Weekend trip

I just got back to the I-house from our trip to the east coast this weekend. I had alot of fun but am so tired and glad to be back. We got up early fri morning (we only have lab on Fridays, no Chinese, so we only missed one class). We took a bus on a 4 hour drive to the coast.. The roads were so wind-y thru the mountains and got kind of scary since they drive so crazy! We stopped at a beach that had rocks instead of sand along the way, it was so pretty. For lunh we went to a restaurant that had aboriginal Taiwanese food.. They just brought the food out to us and we didn't get to choose what we wanted so I didn't eat as much. They had a monkey on a leash in front of the restaurant, and she stole one of the guys glasses!
Then we took the bus to Taroko national park.. it was the prettiest place I've ever been. There were huge mountains w a river runnig through them and giant chunks of white marble.. There were lots o water falls and the water was so blue.. It all just looked like screensaver pictures! I got to see some Buddhist and Taoist temples too. We went walking thru some if the cliffs and had to wear lovely helmets in case rocks fell. We went to a night market that night.. They have soo many cute clothes for so cheap! I got new shoes and a dress for about 6 American dollars each :) we stayed in a hostel that night.
Saturday we got up early to go on our white water rafting trip. We had to wear helmets again and big life jackets, so it was really hot. There were 7 of us in each raft. The water didn't have a whole lot of rapids, but when we got to them it was really fun. One of the girls on ours fell off in the beginning which was really scary.. Glad it wasn't me! We went for 3 hours and then stopped on a bank for lunch that they gave us. Then we went about another hour and were done. We all got kind of burnt even after putting sun screen on.
After rafting, our tour guide took us to one of the only sand beaches in the area, but me and a dew others stayed in the bus and fell asleep cuz we were so worn out. After that we went to a supper at a place they called a "BBQ" which was so good! We had a grill at our table and just got to pick out the raw meat and vegetables we wanted and cook our own food. It was my first beef of the trip. We had sone things that we thought were bread and were so good, and we found it was fish loaf! It was all u can eat, and had ice cream too. We went to the night market for awhile to shop again after that, and then went to bed.
Today we got up early again (I'm good at being a morning person here cuz I get so tired I have to go to bed early!) we took the bus to the national center for traditional arts. It had alot of fun little shops, and had people acting out fights and stuff in traditional costumes. Then this afternoon we went to a gro park, which was outside by the vast and had lots of rocks that had been formed into different shapes by the water and wind. It was raining tho while we were there, so we didn't see as much as we could have- everyone had umbrellas but us! We found the biggest snail I've ever seen sitting by some flowers.
We start inour actual labs tomorrow.. Kind of nervous for that. Everyone else has another UNI student w them in their lab but I'm alone. Could be interesting picking up the rats too ! I have to study for a quiz still tonight, were starting to learn how to draw characters now, hope it goes well!