Geopark and Extensive Hot Pot!

Saturday December 29^th, 2012

My family (host mother, father and grandma) went out for a day’s trip. As soon as we all climbed into the car, I knocked out asleep. No, I’m not on a normal sleeping schedule yet so all of today’s car trips were spent snoozing away.

The first stop was Yehliu Geopark. It was filled with tourists, Mainland Chinese as I was told. I find that interesting how Taiwan is depicted as independent yet people refer to China as “Mainland” and not “China.” It’s almost as if Taiwan mentally considers themselves part of China still. There’s probably varying opinions over that but it’s what I’ve encountered a lot.

In this geopark was some famous landmarks unique to Taiwan. First up is this rock. It’s called the ‘Queen’s head.’ The slender part is her neck and the head is facing the left. So that big bulge in the back would be her hair in a bun.

This is apparently some sort of goddess’s shoe. No I don’t really understand it but that’s what I was told.

Some shots of the area…

And those are the main points of the park. Nothing big but still cool to look at. The weather, if you’re interested, was hot but had drizzles of rain.

Next up was supposed to be a trip to a hot pot museum but we found out it’s closed on the weekends. Instead we just went to have hot pot for lunch. As usual, this is a beyond extensive meal, so make sure to have an empty stomach and/or a long workout afterwards. You get veggies, tofu, meat, assortment of hot pot balls, starch of choice (noodles, rice, etc.), sweet soup dessert and ice cream.

The overload of food begins! Let us bombard you in…EVERYTHING! XD

This ball puff things, I shall label out for you:

Bottom right: Um…cheese…ball…something?

Bottom middle: No idea. Maybe fish something

Furthest left: Fried mochi nugget

Top middle: Fish cream puff

Top right: Fried taco ball. I love it just for its name. XD Tacos are tacos. Balls are balls. Asian food is Asian food. Mexican food is Mexican food. Funny how they got magically combined. :P

My starch. White noodles…yep.

Chiiiiiiiicken.

Soupy sweet dessert. It has things what I think are beans and chewy stuff. I have no clue what its name is.

Host father and host grandmother.

Hot pot can also be referred to as shabu shabu. I liked this experience with it because I finally learned how to properly eat it AND I could control the temperature of the pot. FYI, in hot pot, you are given…well, a pot with liquid in it. You then place some ingredients in and bring it to a boil. Once boiled you can remove the food and put it on a plate for eating after cooled. This leaves you to put more food in the pot to cook. So you can imagine the cycle. Just be sure to watch and control the temperature. ;) The hot pots when there’s lit oil underneath and you can’t control it…that was a nightmare of an experience. Never again!

For the rest of the day, we perused down a street with a bunch of factories. We had a glass technology tour, bathroom viewing, massage advertising and crystalize salt lamps. The massage time was my favorite because they had two nifty machines that hit a bunch of sore spots. One was like a sling you put around your neck that punched the area around your shoulder blades. I didn’t know how tense I was until that machine started karate punching away. XD

This part of the bathroom time just shocked me. At first I thought, ‘haha that’s funny’ until I thought about it from a different perspective, an American in Asia one. Jokingly I explained to my host family how that could be offensive since it’s like crapping on America (both currency and past presidents). Then they explained that in Chinese culture, crap is considered gold. Um…am I missing something?

I don’t know when but my host father contacted a Rotarian’s family to come by with us. This and that happened, we went for dinner at a restaurant but were separate for some strange reason. Maybe the place required reservations for a party over four people (there were seven of us total). Still carrying no appetite thanks to our GINORMOUS lunch, I just settled for chicken with pineapple sauce and skipped on the bowl of rice and dessert. It was just too much for me.

As a quick little thing, we saw…something. Not quite a temple but it was a gigantic statue of some Buddhist deity guarded by two lions. The night was getting late so it was difficult to take a good picture and I didn’t have the energy to fight it.

So with that, good night people and have a nice rest of the weekend.