Taiwan

Hi! I haven't written for a while but I'm back! Since we couldn't connect to the blog in Taiwan, I have a lot to write about!
First of all, the weather is extremely humid! Which on some days was okay, because sometimes it got really cold in our hotel room. Speaking of our hotel room, we originally were put in a hotel that was still under construction! The hotel room was extremely small and stuffy which didn't help at all since it was so humid outside. The breakfast was okay but it didn't offer much. One time, when we were waiting for the elevator to come the one that came was nothing but a rough wooden box. no mirrors, no wallpaper, (or walls!), no railings, nothing. My mom said to get in but my sister said that she was definitely not going in an elevator that looked like the real Hollywood Tower of Terror! On our second day at the hotel, we got upgraded to a hotel that was much better than the other one. It was called the Dandy Hotel and it was really nice! The breakfast selection had a lot of food to choose from and most of it was pretty good. The rooms were amazing though! Each one had 2 twin size beds and a flat screen TV! Next to each bed was a nightstand built into the wall and a touch screen control panel that operated over 5 different lights in the hotel room! The toilet was one of those fancy ones that had a bunch of cool features you could pick from with the touch of a button. The experience we had in Taiwan was even better though. On one day we went to the 2nd tallest building in the world! Up until about 2 years ago it was the tallest building in the world! It is called Taipei 101 because it is 101 stories off the ground. Another day, we went to the Taipei Zoo and saw one of the world's most endangered animals. The Giant Panda. We also went into a nocturnal exhibit and it was really funny when a chinchilla would come down from his corner and jump around at the bottom but whenever Laurel came around to look at it, it would run back into his corner and stay still. Laurel was convinced that it wasn't moving from its corner, but whenever she left it would come down again! After we went to the zoo, we took a gondola ride up a mountain and got off at the top. We walked along the road for a bit (totally lost) but having walked 1 1/2 miles, found ourselves on an abandoned street. we realized that the only way to get back to our hotel was to walk 1 1/2 more miles back down the road and take the gondola back down the mountain where hopefully a shuttle would pick us up and take us to the city. Thankfully we got back to our hotel, but our feet were so sore that a few days later my mom, Laurel, and I all got foot massages! Laurel and I both got a shoulder rub and a foot spa but it was actually really painful because they pressed really hard on your back and my back was even more sore after it than before! My dad couldn't join us because he had to teach that day though. Speaking of which, my sister and I got to spend a day at the school but it was really weird because everybody was surprised that I was only staying for 1 day. I didn't even get to eat my lunch because I had brought a peanut butter sandwich and of course I had to be assigned to sit next to Sophia, who had to be allergic to peanuts, so I had to throw half my lunch away! While we were in Taiwan we also got to go to an awesome water park! One of the rides was really scary but really fun! You had to hold on to a rope and swing on it and then drop 50 feet when you were right above the pool! Another one of the rides was really painful though. It was also 50 feet above the pool but it was a slide. You were supposed to sit down with your hands behind your head and then slide down. What I didn't see the first time I went on was that at the end of the slide the water pushes you really harshly and if you were sitting up straight (like I was) it would send you flying into a 50-foot drop and landing in a belly flop. That's exactly what happened to me. Ouch! Well, I've written quite a lot now and you're probably getting bored of reading it all (if you're even still reading it) so I'll write more soon!


                             Bye for now,
                              Ariel