A day of 3 trains

We had another 3 day weekend, so of course we headed off to visit another part of Taiwan for the weekend.  What was the occasion?  It was Taiwan's Birthday!! Happy 100th birthday Taiwan!!

First stop: Feng Yuan train station. Final destination: Hualien.

Jessica, Heather, Veronica, Kaylee, and I woke up ridiculously early on Saturday morning to board our first train headed about 40 minutes away to Xinwuri. We could have taken a train straight to Hualien from Feng Yuan, but we really wanted to take the High Speed Rail.  Why? Two reasons: Number one, it would get us to Hualien a lot quicker, and number 2, it's pretty cool and exciting.  Seriously, who wouldn't want to get on a train speeding quickly through the country? Especially when a normally 3 hour train ride could be done in about 45 minutes. 

We were so excited for this train. Can you tell?

I kept waiting for the train to lift off the ground, because it's speed felt a bit like a plane on runway.  Don't worry though it never did lift into the air, but that would be quite an exciting story wouldn't it?

 From Taipei we took our final train of the day, 3 hours of standing room only on our way to Hualien.

 Arriving in Hualien at precisely 11:11 we were greeted by this sign:

We planned to do just that. 

Exiting the train station, we consulted our map, and headed to our hostel with only a slight difficulty.

Welcome to Colorful Taiwan, our "home" for the next few nights.

On this trip we visited many beautiful buildings.

The first one was a huge Buddhist structure called the Still Thoughts Hall.

While taking these pictures I learned that I really can't jump very high.  No wonder I never did the high jump in track...

At the Still Thoughts Hall I met and talked with a man who I think was working there.
Man: "Where are you from?"
Me: "America"
Man: "What state?"
Me: "Utah"
Man: "Oh, home of the... uh..., Mormons?"
I told him yes and then he asked me if I was a Mormon.  As he asked I remembered the conference talk by M. Russell Ballard this past conference, when he spoke about using the full name of our church.  I paused for a moment and then told him that yes, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known by our nickname the Mormons.  He asked me a few more questions about whether my friends were also members, why we were in Taiwan, if we would be going to our church while in Hualien and if our church provided sleeping arrangements for us.  I answered his questions until he was called away to lead a group of doctors coming to volunteer.

Walking to the other side of the city we had a little detour and found these "lovely" surprises:

That thing they're hacking at? Ya it's a huge fish head.

I seriously let out a scream upon turning around and seeing this creature.

It wasn't long until I was singing  "Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads..."

After that interesting little detour we continued across the city to this building:

We saw many dragons like this one while crossing the bridge.

I had a short lasting little souvenir from this little hike.  I slapped a mosquito and came away with its dirty little imprint on my hand.  Gross dirty mosquito.

A lot of travelling and a lot of walking sure made for five hungry girls. 

Part of the meal for the night included octopus (or squid, we weren't entirely sure).

As we finished our dinner we realized it was raining.  It was really, really raining. So we scurried from the restaurant, bought some rain ponchos and some snacks from 7-11, and made our journey back to the hostel.

 Tomorrow, Taroko Gorge...