Starting off strong

Alright, I'm going to try to explain the flight and first night in Taiwan and the first full day in Taiwan.

The day of flying was (obviously) long. With layovers and flight time included, it ended up being about 24 hours from the time I arrived for my first flight in Detroit to when I landed in Taiwan. 13 of those hours were just the flight from Chicago to Tokyo. To try and combat jet lag, I only slept for about 30minutes - 1 hour on the airplanes and then didn't go to bed until we got to the first hotel in Taiwan. The first hotel wasn't that bad. Just a small little room, but they brought a pretty good breakfast right to our room in the morning and the staff was very friendly. After a good 6 hours of sleep, I was able to get through this first day with no problems.

A little before 8am is when the running around started. We all met in the lobby of the hotel and then headed to the train station. We took the train into Taipei and then took the subway to the station by our hotel in Taipei. After dropping off our luggage, we went to our 11am tour of the Confucius Temple.

The Confucius Temple was amazing. A very friendly volunteer named Harrison Lee was our tour guide. He started off by telling us that there is a Chinese saying that says that those who visit you during the rain (just rain, not a thunderstorm or anything) are good friends of yours. Because today was quite rainy, he told us that this meant we were good friends of the Confucius Temple and that we were meant to return there in the future (according to this saying). He knew quite a bit about Confucius and his teachings. I think what made it even better was that, while he was telling us about the teachings, he would include some of his own personal experiences. Some were funny and others were really interesting. Overall, I really liked the architecture of the Confucius Temple. There was always something interesting to look at while we were there.

Part of the Confucius Temple

After the temple, we got back into the subway system and traveled to the main station in Taipei. Dr. Peng took us to a section that was basically like a big food court. Unfortunately, because the tour at the temple went a bit longer then expected, we only had about a half hour for lunch. Since time was so short, I decided to just get food from a Burger King I found, since this was something I knew I would like and I knew this would be my only opportunity to eat until dinner.

Me with a cutout of President Ma Ying-jeou

After lunch, we headed to the Presidential Office Building (basically the equivalence of the White House). Obviously, the place was really secure. We basically had to go through something like the TSA in airports just to get onto the grounds.During the tour, we were allowed to take pictures, but no videos. The building itself was very impressive. Building of it began in 1912 and was finished in 1919. The building is only open to the public on weekends and some holidays. While inside the building, we went into many rooms that explained a lot of the history of Taiwan. This included the period of Japanese occupation and how China took it back. I think my favorite part of this visit was getting my picture taken with a card-board cutout of the President and one of the rooms that explained the different Presidents and notable events that happened during their terms.

A model of the Presidential Office Building

Because of the heavy rain that we had today, Dr. Peng took us to the National Taiwan Museum instead of the destination he originally had planned. Overall, the museum was interesting, but I ended up using this time more to rest my feet since we were not really able to sit down for most of the day. Following the museum, we wen to The Red House Market for Artists for dinner and to explore. The Red House Market is basically a section in the city where people can come and sell or demonstrate their art. This included someone showing off their DJ'ing skills (which was pretty good). Besides that, there were quite a few stalls of people selling jewelry, shirts, etc. I ended up going with my friends Dani Adams, Christopher Eckenwiler, Dr. Laurence, and Dr. Peng too look for a noodle shop that Dr. Peng really liked. Unfortunately it was closed, so we found a different noodle shop. While I have never really used chopsticks before, I believe I did pretty good this time around and I enjoyed the meal. After we finished eating, we had about a hour and a half to explore the rest of the market before we had to meet to go back to our hotel. There was a wide variety of shops we found, but my favorite was a little place called "Coffee and Beer".

This was definetely a very packed first day. We did a lot of exploring and saw some beautiful sights. If the rest of the time in Taiwan is like today, then I know I am going to love my time here.