Choir Trip Day 2

I got up around 6:30 in the morning, due to a wake-up call from a few choir ladies (incl. Rolin whom I sort of like) ... naturally my hair looked really stupid due to showering at night & then sleeping on it. Sometime in there I got a call from Alice, and I talked to Luke some more at breakfast. The sun was really nice out & I took advantage of the light. We went to a kind of buddhist place, with a really big bhodisattva (buddha?) statue and a tower. I went to the top of the tower and saw the good hotel where we didn't stay, which was conveniently near our hostel:

Then we got on the bus and watched "Shark Tale" while driving up, and up, and up. Eventually we ended up 3275m up Hehuan mountain (合歡山 hehuanshan), then subsequently walked up a very, very steep alpine-meadow type slope. You can kind of see what the terrain looks like in this one, as well as the vestments of many people. I actually underdressed for this one:

As we got higher & higher, it got cold, then damn cold. An ice wind arose, bringing in the windchill factor. There was snow on the ground though--something exciting and novel to most of the Taiwanese children. Snowball fights & stuffing of snow down shirts quickly ensued, going to show that children everywhere do this naturally, & it is more a spontaneous than learned behaviour. There was also an unmanned but running (locked up) military/radio facility, along with an underground parkade. Not to mention the little pillboxes/fortifications for riflemen. I just thought I'd show a picture of people being excited by snow:

In the evening at our mountain hostel, it was a little chillay. I had a headache from being out in the cold too long so I popped an advil (I still have more than half of the original 8 or 12 I brought). In the evening we looked at constellations & I could see Orion, even with the bow. I found alternate sleeping arrangements so I could go to bed around 10:30. w00t

Today I got up pretty late, chitchatted on MSN a bit then went to Scott's again. We finished watching the first season of "Full Metal Panic," then ending of which was a bit odd, & had some pineapple buddha fruit. This fruit is a hybrid of pineapple & buddha fruit and it's only available in Taiwan. It is very good, though I don't know if I--as Scott has--can declare it yet the best fruit ever. Later the 1st, I plan to go to see some live indie rock with American Alex... finally! Live music that's not pop or classical: it's been that long. Rock on [1 hour 10 minutes] K out

EDIT: fixed a grammatical error and removed a gross < hr > tag.