The Day that never happened, and what I wish I never experienced

First of sorry that it's been so long since you've heard from me. Will is very obsessed with this blog and he's not the best sharer of the computer. Pretty much I'm allowed to use it to call home and to check my email. It was actually difficult for me to get on it right now, but I did. So I know that you read what Will had to write but there was some stuff that I thought was interesting that he left out.

First off after being on 3 different planes for 21 hours of travel time plus a lot of lay over time, Will and I never experienced January 16th. It was actually quite weird. We left LA around 10:30pm on the 15th and didn't arrive in Hong Kong until 7:00 am on the 17th. So for us January 16th is non-existent. I would also like to say that being in complete darkness for 15 1/2 hours was a weird experience as well. Will had picked our seats for us in the back of the plane that he had done research on and thought would be great. ROW 68 is where we were to sit and believe me this was the biggest plane I had ever been on in my life. 2 stories, 4 different sections, and we were stuck in the second to last row. Nice picking Will is all I was thinking as we passed more and more rows of chairs. I never actually sat in those seats because I was continually watching for an open row of 4 seats where I could stretch out and sleep on this journey. My dad has always taught me keep your eyes on for those seats and this time it worked. There was this tiny Asian women sitting in an aisle seat right next to our two seats and she had four seats to herself so I waited and waited and when the plane door shut I made my move. She was incredibly sweet and made the switch. So Will and I ended up having 2 seats each and I slept most of the flight, and what a flight it was. Every time I woke up there was more darkness and around the last 4 hours on people started congregating around the back because there was room to stretch and walk around. I just kept waiting for the pilot's announcement that we were close and when we heard it I couldn't have been more excited.

We took our flight from Hong Kong to Taipei which was another 2 hours of flying time and when we arrived in Taipei I was excited and thought I was ready to start this adventure. When we saw that first hotel, The Good Ground, nervousness took over my body. I was trying to make the best of this horrible situation and thought as long as the bed is comfortable I'll be fine. I plopped down expecting some cushion and received none. Let's just say the bed was EXTREMELY firm!! When we found the OneStar I knew that a change would be the best way to start this trip off the right way. We made the change and the funny thing is nothing about this room will receive criticism. We just laughed when we realized that we didn't have a window. Our room is a box and it's GREAT.

The Good Ground Hotel

OneStar Hotel

Yesterday was an interesting day. We ventured our after we made our move and wandered around this same area looking for food. There is food everywhere but the hardest thing we've found is that we can't understand a single thing here. No one speaks English which made finding a place to eat, where we could understand what we were eating was almost impossible. We had decided that we were just going to cop out and head over to McDonalds but of course the food there kind of freaked Will out. It looked like all they served was fish. I joked and suggested eating a hot dog a 7-11, which are on every street corner, but we sucked it up and decided to be adventurous and try some Sushi on the street. It ended up being pretty good, of course, again we really had no idea what kind of sushi we were eating.

When we adventured back out last night we took the subway and we noticed that everyone here is very quite and they all line up in lines to board the trains. Looking around I noticed we were the only Americans (Foreigners) any where to be seen. We got off the subway and again wandered around the area looking for a place to eat and found nothing. Feeling defeated we headed back to the subway when Will decided that he wanted to eat dinner in the subway station. I kind of looked around at the food, and feeling a little nauseous, passed. Will ordered this bowl of noodles with beef chunks, well we at least thought it was beef, I actually think it was probably dog, but he didn't care. I tried his meal and tasted nothing. I felt like I was eating cardboard and was glad that I hadn't ordered dinner. We headed home and 7-11 was where I found some Pringles and beer as my meal.

We had an AWESOME breakfast this morning: eggs, toast, cereal, it was great. Just what I needed before we started our day of sightseeing in the rain.