Errands, Errands, and More Errands

My internet wasn't working last night, so I wrote my blog but couldn't post it until now.

Oh gracious, I spent all day running around. And I have a sun burn on the tops of my arms to prove it. My day off was super busy. Ronald came running with us this morning. And then Nancy came back to shower and I cleaned. This was a more intensive cleaning then my other Wednesdays. I moved all of my furniture (okay, so there are only 4 things, but I moved them all) and swept my entire room. So, even though I do find cockroaches in my room, I know that there is no nest and I know that they don't live in my room, they only visit late at night (oh wait, that's not as comforting to me as it was supposed to be). After my room I cleaned the bathroom, and then I cleaned my shoes. The cute yellow ones I bought in Taipei got super dirty on Friday when I was walking around in the rain so I scrubbed them clean. They don't look like new, but they look a whole lot better.

After cleaning it was time to do my run around errands. I first went down stairs to talk to Yuling about my train ticket back to Hualien after I get back from Thailand. I get back Friday the 27th and there is a ward Temple trip on Saturday the 28th. I thought that I would just stay one night in Taipei so that I could go explore Friday afternoon, go to the temple Saturday morning, and then explore Taipei some more Saturday afternoon and come home on Saturday night. Well, when I was talking to Yuling about it, I was off on my dates and so I told her that I needed to come back Saturday the 29th. Then she told me that Natalie was coming in on the 30th. We decided that I should just stay two nights and ride the train back with her. Good plan, right? Yeah, except that there is no Saturday the 29th, it's Saturday the 28th. So I'm actually staying 3 nights in Taipei by myself. Eh... it'll be fun. I mean, I will just be getting back from being on a trip to Thailand by myself, so I should be able to handle Taipei, which is a place I have already done some exploring in. But still, I was not planning on staying that long- ooops. It will be good to have the two hour train ride to get to know Natalie though.

So after squaring away train ticket plans I went upstairs to open the package that was waiting for my on Yuling's desk. Nancy is making fun of me. She's been here 6 months and hasn't gotten a single package. I've been here for 2 months and I've gotten 4 packages. Why's she making fun of me, it just means that I'm more loved. Just Kidding!!! :o) But I really don't expect any more. It is way too expensive for people to send me things, and although I greatly appreciate it, I don't want people wasting money on me. But letters are still good, if anyone still feels the need to send something off to me. It was nice getting a package, but it wasn't what I expected.

After opening the package, it really was time to give myself the run around. I went to the other side of town first to go to the cheese cake store. Nancy decided that she was going to get mini cheese cakes for some of the tutoring families who took her out to lunch/dinner all the time as a little thank you/good bye gift. But, the store doesn't always have the things that she wants and it's not always open when we have time to go. So, since I could go any time today I volunteered to go and pick her up some boxes of cheese cake. There were too many to fit into my basket, so before doing the other errands, I had to drop these off at home. Then I went to the store to buy toilet paper and bleach (all of my white shirts are stained and so I'm soaking them in bleach water to see if that helps at all). Next stop was to the bakery for a loaf of bread. Unfortunately they did not have wheat bread so I had to go with white, but it was good because instead of paying 35 NT$, I only had to pay 28 NT$. It must have been yesterday's bread or something, but that's fine by me. Right down the street from the bakery is a fried rice shop that Nancy wanted for lunch. And so I bought us some lunch and went back home. I still had 30 minutes before class was over and so I figured that I could make it to the train station and back in about that amount of time if I hurried. Boy did I hurry. I booked it all the way to the train station, waited in line, and made it back only 4 minutes after class had ended. If the line had been shorter or if I hadn't hit every light, I would have made it back early. And, I've got to tell you, that a half hour time limit to go to the train station, buy tickets, and get back is pretty impressive. Unfortunately, when I came back I felt the effects of stressing out and pushing myself hard in the intense heat. I had a headache by the time I got back.

The reason that I had picked up lunch for Nancy and I and the reason for my rushing was because Nancy and I had decided to go find a swimming hole we'd heard about and since the lunch break isn't very long we had to be right out. Luke heard us talking about swimming and so he asked if he and Kaylene could come. We left before them because they hadn't planned on being right out like we had, but I guess they seriously booked it and they caught up to us at the river as we were trying to find the path to take us up further. The water felt amazing, but the swimming didn't turn out to be all that great because as we were walking up the river the cops saw us and told us to stop. We knew that you technically need a permit to go beyond a certain part of the river, but we were told that if you sneak past, it's okay. The cop was up on a balcony and wasn't going to come and get us so we kept walking. Well, Luke turned around to go and talk to him while Kaylene, Nancy, and I kept on going up. Luke never showed up and so after being in the water for a little while we tried to go back. But, we a cop saw us and waved us over. He told us that our friend had gone higher up. We didn't believe him so he told us to get into his car and he would drive us back to the front of the trail (where we were allowed to be). We didn't want to go with him, and he thought that it was because we were scared and so he showed us his hat and told us he was "Taiwanese cop" (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that his English was very limited). Um duh you're a cop. If you weren't we wouldn't even have come over. So we went with him and it turns out that Luke really had gone up farther in an attempt to shake the cops off his trail. So we didn't swim very long and we got picked up by the cops. The cop was pretty nice and just told us that next time we needed to get a permit and then there would be no problem.

Once we got back from swimming, I put in a load of laundry and did one session of a Chinese language DVD.

Right before school ended I went down to fill up our water bottle and Yuling told me that she had the Thailand itinerary printed out and when I have time she could help me translate it. We didn't get very far in the translation before I had to tutor, but at least I know that I have the itinerary and I have until Friday to have Yuling help me figure it out. I still can't believe that I'm going to Thailand on Sunday! Crazy!

After tutoring I tried to go get fried chicken for dinner for Nancy and me, but it was closed so I ended up coming back and fixing fried rice with an egg. As I ate I booked three nights in a hostel in Taipei. It's a different place then the one that Nancy stayed at before (which is the same one we're staying in this weekend) so I hope it's still a good one and that I'll be able to find it.

After booking the rooms I started blogging. After half an hour or so Dar-sen opens the door and says, "Hello." Dang shoot, I totally forgot that I tutored him tonight. I had to put the blog on hold really quick and then cleared off a spot for him to study. It worked out okay because he was actually a couple of minutes early so by time I logged off the computer and he sat down, it was 8 o'clock which is right on time.

So that was my day. I've just been going and going. I hope that I'm able to just crash tonight and get such a good night sleep, but I really doubt that it's going to happen.