HallowGiving.

          Bet ya don't know what hallowgiving is do ya? Let alone celebrated it. Well oh well you ARE missing out. Sucker. So I don't know what it is about Americans but we seem to have thing thing where it's ok to celebrate Halloween for weeks in advance but the day that it's over, the decorations come down and all Halloween related items are up for clearance. Well that really is a shame, in Taiwan this is not such the case. In fact they like to throw in Thanksgiving to butte, hence Halloween + Thanksgiving = HALLOWGIVING! Jealous yet? You should be. If not, let me add that they had a turkey and haunted house too, the whole nine yards I tell ya. Probably the sweetest ward party I've ever been to. EVER. 

          So, how did we get invited to attend such a glorious event you ask? Well, one of our students from our college class got baptized on Saturday. (not sure if i've mention this before but, yes. I teach a college class. It is fabulous! Associate Professor Kailey Jean Larsen of National Chang Hua University of Education. Sounds like a joke i know, but it's real life I swear!) After we attended her beautiful baptism, they invited us to go to their ward party. So we did, and that's where all of the greatness happened. 

From now on out my friends, the first weekend in November we WILL be celebrating Hallowgiving. Have your party pants washed and ready, it'll be the party of the year! Maybe, just maybe i'll throw in a turkey, sushi, whole mini-octopus, and egg drop soup just to make it really realistic....

     

In the middle is one of our cute students Tiffany, who had just been baptized. Apparently something was really funny at the moment too.

So, my thoughts are just a little bit bazerk here today and now we're going to back track a little bit. As far as the weekdays, everything was pretty much exactly the same. Minus some ridiculous comments and suggestions given by some certain people that make my life a living, you know what. But, we won't get into that here. Friday night we got the pleasure of going with our super students to McDonald's again. Which is always such a pleasure. 

Saturday morning. Saturday morning, was just oh so lovely. So there is this lake in Taiwan called Sun Moon Lake. EVERYONE talks about, so Anna and I decided to take a little trip out of town. It was lovely, not only the scenery but just to get out of town and breathe some fresh air. Not even kidding you my throat has been feeling like someone took a cheese grater to it or something this last week. While we were there, my throat did not hurt at all. When we got back, guess what? My throat hurt again, no exaggeration. I really am going to die 6 years early for living here for 6 months. I read somewhere that the air here is something like 15 to 100 times (can't remember exactly, but it's bad alright cut me a break) WORSE air days in L.A. disgusting I tell you, the inversion in Utah sounds real good right now.

But here are some pictures of the lake and our little adventure

This would be their "trails" in Taiwan. The people all claim here that they love the outdoors. But really they're all just a bunch of pansies. 

I love the little Asian fishing boats. 

Everybody's been to a trout farm in their life, but how many of you have been to a Coi fish farm? Intense too, I tell you. Look at that net they use!

While not quite getting Thanksgiving and Halloween, they also really don't understand Christmas. They leave Christmas decorations up year round!

Just some ladies doing Tai Chi on the side of the "trail"

Okay, so I must tell you about this rock. I'm still yet to discover exactly what this puppy says but it must say something really good! There are rocks like this all over the place at Sun Moon Lake but for whatever reason this one was ultra special. Notice how you had to line up to get a picture with the rock? 

Obviously, with a rock that great we had to get a picture with it! Maybe it will bring me good fortune for life or something.... i'll hope so. 

That "island" was pretty cool they made it out like the stuff you have docks on and just had the plants growing right in the water. 

Taiwan Touch Your Heart. It's like their BIG tourist motto logo majig that's all over the place. 

So, weird random fact. All of their highways are up on bridges like this, and some will have two or three roads beneath them. It's really odd and when your driving in the city, especially Taipei you just drive right on top of the town. It's so odd, i'm not sure why they do it. To save space I suppose? If you have any idea why please let me know.

I also must mention  one last thing. We also went to the Chinese branch again this Sunday to see Tiffany get confirmed. After she was confirmed the ward counselor dude called us up on stand to introduce ourselves and bear our testimonies. Interesting. So after going to that we still had to go to our English branch. I had to teach the lesson in relief society today and we were in somewhat of a hurry. Well..... we rushed to the train station. Got on a train. Going the wrong way. Crap. So, needless to say I didn't give my lesson today. Oops.

There ya have it. Taiwan is great.