travel

Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure # 29: Saying Goodbye to Seoul

On Saturday we took the train to Seoul for a short final visit before we leave Korea, possibly forever. I love big cities in the summer. Maybe it’s because we’ve just happened to visit a lot of big cities in the summer time, but there’s I’ve always enjoyed the energy of city life in the summer when it seems like there are festivals and concerts and people in the parks everywhere you go. Jonathan and I both feel like we’ll miss life in a city when we get back to America. While our city (Daegu) is small compared to Seoul, it would be considered a large city in the US with a population of 2.5 million. We are excited for the open spaces of America, but at the same time, we realize how much we’ve come to enjoy life in our city.

Our time in Seoul was short, but we had a few priorities – visit the stream that runs through the center of the city, eat yummy foods, shop for Korean souvenirs to bring home with us (we never bought these while we were living here, but now that we’re leaving we want some things to put in our home to remember it by), and check out one of the parks by the river which is one of the things we’ve always meant to do in Seoul and never gotten around to. Check, check, check and check.

The great admiral Yi Sun Shin. I think this statue is pretty awesome. Every time I see it I think, “Let’s get down to business…to defeat…the Huns!” I know, I know. Totally wrong country, But still.

Fun fact – Koreans like to take tents with them when they go out for the day. It’s not unusual to find a big open area strewn with tents from people who are just there to hang out for the afternoon.

And with that we said good-bye to Seoul, possibly for the very last time. Though I suppose that no one knows really knows the future. Just a few years ago I never would have predicted I’d live in Korea. So perhaps we’ll meet again someday.

If you have an adventure to share, add your link to the link-up by clicking the button below. You can participate in all of the adventures or you can just do a few – no pressure. If you missed last week’s adventure about our hike at Palgongsan you can find it here. And if you are new to my Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure project you can find out more about it here.

Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure #28: Hiking Palgongsan, Featuring Lawrence the Slug

One thing we love about Korea is the mountains. I grew up in Louisiana which is so flat, part of it is actually below sea level, and hubby grew up in Indiana, which is possible even flatter. When we lived in North Carolina we loved that the land had a roll to it with lots of small hills and there were real mountains within an hour’s drive or so. Here in Daegu, we live in a geographic bowl surrounded on all sides by mountains. You can see them any direction you look and you can hike most of them. When we move back to the US we’ll be in South Carolina which might have a few hills, but doesn’t have mountains, and I know we will really miss seeing them every day.

On Saturday we went hiking at Palgongsan which is the tallest mountain in the Daegu area. We’ve only hiked to the summit once since it takes a solid 4 hours to do, but thankfully there are lots of smaller ridges and peaks you can hike to more easily and still get a nice view.

The view from the highest place we climbed to.

We decided to go on Saturday because it had rained during the week and was supposed to rain again on Sunday so we wanted to take advantage of our window of opportunity. What we didn’t realize was that all of that rain made it unbearably humid and sweat was dripping from our fingers and elbows and noses within minutes.

Apart from the heat and humidity, the hike we did wasn’t too strenuous and there were some temples and shrines along the way that we could stop at.

We took my parents to this temple when they visited last year and at the time it was decorated with lanterns for Buddha’s birthday.

The ubiquitous rock pile.

A jillion tiny Buddhas! Dreams do come true!

We originally intended to continue on across a ridge to get to another peak, but as we headed that direction it started to thunder. Thunderstorms are extremely unusual here (at least down in the city) so we figured we should probably get off the mountain before it hit.

We did get to see this amazing slug that was half the size of my hand. I shall call him Lawrence.

Since we only have four weekends left in Korea, this was probably our last time hiking at Palgongsan. Like everything these days, this was bittersweet. While I’ve moved many times in the past few years, this is the first time I’ll be moving away truly not knowing if I will ever come back to these places again. So while part of me is counting down the days, another part of me doesn’t quite know how to say goodbye. I am so thankful for the adventures we’ve had here, even as I look forward to the adventures to come.

If you have an adventure to share, add your link to the link-up by clicking the button below. You can participate in all of the adventures or you can just do a few – no pressure. If you missed last week’s adventure about our visit to the cat cafe, you can find it here. And if you are new to my Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure project you can find out more about it here.

Fifty-two Weeks of Adventure #25: Adventures in Konglish

When we first arrived in Korea two years ago we were surprised to discover that there is English everywhere here. We were equally surprised to discover that the vast majority of it is grammatically incorrect, misspelled, or complete nonsense. The majority of store names, advertisements, and words on clothing are all written in English, though it’s clear that no one who actually speaks English was involved in their design or manufacture. To give you an analogy for what this is like, imagine if you went to the US (or England or another English-speaking country) and found that all of their stores had Chinese names and the people mostly wore clothes with Chinese characters on them, even though very few people spoke Chinese.

In our first few months we were constantly amused by this and tried to take pictures of especially funny examples when we found them, but if you live with anything for long enough it will start to seem normal. After a while we got used to all of the strange and bad English surrounding us and stopped noticing it as much.

On Sunday we met our friends downtown for lunch and decided to make a point to try to notice the ridiculous English we passed just on our way to the restaurant. Unfortunately some of the best examples are on people’s clothing and that’s much harder to get pictures of without being really rude, but we still found some gems without going out of our way.

Clothing store with this inspirational quote on it.

Contact Lens store

On the wall in one of our favorite restaurants.

In addition to these signs we spotted on the go, I went back through my phone pictures and pulled out some favorites we have collected along the way.

Student’s English notebook.

On the wall in the English Village Learning Center

Best Coffee Cup of Life

Shirt I almost bought for my friend but resisted.

On a plastic surgery office. I’m hoping those “breasts” are the befores and not the afters….

This is on the wall in my English classroom.

And my all-time favorite – this tissue box found by a fellow native English teacher.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s Adventures in Konglish. We are trying to remember to take more pictures of these things now that our time here is coming to an end. I know the photos will bring back memories and make us laugh for years to come.

If you have an adventure to share, add your link to the link-up by clicking the button below. You can participate in all of the adventures or you can just do a few – no pressure. If you missed last week’s adventure about our 5th anniversary trip to Busan you can find it here. And if you are new to my Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure project you can find out more about it here.

Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure # 22 : Tokyo Streets and Eats

Our second day in Tokyo was packed with great activities. After our morning coffee boost we headed to the observatory of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. This is a free observatory, which is really cool. It’s only 45 floors up, but still high enough to get a pretty good view. It was a little too hazy to see Mt. Fuji in the distance, but we were assured that it was there.

From the observatory we went to Yoyogi Park. We could see the park from the observatory and it looked like a big wooded area, but it was hard to tell what it would be like on the ground. When we got there we found a wide dirt road between giant stands of trees. It was very peaceful and quiet even though there were lots of people there.

Inside of the park is the Meiji Shrine which supposedly houses the souls of Emperor Meiji and his consort Empress Shoken.

We weren’t really supposed to take pictures of the shrine since it is sacred, but this is sort of the side of the shrine. Plus, hubster became obsessed with this tree which he felt was the “most symmetrical tree in the world.”

On our way out of the park we found these displays with barrels of wine and casks of sake. Apparently these are donated every year from the wine and sake brewers to thank the emperor and empress for blessing their production.

Barrels of sake donated to the shrine.

When we left the park we found ourselves in the Harajuku district, an area know as a popular youth hangout. This is an especially good area to see the young people who like to wear anime-esque costumes and there are many shops that sells those kinds of clothes. I don’t know a lot about this particular subculture, but in Japan it is fairly common to see people (especially girls) dressed in these costume-like clothes trying to emulate favorite characters. We saw some girls in pretty amazing outfits, but weren’t really comfortable chasing them down with a camera since they are just regular people going about their regular lives.

I made a pretty important purchase in Harajuku. Hubster did not understand why I had to have this shirt and was reluctant to let my buy it, but I finally convinced him that I needed it in my life and promised to wear it every day. In fact, I put it on immediately.

Belle has a sleeve of tattoos and glasses and is wearing a Bazinga shirt. What’s not to like?

In this area there were tons of crepe and soft-serve ice cream shops, but we were intrigued by a store that sold homemade chips and soft-serve. Like together. You could get them with chocolate drizzled on top or you could get the chips in a variety of flavors. I went with regular potato chips and plain vanilla soft-serve. Since I’m a huge fan of salty sweet combinations (I would sell my firstborn for anything salted caramel), I really liked this. Kind of like dipping your french fry in your frosty.

After shopping and snacks we decided to visit the Shinjuku Gyeon National Garden. By this point in the day we had already done a ton of walking. We walked around the garden for a while and then found a bench to sit on and do a bit of reading. I liked that these gardens were so beautiful and well-maintained, but they were intended for people to really use, so there were people with blankets all over the place relaxing and enjoying the day.

After relaxing for a while we decided to head back to the area around our hostel and look for dinner. I really wanted some sushi (because, Tokyo, duh) but we needed to find an ATM first. For some reason, we had the hardest time finding an ATM in Tokyo that would take my card. I’ve never had this problem before, but we tried 7 or 8 ATMs and none of them would work with either my Korean or American cards. I have no idea why, but the only ATM we could get to work was CitiBank. Just an FYI for anyone traveling there.

We went to a tiny conveyor-belt sushi restaurant where you paid per plate (plates were different prices depending on what fish they used). I love sushi so eating it in Japan was high on my list, but I have to admit that I still enjoy the westernized versions with all the fancy ingredients a little more than the real thing, which is usually just a piece of fish lying on top of a little rice mount, possibly with some wasabi. 😉 Jonathan is not a big fish eater, so he mostly watched and afterwards we went to a kebab place where he got a kebab. (Side note: there are Turkish people running kebab stores absolutely everywhere in the world. Random, but I’m not complaining as I love that stuff).

We took a few pictures in the area around our hostel while we were trying to find a bank/go to dinner.

Of course, we needed to finish trying out the local snack varieties, so we picked up a few of those from the 7-11 and continued our assessment.

In case you are wondering, these are little chocolates filled with a vanilla flavored nougat and also pop rocks. Yes, pop rocks. As in they fizz and crackle in your mouth. It was quite the surprise.

These were intense. A little too intense for me. But if you really, really love wasabi they’d be great.

Our hostel had the smallest room I’ve ever seen – we could hardly both stand in it at the same time – but of course, that didn’t matter much since we spent most of our time out and about. But one good thing about our little room is that there was a huge window that looked out right on the river so we could see sights like this at night.

I have no idea what that weird scultpture thing is...we called it the rutabaga the whole time we were there.

I have no idea what that weird sculpture thing is…we called it the rutabaga the whole time we were there.

All in all it was a fantastic adventure and we’re so glad we took the opportunity to take in Tokyo before leaving Asia. Who knows, maybe we will end up back here someday!

If you have an adventure to share, add your link to the link-up by clicking the button below. You can participate in all of the adventures or you can just do a few – no pressure. If you missed last week’s adventure (also about Tokyo) you can find it here. And if you are new to my Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure project you can find out more about it here.

What I’m Into: May 2015 Edition

Have you ever noticed that the moments you are most enjoying your life are always the ones that seem to got the fastest? Since the weather warmed up and the world turned green and we had some long weekends to travel life has been pretty enjoyable this month and it’s also flown by. We are about 2 1/2 months from leaving Korea and as excited as I am to go home, I sort of wish I could make time stand still. Life here is comfortable and there is so much unknown ahead.

I am linking up with the lovely Leigh Kramer for this little reflection on what I’ve been into in May.

What I’m Reading:

Since I took two trips this month I had lots of plane/train/waiting room time for reading. I read 8 books so I won’t go into too much detail on each one.

The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. This is a YA fantasy trilogy that I devoured. I thought it was great. Highly recommend for those who enjoy slightly lighter fantasies.

Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin. I’ve never read Rubin’s first book on happiness (The Happiness Project) so I can’t compare it, but this book was only all right for me. It was mostly her making a lot of resolutions which mostly made me feel tired and stressed rather than empowered. Maybe that’s just me.

Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans. I wrote a full review on this here, but the short version is that I loved it and it’s had a huge impact on me as I look towards moving back to America and thinking about church.

Story Story: How I Found Ways to Make a Difference and Do Work I Love by Kola Olaosebikan. Kola recounts her winding path through the corporate world and then out of it as she searches for meaningful work. I could certainly relate to her winding path and appreciated how she addressed the practical issue of finances, something a lot of “I quit my job!” people never explain. I wish she’d explained more at the end about what she’s doing now, but this was a very quick read that reminded me I’m not alone in what feels like floundering about trying to find meaningful work. (As full disclosure, I was sent this book for free from the author).

Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor. To be honest, this one wasn’t my favorite. It just felt a little more rambling than her other books, less focused and less insightful. I did appreciate the idea that darkness isn’t always sinister and that we shouldn’t expend so much energy trying to avoid hard emotions and instead let ourselves feel them.

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan. (Crossed this one off my “sitting on my kindle” list!) I really liked this memoir which is about being in the middle place between being a child and being a parent. Corrigan, a mother of 2, is diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 36. As she goes through treatment, she relies heavily on her father who has always made her feel like the most important person in the world. When her father is diagnosed with cancer himself a few months after she is, Corrigan must deal with what it means to move from being the cared-for child to being the caretaker, for her children, for herself, and for her father. It’s a very moving book.

What I’m Watching:

Television we keep up with: Brooklyn Nine-Nine, new season of Community, and New Girl. Still watching The Good Wife, the occasional Friends or Bob’s Burgers and Graceland which just became available on Netflix. We finished Fresh Off the Boat, a big hit for us.

Last night I saw Pitch Perfect 2. The story was pretty generic and I didn’t find it nearly as funny as the first one, but the music was great! I watched two movies on airplanes, Still Alice (really good, but so sad) and Song One (also kind of sad). It was good, but nothing spectacular.

What I’m Eating:

Finally kicked it into gear and have been eating really well (aside from my travels). I started eating these banana pancakes most mornings that are literally just two eggs and a mashed banana. They are surprisingly delightful – they taste like banana french toast with just a slightly chewier texture.

I also tried a lot of Taiwanese and Japanese snack varietals while traveling, mostly with great success.

Follow me on Pinterest for more of what I’m cooking.

On the Internets:

Loved this Open Letter to the Church from Non-Mothers that came out around Mother’s Day.

And this from Sarah Bessey, “Why Not Let a Woman Preach.”

This list of 13 Things to Remember if You Love a Person with Anxiety because it is SPOT ON.

This post on God’s intense love for the Cosmos is beautiful.

Really really loved this post from one of my faves (Jamie, the very worst missionary) about prayer and remembering its purpose.

And this clip of Amy Schumer on Ellen which made me laugh so hard even on the 3rd viewing.

On the Blog:

This month I got to write two guest posts for friend. This one on Sacred Spaces and this one on Rituals. I also got to host a bunch of guest posts in my Thankful Thursday series from writers Rox, Jackie, Karissa, and Melchee

I continued my 52 Weeks of Adventure with our trip to Taiwan (parts 1 and 2), seeing an original musical, and going to Tokyo’s famous Robot Restaurant.

I wrote about what’s on my kindle, reviewed Searching for Sunday, and made a list of summer reading suggestions.

My most-viewed post this month was Karissa’s “I’m Thankful for my Body” guest post, followed by my post about living life in the in-between.

If you just can’t get enough of me, you can like my Facebook page, or follow me on Twitter and Instagram for more things I’m into.

Beauty Bits:

After much contemplation I sprang for the Urban Decay Naked eye shadow palette (the original one). This is my first high(er) end eye shadow palette and let me just tell you, it really is that much better than anything I’ve ever tried. I didn’t know eye shadow could be so creamy. It’s like my eyelids are covered with baby unicorn magic dust. For realz.

What I’ve Been Up To:

Ugh. Trying to find a job. Job searching is the worst, but it’s especially unpleasant when you’re doing it from another country. Other than that, we’ve been trying to enjoy our favorite things about Korea as much as possible – going to favorite restaurants, taking walks, runs, and hikes, and hanging out with our friends.

As I mentioned before, we traveled to Taiwan and Tokyo this month which was bittersweet since those were our last trips before returning home. We’ve come to love traveling so much that it’s hard to think about going back to a life where international travel isn’t easy.

I’ve been on the ball about taking care of various tasks we need to do while still in Korea. For example, we went to the dentist last week even though that is my least favorite thing in the whole world. I think that is what you call “responsible,” thank you very much.

Also, I got this shirt in Tokyo (much to hubster’s chagrin) and I am very, very into it. For obvious reasons.

So, that’s me. What have you been up to?

Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure # 21: Temples and Robots in Tokyo

Usually, Korean holidays don’t coincide with American ones, but this past weekend (Memorial Day in the US) happened to be the holiday celebrating Buddha’s Birthday in Asia. Buddha’s birthday is celebrated according to the Lunar Calendar which means it’s on a different day each year, so it really was a happy coincidence that it fell on a Monday, creating a long weekend for us government employees.

This is our final holiday/day off before the end of our contract in August and was therefore our last opportunity to travel, so even though it was only a few days, we headed to Tokyo to take advantage of them. We’ve been to Osaka and Kyoto in the past, but we’d never been further than the airport in Tokyo. It seemed a shame to live so nearby (less than a 2-hr flight) for two years and never make it to the biggest city in the world.

We arrived in the city around noon on Saturday and immediately set out to see the Sensoji Temple which was within walking distance of our hostel.

The temple area was packed with people, many lighting incense sticks or tossing coins into a big trough in front of the Buddha statue. Outside of the temple there were long streets of stalls selling all kinds of souvenirs. We wandered around for a while an eventually stopped at a little ramen shop for lunch.

The ramen shop was a super narrow hole-in-the-wall with just one long counter where you sit and eat what these guys cook up for you.

So much deliciousness.

After lunch we had to go back to our hostel to check into our room and put our bags away. From there we took a long subway ride to the Shinjuku district looking for the famed Robot Restaurant. We’d heard about this place from friends who went in the past and we were intrigued. Restaurant is a bit of a misnomer since food isn’t central to the experience. In fact, we didn’t eat anything while we were there. It’s more of a show at which you can have food and drinks if you want. We weren’t exactly sure where it was, so we wandered around for a while before we found it, but the area was interesting so we didn’t mind the stroll. We were intending to buy tickets and come back later that evening for the show, but when we arrived around 3:45 the evening shows were sold out, but there was a show starting in 15 minutes, so we just went for it.

Area near the Robot Restaurant complete with Godzilla head attached to one of the buildings.

The tickets were pricey, but this was one of the weirdest and most unique experiences of my life. It was everything you imagine when you hear stories about how strange Japanese culture is. There were robots and dancing girls in weird and revealing costumes and huge radio-controlled animals and lots of drums. It was like a super geeky 13-year-old boy had been given unlimited resources to create the world of his dreams.

The show itself was incredibly corny. The best (and by best I mean most ridiculous) part was a story where there was a peaceful planet that gets invaded by robots and the forest and sea creatures must band together to fight the robots. The robots literally came out and said things like, “This planet is so peaceful. Let’s trash it!”

The part where Kung Fu Panda came out on a cow to save the forest from the robots.

After the show we decided to look for Yoyogi Park which has a shrine in it. Unfortunately, we had some trouble finding the entrance, and as we wandered around looking for a way in, I started to get very tired and very hungry and very cranky. Eventually we abandoned our plan and resolved to come back the next day. Instead we found a tasty dinner of donkatsu and Japanese curry.

Fortified with dinner we went down to Shibuya Station, famous for being the busiest intersection in the world. We walked back and forth across the intersection a few times taking pictures of the crowds and then went up to the second floor of the department store to look out the windows. This was a great place for people-watching.

By the time we’d finished with all of that it was after 10 pm and we’d been going non-stop since 5:30 that morning. We headed back to our hostel to shower and sleep, but not before picking up a few local snacks to try. One of our favorite things when traveling is to try out all the special varietals of regular snack foods. Japan is especially famous for their green tea (matcha) flavored treats. I happen to like green tea, so I enjoyed a lot of these.

Green tea mini oreo. Loved these.

Raspberry Kit Kats. These have such a strong fake raspberry flavor and it is so artificial tasting that we weren’t big fans.

Green Tea Kit Kat bites stuffed with red bean paste. I really like the regular green tea Kit Kats, but I’m not that into the red bean paste.

Check back next week for more Tokyo adventures! If you have an adventure to share, add your link to the link-up by clicking the button below. You can participate in all of the adventures or you can just do a few – no pressure. If you missed last week’s adventure you can find it here. And if you are new to my Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure project you can find out more about it here.

Life in the In-Between

I’m living an in-between life.

The days grow longer and hotter, the mercury already rising near 90 some afternoons, and I remember what it is to live coated with a constant sheen of sweat. But even as I dread the oppressive heat and the thick cloak of humidity beginning to descend, I remember that the cool kiss of the air in the mornings and the smell of the jasmine in the park and the dozens little voices screaming, “Hello, Lily Teacher!” from across the school yard will only be memories sooner than I know.

I measure my days in lasts – last cherry blossom season, last hikes, last baseball games, last weekend trips, last nights hopping in cabs and speeding home through the city with its crazy drivers and its flashing neon signs. Last few months of stability before this life disappears and I’m trying to find my place all over again.

Soon we’ll have our last home church meeting as the family who hosts us returns to the US for the summer. And then we will have last meals with our friends as one-by-one we leave this place and return to our Before lives. But we are not our Before selves.

For months I’ve dreamed of home – of a place where no one stares at me while I try to run errands or pushes me out of the way on the bus. I’ve dreamed of my mother who hugs fiercely and breathes deeply every time she sees me, so she can remember the smell of me when I’m gone again. Of a grocery store full of foods whose names I know, where cheese doesn’t go on cookies and where a watermelon never costs $16. And I’ve dreamed of my friends, the ones whose lives I’ve missed little by little as we’ve each taken two years of steps in different directions. But the closer I get to home, the more I understand that this home doesn’t exist anymore. At least not in the way I remember it.

I see it most clearly when I talk to my friends in America. Sometimes it feels like I’m playing the role of Before self in our conversations, unsure if this New self still fits. And as each day brings us closer to our return I find myself clinging to this life we’ve built – to all the strange and difficult things that have become oddly familiar, and to the adventure of it all, something I’ve nearly forgotten in my months of homesickness.

“What if this is it?” I wail to my husband. “What if this is all the adventure we are ever going to get and I spent so many months ready to move on?”

He says adventure is only over when we choose to see it that way. He says adventure is a gift that comes in different shapes and sizes – we only miss it if we reject the gift entirely.

I try to pray about all of this. About being torn between home and this strange place that has crept its way into my heart and about the fear of no longer belonging. I try to pray and I find myself reading Mary Oliver instead. She writes at the end of “The Summer’s Day”.

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

And the words come to me like a grace.

You are already living your one wild and precious life, Love. Pay attention. Today may be all the adventures you will ever live. What are you going to do with it?

And I catch my breath. Because in the midst of all of it – the fear, the uncertainty, the longing for things that don’t exist anymore, the warring desires to stand still and to run forward–isn’t this still the question that matters?

We are all living in the in-between, caught somewhere between who we’ve been and who we are becoming. But we are all also living in the very center of our one dazzling life. Pay attention. What is it you plan to do with that today?

Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure # 19: Hot Springs and Chicken Feet

Although our Taiwan trip was short, it did technically span two different weeks which let me split it up between two weeks of adventure posts.

Our second day in Taiwan we looked at the forecast and were told there was 100% chance of rain with some severe thunderstorms. We spent a long time debating what we should do. Eventually we decided to head out to see some hot springs that were located near the end of a subway line. We didn’t want to go anywhere too far out in case of storms and we didn’t want to do something like the zoo or the mountain gondalas which would be ruined by a thunderstorm.

As it turned out, the forecast was completely wrong. It sprinkled once or twice, but there was certainly no heavy rain or severe thunderstorms. Thankfully, we enjoyed our trip to the hot springs anyway.

After checking out the hot springs we stopped for lunch at a small shop in the area where we had Taiwan’s most famous dish, beef noodle soup. It was delicious.

After our scrumptious lunch we headed on to another temple. This one is particularly well-known for being the place to go if you need matchmaking services. When we arrived there were lines of people waiting for their turn to receive some sort of blessing from what appeared to be some sort of lay people who were equipped to do blessings using incense.

After checking out this temple (but trying not to interrupt the locals who were there) we decided to head to Taipei 101, the tallest building in Taipei and the tallest building in the world until the Burj Khalifa was finished in 2010. It started to rain right as we arrived at the base of the building, but luckily the first few floors are a fancy shopping mall, so we popped inside and took a short break at the food court.

A lot of other people seemed to have the same idea because the food court was very crowded. We eventually found a table, but soon after we sat down an elderly Chinese couple came up and asked if we could share the table with them. (At least, I assume that’s what they asked. I only speak two words of Mandarin). Of course we said yes and then proceeded to have the most awkward snack of all time when the elderly couple pulled out a giant bag of chicken feet and started digging in. I hardcore stared at my seaweed chips to avoid looking.

Went back to our hostel a bit later to regroup before heading out to another, different night market. This night market had a really cool temple at the front of it that was all lit up for the evening and lots of fascinating foods inside of it.

Hey, more chicken feet! Just raw this time!

We also inadvertently stumbled upon something called the Rainbow Bridge which was kind of nice in the dark, though it’s possible that the water is all brown and murky in daylight.

Day Two in Taiwan concluded with another food success, the discovery of these Coconut Oreos at the local 7/11. If you like coconut, these are simply phenomenal. I can’t believe we don’t have these in America. Oh the things you learn by traveling!

If you have an adventure to share, add your link to the link-up by clicking the button below. You can participate in all of the adventures or you can just do a few – no pressure. If you missed last week’s adventure you can find it here. And if you are new to my Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure project you can find out more about it here.

What I’m Into: April 2015 Edition

Even though I was counting down the days to the end of April and the beginning of our little spring vacation trip to Taiwan, somehow the end of the month What I’m Into post crept up on me. So here it is, a little late, but not forgotten. As always, I am linking up with Leigh Kramer for this monthly round-up.