FIELD TRIP!!!

So last week my class and another class took a field trip to 淡水 or DanShui! The purpose of the field trip was actually to visit three specific locations so that we could go home and write about our trip (in Chinese obviously) and present it in class, powerpoint included. We were all paired off with a person from the other class, so it was nice to make new friends!

Of course, I meant to arrive on time, but was 20 minutes late. How embarrassing... as soon as I arrived (last one of course) we all headed off to the first stop: a shop selling all kinds of traditional goodies from DanShui!

This store specialized in cakes filled with all kinds of different fillings: sweet and savory, including pineapple, curry, pork, red bean paste (not like kidney beans haha, red beans are a kind of popular bean in Asia, and when you mash it up to make paste it's sweet. same with "green beans." We don't eating mashed up American green beans, I promise you.)!

Carol & all the free samples :)

David, 老師 (my teacher), and Carol!

We were supposed to interview to shop workers about the history of the place, because it's apparently famous, but none of them would give us the time of day because we were obviously students with no money to buy products haha!

Our next stop was a very, very old temple:

outside

inside

it was pretty boring inside... not much to report. except these weird red wooden pieces that you are supposed to throw on the floor and ask yes/no questions to the gods, pretty crazy. if one lands face up and the other face down, it means yes... i forget what the "no" was...

Next Stop: weird statue, but i'm going to skip over that because it was so lame, and go straight to the fun stuff, aka lunch.

this is called ah-gei, and it's basically a tofu box with yummy yummy clear noodles inside, and covered in this sweet and salty sauce, and it's delicious. And did I mention this was only $1??? It was so good I'm contemplating going all the way back to DanShui (an hour and a half ride on the MRT) just to eat it again!!!

Carol & Eric copying answers. cheaters. hahaha

After lunch we walked around, bought some more traditional snacks, and then headed to 紅樓, quite literally translated as Red Multi-Story building. hahaha! Anyway, it's an old three-story building that is now a cafe/restaurant at the top of a hill in DanShui, and you can sit up there and drink (really yummy) fruit tea, and eat, and take in the beautiful view!

We all sat down, ate, and relaxed for a bit (aka my favorite part of the field trip) and afterwards everyone wanted to go home, but since it took me SO long to get there, my friend Lucia and I decided to stay on. We basically just wandered along the water, and walked back to the MRT stop, shopped, ate, talked :) along the water there were a bunch of little snack stands as well as like carnival games!

DanShui was beautiful, definitely going back. Especially because word on the street is there's a great MEXICAN FOOD place there!!!!!