big buddha and alis(h)an

one day on a sunday after church, some of us walked up to a big huge budda in chunhua city. it was really freaking cool. and best described in pictures. you can get an idea of how huge this buddha is from looking at the street picture. at that point, we were about a mile away.











nothing says "taiwan" more than budda statues and koy ponds. :)

some of us took a weekend trip to a national forest named alishan. the trip was amazing, the place was beautiful. even the process of getting there: taking a two-hour train ride, then taking a two-hour van ride, was fun and gorgeous, and chalk full of picture opportunities for picture-happy tourists such as ourselves.

we stopped at a temple on the way that had a ton of fun budda statues and a suspension bridge (pic on the left: courtney, center: me, right: rachelle)
below right picture pic (lindsay and courtney mimicking the cool budda)




alishan is a mystical, magic-like forest with a series of amazing giant trees, and great sunrises. it is a great little resort town. we spent saturday traveling there, walking around the giant trees, and having a genuine chinese hot pot for dinner. like, we had tofu and shrimp with their eyes still on. i really did not want to leave. gorgeous trees, heavy mist, the works. there were comments made like we felt like peter pan's lost boys. i personally felt that i was in sherwood forest that was filled with asian people instead of british persons. but that's just me because i was always a sucker for robin hood. but we saw a series of giant trees, a sacred tree, a heart-shaped tree, one that looked like a pig.....alishan is full of imaginative trees.

we found a quaint little hostel in the heart of alishan forest. all six of us gals on the trip fit onto one huge bed the size of our room! though alishan was much colder than the kind of weather we were used to, we kept each other warm.....

the next morning we got up at 3.30 AM! to catch the 4.10AM train to go up the mountain aways to watch the sunrise. it was beautiful and wonderful. not only was there a great sunrise, it was a fantastic people-watching opportunity. lots of people were wearing these funny sunglasses and i was making fun of them until i realized how bright the sun was and i pulled mine out as well.

did i mention that we took lots of pictures? no joke, when i got home and uploaded pics i had taken over 400 that weekend. so it was difficult to select which ones for this blog but when i get back to the states there will be some kind of picture-slide-show party, for sure.

isn't that sunset gorgeous? the words fabulous and to die for and so worth it come to mind.

hey, you curious or jealous or anything like that yet? then come visit me.

love, peace, and street food grease, megs and the taiwanese-wannabes.

wouldn't that be a great name for a band?

pictured from left to right:

on top: rachelle, jason, jake, courtney, darren, lindsay

bottom: emily, me, britta