Trippy!

I haven't had much access recently, so I've forgotten some of what's happened. Too bad.

But I do remember that I was going to write about two things.

The first, I went to a nice restaurant with my boss, Eva, and all the teachers' assistants. Have you all heard of okinomiyaki? If you thought that sounded Japanese, you'd be right. It is. Another thing it is, is very good.
The way it works is like this: you order something. The waiter brings you a big bowl full of whatever you ordered. There's a grill in the middle of the table - you can cook the food yourself if you want, or the waiter can do it. Either way, whatever you ordered doesn't really matter - it ends up looking and tasting almost exactly the same, whatever it was. The only difference is in the toppings. oh! I'd better explain some more.
So you cook it, right? But you cook it up in a circle shape. And you flip it over. When it's done, you cut it up into slices, so that it looks very much like a pizza - thus its sometimes name, "japanese pizza". If you'd like some pictures, or a much better explanation, you can find both here: http://greggman.com/japan/okonomiyaki/okonomiyaki.htm .

It's really good. However, the presentation of ours suffered a bit. Eva is the take-charge sort, and she's...spirited, I guess you might say. What she is not, is cautious. Anyway, she decided she would cook ours. It turned out being food, fortunately, but not pretty. It was a massacred heap of cooked stuff. It was still delicious.

Also at this restaurant we ordered "monjayaki." Those of you who cook, you know how the edges of the food sometimes get just a little brown and crispy and delicious? Think of an entire meal like that. So good.
Here's how it works: there is a bowl of soupy stuff. The bowl is poured out on the grill, and you stir it around a little bit. Then you are given a ridiculously tiny spatula - big enough maybe to belong to a mouse - and with that spatula, you scrape the food off the grill. It's all just slightly brown and crispy, and it takes forever to eat it all, because you just have a tiny metal spatula. It's well worth it, though. Eat it sometime!


It's kind of hard to write right now. I'm not really in the mood. Just not feeling very creative. Ah, if only I could've written this morning! Oh well.

So, I continue.

The trip I wanted to talk about was to a place called "Alishan." Or Mt. Ali. Whatever. This place is supposed to have a beautiful sunrise, so people often take trips to see that.

Several other teachers, and myself, decided we'd like to go see the mountain. And the sunrise, while we're there.
Jana, one of the teachers here (and who I have to admit liking quite a bit, even though she is a filthy Canadian), is staying with a host family that owns a hotel (oh, if you've seen my pictures, she's in one or two of them). They're kind enough to let us in free of charge. Not to sleep, of course, but there's a big room on the top floor that they let us use for hanging out. We agreed to meet there Friday after school (on the 11th?) whenever it was conveneient - and then leave at 1 AM.
Why so early?
Because it's a few hours away on twisty mountain roads. Oh, that's not a good explanation, is it? Well, if you leave too early, you have to stay the night at the one hotel in the area, which you do not want to do if your funds are limited. If you leave much later than that, you won't see the sunrise. Simple. You also can't get to the top of the mountain unless you hike, which is not good in an unfamiliar, unlit mountainous area; or you take the train, which doesn't start running until maybe 3 AM.

I don't remember what I did that evening, but I didn't get to the hotel until maybe 9:30. Oh, wait - I took a short nap (being a teacher can be exhausting). So I met most of the other people there, and we all had fun sitting around being goofy, as only sleep deprivation and boredom can inspire. There was a Mac, and it had a built-in camera with all kinds of neat little options (mirroring the image in the middle, fishbowl effects, etc.) We couldn't let that sort of awesome power go to waste, so we made many, many silly pictures. And watched bad Chinese tv.

The last member of our group had us worried. Celia (that's her name, and boy does she have it rough - she's Jewish, and I'm almost certain it's impossible to avoid pork products (not to mention unclean seafood) in the food here) has rented a scooter for the duration of her stay, and she said she'd just drive over and meet us before we left.
At 12:40, we were starting to get a little concerned. She wasn't with us.
We called her, and she said she'd be there soon.
But soon came and went, and Celia did not.
We called again, and, as I'm sure you expected, the poor girl was lost.
Things weren't that dire, though - our hotel is right by the train station, and it's easy to find. So Celia was quickly directed in the right way, and we met her at maybe 1:10 AM.

We called the cabs, told them we wanted to go to Alishan, and then went downstairs. The cabs came in only maybe two or three minutes. We were ready to go, but several members of our group were still upstairs. We waited on them. After about ten minutes of waiting the cabbies were getting impatient, and they had to move their cars so they weren't blocking the street anymore (everyone just parks in the street here if they're going to be quick); like cabbies anywhere, they didn't like being kept waiting. Another ten minutes passed before the rest of our group came down. They apparently didn't know we were ready to go.

We were just about to get in our cars when the cabbies began speaking. That is never a good sign, if you're still outside the car.
Important note: this is right after several typhoons had passed by.
It turns out the cabbies couldn't take us to Alishan after all, because a bridge on the way up the mountain had been covered by a rockslide.
We sort of believed them, and they left.
One teacher and her homestay girl left, disappointed at the way things had turned out.
The rest of us began arguing amongst ourselves, and decided we were being fed a fairly lously lie. The cabbies hadn't been on the phone or anything, and, if they'd known before that the road was out, why didn't they say so in the first place? So we called the same company again, and asked if the road to Alishan was still out. They told us to wait while they checked. Not two minutes later, they called back and told us the rockslide had been cleared. Keep in mind this is almost 2 AM - I sort of doubt any construction crews were out clearing rocks in the mountains at that time of night.
The cabs arrived, and finally we were on our way.

Of course, that's not the end of the drama. It's never over till the fat lady sings, right? And we didn't have any fat ladies.

As I mentioned before, the road up to the mountains winds a lot. It also gains an incredible amount of altitude in a very short time - I think almost 2 miles' worth in something like 20 miles of straight-line distance. I did not think of carsickness, because I never get carsickness. Unfortunately, no one else thought of that either - and we had one girl in each car get very sick. We had to make frequent stops on our way up so our sick people could get some fresh air and experience normal movement.
I enjoyed doing it that way. Not that I was enjoying their suffering: no, it gave me a chance to enjoy the mountain air, and the clear night sky, and to see a little of the moonlit land. And we still made good time, too - remember, these are cabbies we're talking about. And there was no one else on the road. I must also admit I occasionally thought we might die, but it turned out well. And our driver was really friendly and good-natured - not at all like the other guys we'd had earlier.

We finally arrived about 4 AM. We waited in line for for about 20 minutes so we could buy tickets for the train to the top. And we arrived at the mountaintop about 5:15 aM - just as the sun was rising. We would've missed it, and I was certain we would, but I forgot something important about mountains - they are tall. And tall things block the sun. So the sunrise didn't happen for a little while longer.

I was glad for that. Happiness is always temporary, though. As soon as we made our way to the top - to the observation platform - we found ourselves in a horde of people. Only I was tall enough to see much of anything, and I wasn't enjoying the view much. It would've been nice but for the crowd, and the crazy man walking on the safety wall. Well, he wasn't just walking - that'd be easy to ignore. No, he had a megaphone, and enjoyed hearing himself scream. I think he was a tour guide/barker - he kept saying things about buying this and that. So that was the perfect way to ruin a beautiful sunrise, I thought.
I was a little pissed off. My group was disappointed. We'd gone through a lot of trouble and misery to get here, and now the whole thing was pointlessly ordinary.
Just at that moment, a girl appeared. Why? I don't know. But we started talking to her, and she told us to follow. So we did. She led us up the mountain further, and it turns out there's another viewing area, less crowded, and with a less annoying huckster. It was perfect (by local standards - heh), and we got lots of pictures. Or at least, those with cameras did. And I got pictures on other people's cameras which I hope to someday have access to.

After that we decided to walk down the mountain. It was beautiful - there were massive stumps overgrown with moss, and a forest grown up around them. It had all been cleared out during the Japanese occupation, and been restored since.

I'm running out of time.

The rest of my group (with the exception of myself and a teacher's assistant by the name of Connie) was exhausted, and I think I annoyed them the whole way down the mountain. I would point at something and say, "that'd make a really good photo". They would grunt. But I enjoyed myself anyway. I have to go back sometime with a camera and a few days to spare - it's going to take me a long time to take all the photos I want.
Alishan is also the first place in Taiwan where I've enjoyed the weather - it was probably around 50 degrees. Awesome. No one else thought so; they were complaining of the cold. But I thought it was awesome.

That's all the time I've got for the moment, so that's where I'll have to end. I'll revise this when I have a moment.
I hope I'll have more time to write soon - there's plenty to say.

Bye for now!