Everyday People

This was the perfect day for me! We woke up and walked down to the MRT, met Christine and followed her to her neighborhood. It's much more open and full of trees with wider streets than we've seen so far. It was a beautiful day today--the first sunny day we've had, and it was a breezy 70 degrees! Perfect in every way. :) Christine first took us to the Guandu Temple (our school is in the Guandu district, so it's pretty close to us. This temple was AMAZING! It is so tall, and so intricate, and so gorgeous! By my American eyes, the Longshan temple is a kid brother compared to this temple!

Guandu Temple. It's enormous!

And so beautifully, intricately carved! Every single inch of this building was decorated

Halfway up the temple steps--that's Taipei (and the 101) in the background for reference

Jim took a photo of us (me, Sweta, Nellie, and Christine)

Taken from behind the top tier of the temple (101 is on the left)

One of the amazing sights on the way up the steps

The view on the other side of the top of the temple (we are standing waaaaay above where we would be biking later)

The slightly bald looking patch on the hill with all of the little buildings (right of center) is the city cemetery. Each family builds a "house" for their past relatives to live in, and burns "ghost money" each day for their relatives to pay their daily afterlife expenses

The beautiful Tamsui river

This is the fence that surrounded the temple--EVERY single thing was carved. Incredible!

We walked over to a beautiful spot just to the left of the temple with a grassy knoll and admired the view (Christine's friend Tiffany joined up with us here)

 This is where I learned my iPhone could take panoramic shots--I'll be taking a lot more of those now!

After the temple, we walked down to Christine's house, where her mother Annie Ling made us a huge lunch!

Trumpet vines on the way to the Ling residence

Lunch was delicious (and extremely filling!) Annie is Vietnamese, but studied music at Berkley and is an award winning composer in Taiwan--she said she composes her music like she cooks her food--it's all improvised, and a mix of all the places she's been. 

Annie Ling (like her daughter Christine) was a delight! She's a firecracker of a woman, and so very kind--and like my mother, wanted to feed us A LOT of good food!

After a long and enjoyable lunch, we went for a bike ride along the Tamsui river (which spills out into the ocean). It was perfect--I was smiling like the big American fool I am the whole way!

The view along the bike road was beautiful. The city was on one side, the river/ocean on the other (with lots of mangrove trees and vines), and it was so quiet! I say again, perfect. :)

We finally arrived at Tamsui park, which reminded me a lot of San Francisco. This was a strangely important moment for me. After two really overstimulating days in the throngs of bodies, it was the first time I could really see individual groups of people interacting--young families playing in the park, old couples on strolls, couples taking engagement photos, kids throwing snap cherries at each other--using those like that is universal, haha!) It was really refreshing and comforting to just see people...being people. 

Behind the park was a row of vendors selling food--the American style corn dog stand was very popular (I guess that's exotic)!

Jim finally found the chips he's been dreaming of since he first saw them 2 years ago--101 Chips (like the 101 tower)!

Today felt like a refreshing summer day to me. People were out and about, the air smelled like grilling and fried food (and a little stinky tofu), I could smell the ocean, and there was a cool breeze along the lush bike trail. It was the exact way I would love to spend any day, anywhere. Perfect.