And the second half has begun…

Hard to believe I’m over halfway through my time here at this point. I am keeping really busy. This past Thursday was a national holiday, Peace Memorial Day or “2-28.” Some friends and I went out to a town called Ilan about an hour bus ride out of the city. One of my good Taiwanese friends is from there and took us all around. We rented scooters, ate food, drove out to a hiking area, and went to an amazing hot springs hotel in the nearby town of Jiaushi. Hiking was great because the air was so fresh out there. The hot springs hotel was amazing. Hot springs are extremely popular with the Taiwanese. I’ve been twice now, once to a public one north of the city, and once on my trip down south to Kenting. Neither were nearly as amazing as this one. The complex had one large pool with different types of jets for different parts of the body, a few smaller pools for different things (“beautification,” muscle pain, pure mountain water, and one scented pool), and a water slide. But the best part was the pool just for your feet with small fish that swarm and bite the dead skin off of them. It felt so weird at first but then I got used to it! It was so fun and so cheap (about $7 US). We decided we’re definitely going back (possibly next weekend.) I've posted pictures of this trip on my photo site.

In other news, I’m going to Japan for a five day trip in about 4 weeks. I have a friend from R-MC who is teaching English a couple hours outside of Kyoto. I will probably spend about two and a half days seeing Kyoto which is apparently amazing. Hopefully I will get to see the cherry blossoms, too. Japan was one of the top places on my list of things to do here, so I am very excited.

I’m going to start volunteering at an orphanage on the outskirts of Taipei. I just visited it with a friend of a friend yesterday. She’s been volunteering there for a year now so she took me along to meet some of the staff and see what it was like. It’s run by a Catholic organization and the facility houses kids of all ages. I am going to be volunteering in the nursery for the smallest babies (under 1 year). There was one baby who was sleeping the whole time I was there who was just about one month old. I didn’t really know what to expect when I went there, but was surprised to see how nice the facility is. The babies want for nothing and are very well taken care of. The youngest ones share cribs and the older ones have their own larger cribs. They are bathed, fed and changed on schedule, and they all look like very happy babies. So as a volunteer I will be holding them, playing with them, and helping with feeding and changing. Most of them are orphans, but some have mothers who are trying to get on their feet and come in to feed and visit them. Really the only thing they lack is one on one attention and human touch and contact, so I think that’s really where the role of the volunteers comes in. I held some of the smaller ones and took a couple of the older ones out of their cribs to a play mat together. They are all so adorable and it was so fun to see a huge smile come to their faces when I started to play with them. (And a few started to scream and cry when I put them down, so sad.) I will be going once a week for two hours.

It’s warming up here finally and the best part is it has stopped raining every single day. It rained for 40 straight days and finally stopped last week. Thank goodness because that was really getting old. So it’s back up in the 60s and 70s now. Hopefully I can put my heater away for good soon! But I’m sure I’ll be complaining when it’s 90 and humid soon enough.