Last Days in Taiwan

Hello from Dallas!

Just got in last night and will be heading out to NY on Sunday! It’s kind of weird being back in the US again. First, it takes me a little bit longer to speaking coherent English sentences. Second, my eyes are still getting used to the large number of overweight people. And third, I had breakfast at Chik-Fil-A this morning and it was good, but it can’t beat a delicious combo of dou jiang (soymilk) and dan bing (egg pancakes).

I want to post some pictures from my last few days in Taiwan. As some of you may know, I like to live by the motto “Go Big or Go Home.” Well, that’s exactly what happened this past week. I went big and now I’m finally home.

It was my last weekend in Taiwan and I wanted to make it a good one. Friday night I went out to dinner with my coworkers at the all you can eat mala hotpot places, one of my favorite places in Taipei, well, because it’s all you can eat! Afterwards we wanted to watch 2012 but because it was the first day that it was showing, the earliest time we could get was 1:10am. Whatever, it’s my last weekend, so I persuaded my coworkers to get the tickets. The movie ended around 4:00am, I went to bed by 4:30am, and then I woke up at 6:30am to go mountain climbing for the next >7 hours.

 

I went mountain climbing with Dr. Liao and his wife Yiching. Both of them have been very good to me during my stay in Taiwan. We went to this place called "Cao Ling Gu Dao" near Yilan which is around Northeast Taiwan.

It was pretty cloudy the entire day but at least it didn't rain. It rained the day before so the ground was still kind of wet. On the last downhill I was going too fast and slipped and fell on my butt.

In the beginning of the climb, we ran into like a mini-festival featuring a bunch of games. There was one where we played rock, paper, scizzors and if you lost they got to draw mustaches on your face. Both Dr. Liao and I lost unfortunately. There was another game where you had to beat them at dice rolling. Although we won, they decided to tattoo these blue dragons onto our cheeks anyways so for the rest of the day and our trip back to Taipei we had these tattoos on our face.

After passing thru the mini-festival, that's when the real hike started. We climbed up and down these mountain peaks, going along the path at the very top of the mountain range.

The mountain range was on the Eastern coast of Taiwan so there was a beautiful view of the ocean. A mountain and an ocean. How perfect can it get.

There we are really tiny in the middle. Yiching liked to stay behind and take pictures, so all of these pictures are hers.

At the highest peak, though there were still many hours left to do. We climbed a total of around 7 hours that day. It wasn't very steep but it was quite long...and this was after only getting 2 hours of sleep the night before.

Wild cattle. On the way down we passed by these people who wanted us to help them carry bags of sand down the mountain. Definitely good weight training. When we got down the mountain, we were so ecstatic but then realized that we needed to walk for another 40 minutes to get to the train station. Dr. Liao was not pleased and immediately got a can of beer. haha.

When I got back to Taipei, I immediately took a quick shower and headed out to watch “A Christmas Carol” with my cousin Andy because it was his birthday and I had promised to take him to the movies. When the day was all said and done, it was already past 1am and I was ready to pass out.

The very next day my parents and I had lunch with Dr. Liao, Yiching and their two daughters. Their two daughters ended up performing this Korean-pop dance called Sorry Sorry. Very impressive!

I spent the last couple of days also meeting up with a bunch of people, namely my relatives such as my cousin Vivien and Sabrina and my uncle and aunt. I was also sure to hit up some of my favorite places, such as Shilin Nightmarket, and went cycling one last time, though it was raining, windy and cold.

Last day of work! It was also one of my coworkers birthday so we got a cake.

Last night in Taipei, here with my coworkers Dr. Liao, Yiching and Yuzhu. We really wanted to get Dr. Liao drunk that night and I think we succeeded for the most part. Each one of us took turn toasting to him and we also kept ordering more beer for him. Pretty cruel but it was all fun and good.

I’ve really enjoyed working at the Bali Psychiatric Center and Xindian Drug Detention Treatment Center these past couple of months. I’ve learned a lot about mental health and addiction, talked with interesting patients, and met a lot of cool people like my coworkers. Thank you to everyone who made my time in Taiwan awesome!

I’m not sure yet what I’ll be doing next year from January until the summer, but at least for now other than being in Dallas for Thanksgiving I’ll be in New York for all of December and some of January. Med school interviews are starting up next Monday; wish me luck!

-Eric

 

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