So a couple weeks ago most of my friends and family back home enjoyed a 3 day weekend as it was Columbus Day. I too had a long weekend but as you can imagine it was not in celebration of Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of the new world. Rather it was to celebrate a holiday called Double Ten (referring to the date October 10). Of course there's a bit of history that goes along with the celebration but I'm not an expert so I'll just post a link here for those who are interested (http://taiwaneseamerican.org/ta/2011/10/10/100-years-of-history-behind-double-ten-day-of-the-r-o-c/).
A lovely new Taiwanese friend I've met at church invited me to go to her hometown of Taichung and I gladly accepted as this is one of the cities on my list of places to visit. Taichung (literally meaning Central Taiwan) is the third largest city in Taiwan and home to several museums, gigantic department stores, and plenty of other cool places I'm sure I didn't see. We had a great time and a full itinerary which included shopping, trying yummy new foods, checking out a museum exhibit on Taiwan's Potential World Heritage Sites and of course plenty of bubble tea and scooter rides! This was the first time I rode a scooter in Taiwan. Something I've been dreading since I got here. I was a little nervous but she was nice enough to take it a little slow for me...on the other hand a couple days later when I rode with another friend there was nothing slow about her driving and I was praying for my life the whole way, but that's another story.
To conclude our weekend trip Sandy invited me to join her at a wedding. My first response? "I didn't bring anything to wear to a wedding!" But apparently Taiwanese wedding receptions are much more laid back (unless of course you're the bride-in which case no less than 4 costume changes will do). Besides that fact that half the guests were wearing jeans I was also taken back that it's acceptable to just invite people along since back home weddings equal RSVP's and head counts and such. From what I learned here couples usually get married and later have two separate "receptions," one for the groom's side and one for the bride. I understood very little of what was going on but it was interesting either way. The main star at these events is the FEAST. At this particular wedding there were 12 rounds of food! Which from what I hear is the norm. I still don't know what half of it was but we were sitting at the vegetarian table so that was a little comforting knowing I wasn't eating random animal parts. Greatest part of the day was making new friends. One of them even taught me how to say my name in Chinese and I'll say attempted to teach me how to write it. Check out the pics below.
No comments:
Post a Comment