Drea's moments :): A weekend away!!

This past weekend we were able to finally travel!! We went to Yuli to visit some of our friends!

Here's how it worked a couple of our friends from Nantou came down to visit us for a day. When they left they were going to visit some other friends in Yuli. We decided we were gonna hitch a ride with them to Yuli. Well, hitching a ride with them meant buying their train tickets and going on the same train as them.

So there we were Wednesday night sitting around when Kyle decided we should get our tickets for the train because it was a holiday weekend. Thursday passed and we picked up Reuben and Marshall and Laura from the train station and spent some time with them.

Then on Friday we hung out with Reuben and Marshall and Laura. We took them to breakfast and to get smoothies and to our school and to the University. Then that night we packed up and got on the train to go to Yuli!! It was a three hour train ride; there were NO seats at all. That meant 6 crazy Americans standing up for the whole train ride trying not to be in people’s way.

On the train we met 4 Taiwanese kids who knew some English and they started talking to us. It was so fun to talk to them. We gave them all English names, Jessie, Libby, Aaron and Audrey. Then, we arrived in Yuli!

By the way, have I said how much I hate blogging?

Yuli was gorgeous! There were so many mountains and it was just so pretty. God was just showing off when he made the world. Especially places like Yuli, it's so beautiful with the mountains all around. The earth must have been so much more amazing before he created to populate the earth and chop down the trees.

Saturday morning we got up and the Pingtung team decided to make breakfast for the Yuli team. Amber, Julia, Jared and I were in the kitchen slaving away making them pancakes and sausage and eggs. I was so impressed with how the pancakes turned out. They tasted like pancake crepes, basically pancakes with a vanilla flavor! Delish! That was probably a highlight of the weekend, all 4 of us in the kitchen throwing pancakes!

Here is a video Lydia got of it!

Saturday we got to see a little bit of Yuli (it was a really small town). We went on a walk to this place where there are two different tectonic plates. So as of Saturday I can say that I stood on two different tectonic plates at one time.

While we were at the bridge we decided to do the "waka waka" dance (which for those of you who don't know is our "team dance"). So we were standing on two tectonic plates and doing the "waka waka." Plus, we video taped it! So if you have 4 mins to waste here is the link...

We found that video so amazingly cool!

Sunday it was raining so we couldn't even go to church because we didn't have a way to get there. Therefore we sat in their living room and watched a sermon. After church the girls went out to go shopping!! Shopping in Taiwan is a love/hate relationship. I love it because their clothes are so funny and you would never find anything like them in America. I hate it because the clothes are so so small! But at one of the shoe stores we went to actually had shoes my size. We were all so shocked

After shopping at one store we thought it was time for lunch so we went and had a girls lunch at a curry place. It was pretty good, rice, chicken with curry, and some random veggies. Then afterwards we went and got some shaved ice. Julia, Amber and I wanted Mien Mien Bing but they didn't have it so we got stuck with shaved ice. All is good though :)

By the time we got back to the house it was night time. We had decided while we were out that we were going to watch Calamity Jane when we got back, so we got back and were going to watch it when Jared came in and asked us to play a game. So all of us girls went downstairs and played "worst case scenarios" with everyone. Then we went up stairs and watched Calamity Jane. When that was done the girls stayed up for a couple hours and talked. I was smart and went to bed when the movie was done!

Monday we woke up and had to go to the train station to catch our train out of Yuli back to Chaozhou.

The ride back was also gorgeous. The water was on side and mountains on the other... We didn't have seats again but we found some room on the ground which was really nice!