Welcome gentle viewers. Please, sit down, have a look around, I've hidden interesting medications in the bathroom cabinet to further spark your imaginations and drastically alter your impression of me. Can I get you something to drink? Some chemical-laced tap water, or formaldehyde-based Taiwan beer, perhaps? No? Well then. Sit back in these lovely green pleather couches and relax as I take you on a magical journey through time, to approximately one week ago, when I went and did some stuff and felt like telling you about it...
Alishan Scenic Wilderness Area
It was a bright and sunny morning when I pulled my hungover self out of bed, greeting the dawn with mumbled curses and epithets. Which, now that I've just googled it, doesn't actually mean what I think it does, and yet works regardless. Anyway. I travelled by foot to the bathroom where I killed several cockroaches, armed only with raid and a broken mop handle, keeping my war cries hushed lest I wake my roommates. Victory was mine, and I enjoyed an alternatingly hot and cold shower in celebration, as someone downstairs was doing the same thing and the water couldn't decide whose apartment it wanted to hang out at more.
It was a half an hour later when I was informed that, in actuality, we weren't leaving until 8:00. Allison had forgotten to inform me of this fact.
I'll get her for that.
Regardless, I was conscious and soon Marvis came in her solid hyundai and picked us up for an afternoon of adventures. We stopped in what she referred to as "her territory" where we met many many people who her father knew. We purchased their food and peed in their bathrooms, and were about to depart when a man came to the window and knocked upon it. Marvis rolled it down and engaged in several minutes of conversation before turning to me and telling me to say thank you in Taiwanese. Which I did, because I am awesome like that and possibly was a parrot in another life - though really, I'd expect to have more dreams about flitting through the trees and eating nuts and stuff if this were the case. Maybe I was a maimed parrot, only good for repetition and begging from strangers, and I don't want to remember it even in my dreams. There could be any number of explanations for this phenomenon, really, and perhaps at a later date I will explore these possibilities further.
Or not. We'll see. Anyways, my duty complete, and the man satisfied (as he'd been advising Marvis quite sternly to teach us Taiwanese and Chinese while we were in town) we drove off into the mountains. We took a rather hair raising shortcut, which was so tight I was certain the side of the car was going to be torn off by an aggressive mob of bamboo. Bamboo, or at least its inhabitants, can be quite sharp and nasty, as you will later see.
We made it out alive, and eventually made it to a hiking area that Marvis and her family tend to take. It was right next to a bunch of lovely tea farms and a lovely temple with some lovely old men talking about us in Taiwanese. Marvis took great delight in telling them dirty lies about us and relaying their strange impressions, for in this area there are few if any foreigners. (Apparently, we were Russians?)
Getting to the actual trail was quite an ordeal, because there was some active construction going on, on the trail. What I mean is, they decided to put a building directly on the trail. I don't know why. They just did. So we had to crawl over a set of treacherous metal beams as the construction workers laughed at our crazy russian antics.
Climbing over metal beams, risking life and limb and definitely losing dignity
But once this metal jungle of death was traversed, we made our way unhindered for at least another 30 feet or so where the tea farming ladies greeted our presence with joy and surprise. "Look, it's foreigners!" Marvis said. Obviously, she was translating (hopefully, or perhaps she had a random bout of amnesia and was startled by our presence, and for some reason spoke her surprise in english. Unlikely, yet possible!) Because of their intrigue, we were able to coax them into giving us a tea-cutting lesson. You have to take the top three leaves, and you have to cut up (which, actually, I still don't know what that really means). The tea ladies have little knives on their fingers (LIKE WOLVERINE OMG) to make the whole process easier.
Kristen picking tea like a ninja (one which has the unusual hobby of picking tea and is pretty good at it despite a distinct lack of training and support)
After cutting the tea we decided (as there were tons of signs blocking the way for some reason) to take the other trail that Marvis knew of. We went back over the metal grating and down onto the road where we met some bikers (who came back for a picture with us), took some gorgeous pictures of scenery and contemplated a couple of misdemeanors. We did not, in the end, steal anyone elses dragonfruit... but it was a close thing.
It looked so delicious, this strange cactus fruit. Oh dragonfruit. You bring out the felon in me.
When we made it back to the temple, Marvis cooked us a delicious lunch and taught me a couple more things in taiwanese and chinese. Of course, since these were mostly polite sayings I've completely forgotten them, but we won't tell her that - even though I have a sneaky suspicion she reads this blog. (Perhaps not such an unusual suspicion, since she told me she did once.)
Then I rescued a butterfly from imminent death-via-tire by scaring it into limping its own way out of the road, waved to the tea ladies as they went home for the day, and had Marvis translate the conversation we were eavesdropping on. When we decided that we'd had enough of this last thing (the ladies started talking in English and as we hadn't been very quiet we thought perhaps the less awkward route would be to leave as quickly as possible) we went to wash our bowls. We came back to Kristen nursing an injured hand and saying, "guys, I wish you were here, the funniest thing just happened, it hurts a lot!"
Turns out, she'd been tapping on hollow bamboo shoots (I told you this was going to come up again, don't forget the extremely unsubtle foreshadowing) and decided to pick one up. And it had a bunch of ants living inside it! And they didn't like being all Wizard-of-Oz-ed and stung her! Huh. I really didn't see that sort of thing happening to anyone other than me.
They weren't really farming tea on a cliff, but we'll pretend for dramatic effect. "Oh no, tea farming ladies, watch out - you're close to the edge, and it's sort of a little muddy and precarious!!!"
I leave you now with this quote:
Me: "Ok. To clear this up: if you say you hit someone, it means to punch. If you say hit on, it means you want to kiss them."
Child: "So, I hit Eric, but I hit on he mom?"
