easy and stay away from internal organs..
We just got back a few minutes ago, and I feel so huge. I think it's the combo of big meals and not really getting much exercise in. Why is school getting in the way of my life?!

assume the position

so today started off kind of iffy, but definitely rallied to a great finish. The whole group's been in a funk; I think we're all exhausted, overwhelmed, and craving some American food (yes, even me. I would kill for a pizza and salad right now). Plus we had a midterm today which everyone was stressed about. Needless to say, nobody paid attention in class this morning. Not that we could actually understand what he was talking about (something about chi?)...but yeah. Cram session. After our morning class we took our midterm which was pretty ok. Not as bad as I expected, but I probably didn't get a 100 either. We had lunch (kind of like mongolian beef) and then went to clinical. Today I got to work with Tae Kwon Do which was really interesting and full of injuries. One guy got kicked in the hand so hard that they think he fractured it. All the kicking made me miss fight club a lot. I'm counting down the days until my Omni membership unfreezes. Around dinner time, things started looking up. It reminded me of moo shoo duck, which was dubbed as "mexican chinese fajitas" by Jena. Ha ok Jena, whatever floats your boat! We had a little time to kill so we went back to our rooms to hang out, and then went back to class to learn about kinesio taping. We were all dreading it, because the last thing we wanted to do is sit through MORE class, but I seriously thought I was going to pee in my pants due to the events that progressed. The class started out innocently enough-we learned various shoulder and neck taping procedures.

The fact that tape was hot pink at went with my outfit made me quite happy. I make learning stylish :) I then tried to teach the NTSU students about back fat, arm jiggle, and my personal favorite...the love muffin (the oh so cute merger between love handles and a muffin top).

AND THERE'S MORE
After we practiced the shoulder tapings on each other we learned how to treat the lower back. Somehow Megan was the model and had to "assume the position" in front of the entire class. She would probably murder me in my sleep if I posted the montage of pictures we took to document it...so here we all are showing off our taping jobs

the following picture needs no explanation

and finally, me doing the "sexy girl pose" (their words, not mine)


good times with the hot pink tape.

when we got back to Pu Yan (our dorm) we had like 5 cans of pringles and a 2 liter bottle of coke zero. THANK GOD. All's well that ends well I suppose.

Tomorrow is going to be another busy day. We have class tomorrow morning and hot springs tomorrow afternoon. Pretty sure we have to be naked in public.....we'll see how that goes..

I'm cranky

This morning, Megan alerted me that she was less than impressed with my latest posts. I apologize faithful followers (I like the fact that I have followers, you may now refer to me as Mao Ze Gabi), there are some reasons for the usual lack of hilarity. 1) I'm tired. When I get tired I get cranky, and cranky Gabi just isn't funny. 2) Funny things haven't really happened in the past few days. Actually, I lied. Things worth writing about HAVE happened, but they either are related to gifts I've bought people (who may or may not be reading) or they could be taken offensively..don't want to piss anyone off while I'm still living with them...just kidding..or am I? I'm about to rush off to clinical (Tae Kwon Do today), but I'll post later, and hopefully Megan will approve.

in the water, out of the water, in the water, out of the water

so we're finally home from our weekend excursion and I have a midterm tomorrow. I think as a group we studied for a total of 1 hour. Oops. So after my last post, Gina and I decided to go exploring aka find what kind of delicious snacks we can stuff ourselves with-great success. We got bubble tea and some chips (roast basil chicken doritos and malasian spice lays) and watched chinese movies in the hotel room. Obviously we fell asleep at some point, because our 6am wakeup call came WAY too early the next morning. One look outside made it clear that rafting was not going to be pleasant at all, the steady cold rain was none too promising. It was a couple hour bus ride to the rafting site where we were greeted with MORE rain, stinky wet suits, and helmets that looked more like swim caps than something that could actually protect my skull. When we finally got in the water, the rain had stopped which gave me some hope that the rafting trip would be fun buuuuuut not so much. First of all, their definition of white water rafting is quite different than ours: there were probably 5 rapids max the entire trip and the water was pretty static. Needless to say we had to paddle a LOT. After trying to stay in a straight line for about an hour, we gave into nature and just spun around in circles until the "guide" (I use this term loosely because all he did was chain smoke, talk on his cell phone, and run into us with his motorized boat) towed us for a little while. Overall rafting was not awesome, but we didn't call ourselves the party raft for nothing-let's just say the vegetation in the water didn't stay in the water..We showered and ate and passed out on the bus until we got to our next destination: random native shopping village. Shopping was pretty much crap until we started an impromptu rice wine tasting party. Interesting. We did a lot of other touristy things like visiting the tropic of cancer and a fish hatchery.

Bought some gifts. Not too exciting. We ate dinner at the fish place and our dinner consisted mostly of clams, the hatchery's main product which was pretty good, but we were all tired, cranky, and not looking forward to the 3 hour train ride back.

We attempted to to study on the train but obviously we ended up just talking the entire time. The internet isn't working, I'm getting annoyed, and there's nothing interesting to talk about today so I'm going to cut this post short. I guess I should try to study a little bit too...

an uneventful day.

Today was a fairly boring day. We woke up bright and early to start our overnight trip to Hualien. We had another delightful breakfast consisting of sugary pastries...again. Brownies for breakfast? My favorite! We bussed it to the train station and then took a 3 hour ride to Hualien. We ate lunch at a restaurant near the station which was once again, way too much food piled on a lazy susan.
Then we drove around Toroko Gorge which is pretty much the equivalent of our grand canyon. And it was raining....falling rocks...great. After we donned hard hats, we walked around for a little bit and then got back on the bus. Drove around some more, did some more sight seeing, saw some nasty bugs, got rained on more, blah blah blah not fun. We FINALLY got to our hotel where Gina and I are roommates AGAIN. Keeping us apart is futile. Team awesome is back again! We have two BIG beds in our room which is a nice upgrade from our mosquito infested twin beds back at NTSU. The amenities are great, including complimentary "sohwer caps"...no spelling error.

Dinner was good-hooray. Had some great kung pao chicken and fruit. Gina had Hakka style noodles which was pretty much a big bowl of noodle soup with seafood. After dinner we went to watch a native dance performance which was HILARIOUS. I can't even explain it, but I will tell you that my Wednesday night hip hop classes have absolutely paid off (thanks jaden!).

yes, that's me. this is payback for making my mom "do the dance" at the pirate show in Jamaica.
Sorry this blog isn't better, but tomorrow should be a good day. We're going white water rafting, and between Gina and I, something hilarious is bound to happen. Think there are lifeguards on duty??

I always knew never learning how to ride a bike would come back to haunt me

I should have known today was going to be a good day when we opened our breakfast box and it was filled with various chocolate pastries!

A honey glazed crossaint, a chocolate glazed and filled sweet roll, a cream cheese brownie, and a chocolate sponge cake (ok there was also a ham sandwich wrapped in seaweed that I had to pass on-ew). Definite good chi.
We ate breakfast on the bus on the way to Taipei County Yingko Ceramics Museum.
After a brief guided tour, we wandered around and looked at various exhibits containg pieces ranging from ancient statues to contemporary clocks. One of the pieces was even modeled after viagra um ew, but my favorite was the toilet display. We then headed to a pottery studio where we made bowls, vases, and pots on the wheel and ate lunch at the attatched restaurant. This may come as a shock, but we finally found a meal that I did not like. Lunch consisted of white rice and this sticky stew of sorts that smelled kind of like trash and had a texture that resembled paste. A lot of people actually liked lunch, but I had to pass. This put me in a very cranky mood as we started our shopping trip down ceramics alley. It reminded me almost of a China Town that sold mostly ceramics..and then we spotted the soft serve. Soft serve frozen yogurt is one of my favorite foods. When I lived in the dorms and ate in the dining halls, I had soft serve with at least two meals a day. After a big cone of chocolate/vanilla swirl, I was perked up and ready to shop. I picked up some cute cups and plates, don't ask me how I'm going to get them back home, and called it a day. While we were waiting for everyone to meet back up with us, we stopped to watch some children's dance performance in the street. Being as we are a group of 13 Americans, we attract some attention and the kids made us come dance with them. Apparently Americans are a novelty here: sometimes they give us candy (thumbs up) and sometimes they make us get in a circle and do dumb dances (thumbs down). We finally get hearded back on the bus and drive for a while until we get to this little shack by the side of the road surrounded by tons of bikes in every shape, size, and seat number. As you may or may not know, I do not know how to ride a bike. At all. So this is what I ended up with:

ok just kidding, they didn't give me a bike with training wheels. Megan, Hannah, Gina, and I (team grab-a-heiny) decided to go on a four person bike, which ended up being broken, and took off exploring around the beachy area. During our adventure we biked through a sandstorm, dodged traffic, almost hit various people, and got involved with many other mishaps. Most of the time we just pedaled as hard as we could yelling "beep beep" and "ni hao" at the top of our lungs. Yes, we were those Americans

a lot of bonding was done on this trip, and afterwards at the fish market we decided to have a fun little team photo shoot


hannah's face is blocked, but since this is MY blog, I'm posting the picture where I look the best (sorry Hannah, I still love you TONS)
and cue gluttony outside the fish market Gina and I split the most delicious pineapple I have ever tasted (she bargained for it-her mom (and mine) would be so proud!) and inside....wow. where to begin. I think pictures can describe better than words:



we split a "bucket" of different fried seafood (shrimp, squid, baby fish) tossed in some spices that I can only best describe as an Asian crawfish boil. This was just a warmup for our dinner.

Dinner was once again served lazy susan style.



It was a lot of seafood dishes, some rice, and a new addition-Beer! The drinking age is 18 here so I can legally drink. new feeling. Apparenly beer is beer because Taiwanese beer tastes pretty similar to some American beer.
It's been a long day and we have to get up super early since we're taking an overnight trip to Hualien and Toroko Gorge tomorrow. Not bringing my computer with me, so be on the lookout for a super long post when I get back!