A Joyful Weekend

This weekend, a new English teacher arrived at the school named Joy. There aren't many teachers around on the weekend, so the school asked us to take her around Taichung and show her the city. We started Saturday morning by showing her some if the local breakfast places and the neighborhood convenience store,  grocery store, our favorite tea shops, juice shops, and English speaking restaurants. Then we explored more, showing her the art museum, cultural center, the local bus stops, the downtown area, the science museum, and the botanical garden.

Joy is fresh out of college and was actually born in Taipei (her mom is Taiwanese), though she grew up in Hawaii. She speaks Chinese which is going to be pretty handy for her in Taichung. That night, we decided to visit the biggest night market in Taichung, the Fengjia Night Market. It took us about an hour to get there on the bus and Joy's Chinese was very helpful. The market was pretty fun, we had some soft serve ice cream (30 American cents each - some things are so cheap here!) and did a little shopping. After a little while it started pouring so we ducked in to some shops (along with everyone else at the market) to wait it out. The downpours here usually last for just a few minutes, but this one unfortunately lasted the rest of the night. We continued shopping a little more by hopping from one stall to the next in the rain, but after a while decided to head back. Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea and the bus was packed! We made it back safely with the bus door only attempting to cut Joy's foot off once (seriously - Tom saved her).

Everything was fun and games before the bus tried to eat Joy's foot.

The next day, Tom, Joy, and I went with a family to Senyi, a small town an hour north of Taichung famous for their woodcarving. First we visited a museum about the Hakka people,  their name meaning "guests" who have left their homeland and moved to another country. They are believed to have originally come from northern China, have spread all over Asia and now have large populations across the world. The Hakka people began coming to Taiwan in the 1600s. The have kept their Hakka traditions and still identify as a group today.

There are dragons like this in many Chinese parades.  One person holds the sticks in front, and another holds sticks in back.

Then we went to the woodcarving village where we had a traditional Hakka meal and looked around at all of the beautiful shops. The father of the family we were with was Hakka and his sister owned one of the shops in Senyi. We visited with her and she made us traditional Taiwan tea; it was really good. Then the family gave us some traditional Hakka desserts to take home.

The little bowl in the middle was an orange teriyaki-ish sauce.  It was meant to be used with the chicken (right, middle), but Tom loaded it on his rice, much to the amusement of every Taiwanese person in the vicinity.

It's a bit unsettling to see swastikas on many Buddhist sculptures, even if you already know that it was a sign of peace long before Hitler stole and corrupted it.

There were dozens of shops just like this one, some bigger, and mostly full of religious and traditional animal sculptures.  They also smelled really nice.