Taipei

We were there for a week-and-a-half, so I'm not going to be able to fill you in on every detail, but I can give you enough stories to effectively procrastinate. The first few days were fairly tough because my dad wasn't really over his jet-lag, which contrasted greatly to the exhaustion my mom and I have been feeling due to the fact that we've been traveling for a month. On his first day my dad woke us up at 8:30 with shouts of "It's almost noon! You're going to sleep the day away! How are we going to see anything on this trip if all you do is sleep!" so we were dragged out fairly early that day. We went to Taipei 101, the (now second) tallest building in the world with 101 floors!

By his third day, my dad was starting to feel the wear and tear and finally understood that we've been doing this for 4 weeks and are pretty darn tired. We've done other exciting things, like visit the neighborhood where my dad grew up and see old friends and family. It's crazy how much can happen in 7 1/2 years ... and in my dad's case the 25 years since he immigrated to the United States! OK, so you have to forgive me because I had loads that I wanted to tell you but the computer was acting up and I couldn't upload photos and now that I can I've forgotten most of the things we did in Taipei. I do remember that we left the day before the Lantern Festival and we got to see people making the holiday's delicacy on the streets!

We came back down to my uncle's in Tainan by the high-speed train (as featured on the Amazing Race!). The trip that takes over 4 hours to drive took less than two hours by the train. It was very convenient and comfortable, and you can see my excitement at traveling like a contestant on the Amazing Race :)

We're leaving in the middle of the night tonight because this time we have a lot of luggage and need to drive up to the Taipei airport. We have an 8-hour layover in Osaka and hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of this time to tour the city a bit. If I have to sit in an airport for 8 hours I will cry. Then we're on our way to Hawaii!!! The land of sun, pineapple, and U.S. cell phone service. This means I WILL BE ABLE TO SEND AND RECEIVE TEXT MESSAGES! The break from constant technology has been liberating, but I'm ready to get back to the "real world" as I know it!