Day 7: Wednesday June 17th

Today was my second time visiting Taipei (Saturday was my first), but it felt like a different city. The first time I went I felt like a Taiwanese student taking a bus to the capital with some friends to hang out. Today I truly felt like a tourist and a foreigner. It was actually some what comforting to go sight seeing because there were many people like us who were not Taiwanese. It might have been a different type of experience today, but it was still an amazing day!

The first stop on our tour was the National Palace Museum. It is one of the biggest museums in the world. We were all handed headsets so we could hear our tour guide as she explained each of the artifacts in the museum. I learned a lot about Taiwanese history and also saw a large amount of interesting and unique items. It was a nice look at Taiwanese culture and it was a good way to start our day. My favorite part of the day was visiting Taipei 101: the world's tallest building. From a distance it does not look so tall, but standing next to it it seems to go on for miles. I was expecting it to take a while to get to the 88th floor, but when we got on the elevator I realized we were going extremely quickly. That is when I saw the sign that said: the world's fastest elevator. That would explain the pain in my ears as we shot up into the air. After one too many pictures from the top floor I went down to the 87th floor to visit some of the shops. I had lost everyone in the delegation, but I soon found Malcolm. We then ran into Ms. Ross who walked around with us. As we were trying to find an exit, Ms. Ross spotted a jade necklace that she wanted to buy. I looked around and found a piece of jewelry that I liked too. They were both reasonably priced, but we couldn't decide if we should buy it there or wait for the night market later that evening. We both decided to go ahead and buy them, and at the end of the day we were glad we did.

The day ended with the notorious Taipei night market. I was dissappointed to hear that we would have only an hour to look around. Eleanor found a stray puppy suffering on the floor at the market. We found him some food and water and then Yu-Ting's family agreed to take him home for the night and take him to the shelter. The rest of the time we looked around. A bunch of us girls were looking for some good purses to take back home. The ones that were out were not good quality, so we asked where we could find the nicer ones. Before I knew it we were in a closet where all the nice purses were hidden. Unfortunately, we ran out of time before any of us could buy a purse. Although I did not get the purse I was looking for, it was still a fun experience to be at the night market.

Favorite food/drink of the day: fried rice
New thing learned about Taiwan: I found a 6 story Starbucks!