The next day I was off to my temporary home stay. I'm currently sharing a room with a very nice girl who is one year older than me and currently in one of the universities that I will apply to. Its National Taipei Normal University. Its my second choice for schools here in Taiwan. My first choice is National Taipei University. I do think NTNU will be easier to get accepted though. Her bed is the comfiest bed I've seen in Taiwan so far. Gosh I miss my soft bed in Canada. Most beds here are super hard because "its good for your back" which I think is a myth because my back an hips hurt everyday I sleep on a hard bed. The day after I moved my stuff Jerry, my current host dad (I call him uncle) brought us to his work, a bio-tech company, where I learnt about new ways they are testing for allergies. That was when I got my first red envelopes. That night I went to another rotarians house and learnt how to play majong. Its very fun. I have a small set but I want to buy a big set back in Canada, small ones are harder to see. The next morning I went to lunch with my first host family at my grandparents house. We ate lots of food and talked for a while. I then met my current host brother and he took me home from there to show me the buses. That night we had dinner with a lot of their family and then headed to another family members house to see the other side of the family. We played cards and majong until two in the morning and went home. I got many red envelopes that day. I remember as a kid my grandma used to give me red envelopes and it was always so exciting.
On Friday I was off to volenteer at a restaurant in a town called Shifen. I mostly made a some drinks, did dishes and when foreigners came in I would help them order. Shifen is famous for sky lanterns. Theres an old street that most people send their lanterns from while standing on the train tracks that go through the town. Train tracks to me are very scary because many people are injured by walking on them in Canada but in this town there are many warning when a train is passing by, there is also a stop for the train for people to get to and from the town. After being there for five days I got to know the staff and got used to being there. I agreed that if they wanted I would go back and help again sometime. I bought very cute lantern lamp shades on the old street and was able to get a bargain from a store by speaking with them in Chinese and surprising them that I could speak any and even try to nagotiate prices. I love lanterns lamp shades, I might go back and buy a bigger one. The night before I was coming back to Taoyuan I went to sleep early and I woke up at around eleven. I sat in bed for a minute until an earthquake began, at first it was small, then a little bigger, and then it got huge, I was so scared when it got very big because I was then in the east of the island closer to where they had gotten bad only one week prior. When it was very strong I hopped out of my bed not knowing what to do, so scared and then what felt like a while, was probably only seconds and then it stopped suddenly.
Over the last week I have seen more fireworks than I have in probably my whole life, also saw and got to release many lanterns in to the sky. They are so beautiful. I love lanterns so much. They are just unexplainably gorgeous. They are also huge and you are supposed to write your wishes on all four sides to release your wishes into the sky so a god can help them come true. I wrote about my hopeful career and my dreams to open a dog sanctuary somewhere in a country in which there are many strays. We released it into the sky and watched as is quickly floated high into the air, higher and higher until the gas papers on the inside finally burnt out and it disappeared into the darkness and fell somewhere near by.
