Long Weekend!

I invited Ashley, a new coworker to join me for a weekend in Yilan. These pictures are from her camera. We had a good time, despite some rain.

We ate LOTS of mooncakes, starting on Friday... more than I've eaten any other year, though I'm still not the biggest fan.

On Sunday after church we went up to a village high in the mountains, about 3 hours from Yilan. The drive was a little harrowing, especially since it was raining and foggy.
But the view was great!

We stopped about halfway up....

.... to pick some vegetables for our dinner

and kept going until we reached this little village.


A wrong turn introduced us to some new friends, who were quite excited to see two foreigners in their village.

The areas main economy is fruit, and we saw tons of fruit trees including this kiwi tree, and persimmons growing (below) you must try this fruit if you ever get a chance, it's lovely.


We also saw Chinese pears and apples growing everywhere (and being sold everywhere for that matter)

In all about 25 people went up, but we didn't know all of them well. The next day we kept going even higher into the mountains.



And finally got above the rain clouds. The weather was great!

Stopped for lunch and a short walk at a scenic area where we saw a giant apple tree. There were 36 different varieties of apples growing on the same tree, they'd all been grafted on. There were also cherries growing on this tree!

We felt like we had left Taiwan and entered another country. The landscape was so different.


The best picture Ashley took! Just before the harrowing drive down (which rendered me a little uncomfortable) that took us past two rainbows and back into fog and rain. We were glad to have escaped the rain for two days though!

Tuesday was the last day of our vacation and it dawned sunny. We went to a beach I'd never been to before with one of my favorite families in Yilan. Despite putting on sunscreen before leaving the house and after arriving at the beach, I managed to get really burnt! Especially my shoulders and the backs of my knees. That made it quite painful to ride my bike back and forth to class today, but I'll survive.
More pictures coming soon.