oh.mylanta.

This morning at approximately 7am I returned from the most amazing, life-changing, beautiful trip I've ever been on.
I went to Hualien.
SO SHEEPIN' GORGEOUS.
Seriously.
You know those screen savers with the mountains and clear, serene, blue water?
Yeah, pretty sure all of those pictures are taken in Hualien.
Our whole group decided to go last week, and it was quite the undertaking to get everything planned. (Hualien is 3.5 hours away from Taipei, so we had to get train tickets and find a hotel and drivers)
Luckily, we had Frieda (I'm tellin' ya, this girl is beyond amazing) and she planned pretty much everything.

I love Fre Fre! :) 

Hualien is a very popular vacation destination, so getting tickets for eleven people is not always an easy task (especially since we started planning so late) so a group of six of us went on Thursday afternoon and the other five came on Friday.
We took a train that went through Taiwan's countryside, and I was more and more surprised.
Taiwan's got it all.

I enjoyed seeing the farms during the train ride!

Big cities, small towns, countryside, jungle, mountains, waterfalls, ocean, lakes, rivers... all in an area that is not a whole lot bigger than Wisconsin.
Insane.
Don't get me wrong, I love Wisconsin.
I appreciate farms and fields and Madison, but I have fallen in love with Taiwan.
I don't want to leave.
Next week at this time, I will be home.
No offense mom and dad, but I don't want to go home.
I want to stay here.
And it's not just the scenery that's making me want to stay, it's the people, the food, the culture, the language, everything mashed together into one beautiful Asian love affair.
Anyway, back to my Hualien trip.

On Friday morning, we woke up, had some tasty breakfast, and headed to an area where Frieda had been before.

eggs, eggs, eggs. Oh, and mango. :) haha 

 Unfortunately, because it's a protected area, the amount of visitors was exceeded by the time we got there, so we had to wait until the afternoon.
That was okay though because we went to Liyu Lake instead.
The lake was gorgeous (even though we couldn't swim in it because it was too "dirty" ... you couldn't see to the bottom... yeah, I didn't understand that logic either) and we went paddleboating around it.

Obviously, this is an incredibly dirty and disgusting lake... Obviously...

Then we went swimming in a beautiful river that was so clear I could see my feet even when the water was up to my chest.

 the ol' swimmin' hole

Did I forget to mention the waterfall? Must have slipped my mind...

breathtaking.
After we finished swimming, we went to the most amazing noodle shop I've been to yet.
They fry their noodles, so the noodles are crunchy. SO GOOD.
Libby, Dayna, and I each ordered different toppings so that we could share (look at us being native!) so we had beef (me), pork (Dayna) and seafood (Libby).
When they say seafood around here, they mean seafood.

 seafood platter, ma?

Libby's plate of noodles was covered with squid, shrimp, possibly scallops, and ...OCTOPUS!
We were real excited that there was octopus on the plate because we hadn't had that yet.
Yes, you read correctly, I (along with the other two) was excited for octopus.

it gives your tongue a massage while you eat it! How handy!

It was real tasty too! (Way better than squid.)
I'm so adventurous now; I'll eat anything (except chicken butts...maybe).
After lunch, we went back to the protected area and were able  to enter. In this area, there is a beautiful river, HUGE rocks, and a bunch of cliffs.
If you add cliffs, huge rocks (that dam up parts of the river) and a river you get...
CLIFF
JUMPING
Yes, that's right, friends.
I, Lauren Stephanie Hanson, cliff jumped.
There is video proof, and my scream may still be echoing off from the mountains right now.
The cliff we jumped from was around twenty feet (maybe less, but I'm not exaggerating) and NOT flat.

See that cliff on the left? Yeah, I jumped off that. nbd.

It was SO intense.
I absolutely ABHOR heights.
I get shaky, start crying and swear like a sailor (all things you can witness in the video taken of me pre-jump), and this was probably the craziest and highest thing I've ever jumped off.
But, we've had this saying with our group since the first day...
"When in Taiwan..."
It's probably the best motivator I've had. It might seem silly that three words could motivate me to eat stinky tofu, pig blood cake, octopus, to jump off cliffs and take a taxi by myself, but it works.
See, I figure I can only live once, and if I miss out on these opportunities, I will always regret it.
So, I cliff jumped.
The other half of our group arrived at about 6pm Friday night, so we went to eat and then night marketed.
Pardon a bit of back-tracking, but it is necessary to know that for the past week or so, Dayna and I have been talking about chewing betel nut.
Betel nut is a "drug" but not really. It's more like all natural chewing tobacco.
It's a sort of nut/bulb that grows on these trees that look like palm trees. After it's harvested (when it's still green), it is wrapped in a leaf.

betel nut trees

Many of the working class people chew it here because it is supposed to be a stimulant.
So, back to Hualien... Dayna was getting pretty anxious to try betel nut, and I decided "when in Taiwan"  and said I'd chew it too. Betel nut is not illegal in Taiwan, but because it's fresh, you can't buy it in stores and since Dayna and I can't read Chinese, we needed help. Luckily, our driver helped us out. Frieda told him that we wanted to try it, so he bought some for us, and we brought it back to the hotel.

the goods.

There's pretty great video of us trying betel nut for the first time.
It tastes HORRIBLE.
I mean, I've tasted some pretty nasty things, but this was real bad.
And, it changes the color of your spit to a red-orange color, so it looks like you are bleeding.

mah spittoon. 

Ridiculous.
But, we chewed it.

Nothing happened! It was kind of a disappointment, but at least I can now say that I've chewed the betel nut! (It makes me feel pretty badass)
On Saturday, we went to Taroko National Park to see the Taroko Gorge.

there sure was a lot of nature out.

Talk about a testament to God's living presence on the Earth!
Holy guacamole was it GORGE-ous. (haha I'm punny)

isn't that neat?

We drove all around and just about died a few times (one lane roads with mountain on one side and gorge on the other are kind of scary when a double decker tour bus is coming from the other direction...)

I'm artsy...sometimes.

Then we went cliff jumping again (we couldn't let the other group miss out!)
The second time, we had to hike to the area we were going to swim at.

(Timon and Pumba were right behind us)

We hiked through essentially the jungle (I don't know what else you would call it) for twenty minutes, and when we got to the swimming spot, I could see why Frieda's friend wanted to walk that far.
Pure beauty.

The area was the aquifer for the town, so it had a pump station, but there was also a cliff to jump off from. I didn't jump again (I was still in a leeeetle bit of pain from the day before) but it was fun swimming in the beautifully clear water.
Oh yeah, and we went to the Pacific. nbd.
It was beautiful, and I am happy that I now can say that I've touched both sides of the Pacific!

 that's pretty neat!

Chacos love the ocean.

We went back to Taipei on a red-eye train, and rode the MRT back to Jingmei.
I still went to church this morning (probably one of the activities I'm most proud of because I go by myself which is sometimes a challenge) and only got a few hours of sleep, but I feel so awake. I know I'll pay for it tomorrow!
Oh well, Ed's has tasty coffee.
Tomorrow in class, we are talking about high school dances because on Wednesday we're throwing a Prom! I'm quite excited!
Until tomorrow,
With love from Taiwan,
Lauren.

Coconut anyone?