新年快樂！
Happy New Year from Taiwan! On the last day of 2017, my host family took me to Maolin to go hiking with Alisa and her host family. The weather was beautiful!
Hiking in Maolin
After hiking, we went to Pingdong, the town where my host dad is originally from. My host family also used to live there so I had the chance to meet many of their family and friends. While we were there, there was a massive celebration to commemorate the reopening of the local temple. The inside had been redone. There were parades, fireworks, and live dramas. According to my host parents, this is a somewhat rare event to witness in Taiwan so I am fortunate to have had this opportunity!
Part of the celebration included caring small houses with various dieties inside. The people carrying them would processing into a small temple and then process out. This process was repeated multiple times. There were also lots of fire crackers. Here is a video of part of the ceremony.
The fireworks were also incredible. Here is a video I took of them.
The Temple
After arriving back in Kaohsiung, I went over to Katie's house. We watched the New Year's party in Taipei and played some card games to welcome in 2018!
On Friday, we went to a recycling center in Kaohsiung. There, we learned about the recycling process and volunteered for a little bit. Taiwan has a very good recycling system and people are in general much more likely to recycle here than in the US.
Recycling Center
After volunteering, I went to Lohas, a glasses store with Alisa, Katie, Tyler and Lina. Alisa and I had ordered glasses earlier in the week so we went to pick ours up. Then we helped Katie and Lina pick out pairs. Glasses are pretty cheap in Taiwan and we received a special student discount so we certainly found a deal!
Our New Glasses
This weekend was packed with activity. I went out to brunch with my host sister, Melissa, on Saturday morning. I ordered a burger. The burger was very good, except for the peanut butter!
My Brunch
In the afternoon, we worked on homework. Then, I went to Wenzao to meet up with Katie and her tutors. We worked on our final paper for our class on Chinese characters. Then, we went out for soup dumplings for lunch. In the evening, Katie and I went to Mass at the school chapel.
Saturday evening, I watched the FRC robotics kickoff with my host family. My host family was super excited about it. I really enjoyed seeing the new game this year and am excited to keep in touch with both my high school team and a the team I met in Taipei throughout this build season.
On Sunday, my host family took me out to the all-you-can-eat Japanese hot pot place. The best part was the ice cream at the end. They happened to have eggnog flavor!
That afternoon, my host sister asked me to teach her how to make lasagna because she had to make it in her cooking class this coming week. Despite needing to find creative ways to substitute for a lack of ground beef, ricotta cheese, and an oven, the lasagna was amazing! It took over six hours to make, counting trips to the store and waiting for it to cook in the toaster oven. This was the first time any one in my host family had eaten lasagna so I'm glad they enjoyed it. I loved eating some homemade American food!
Lasagna
Since it was the Feast of the Epiphany, I told my host family about my family tradition of blessing the doors of our house. We went out to a stationary store and bought chalk. Then I blessed the doors in the house in commemoration of the New Year and the Feast of the Three Kings.
Door Blessing
2018 is going to be a beautiful, blessed year!