Taipei: And the "Classes" Begin

A huge part of our everyday life is riding the metro. A solid half of our days are dedicated to getting around the huge city of Taipei, especially between our campus and where we're staying. (Yes, we are taking classes, I swear!)

As a culture class, we went to a traditional tea ceremony where we smelled different teas, learned all about each type of tea, and learned how to drink and pray over the tea we drink.

Yeah, the tea was dang good. 

Each street has a type of store it specializes in. This particular street had Chinese medicine ingredients. It was amazing to see all the different, complicated types of ingredients that go into healing naturally. In this picture, there were different flowers to brew in tea.

Shark fin was everywhere! Who knows what that does.... or even how they got it.. eeek!

A typical day in kung fu class. After we learn a series of moves, we have to perform it to the class. Our campus overlooks the city, and we have class outside everyday.

Working on our calligraphy takes up a big portion of our time. We have to do 4-6 sheets per day and perfect each stoke. It looks easy, but is actually very intricate and hard. Each quiver of the hand shows up in your stoke, which can ruin the whole character.

Another cultural class was going to see a puppet show and puppet museum. The puppeteer showed us his hand movements outside of the puppets mask and it was literally like his hand was dancing. The incredible isolation of each of his hand muscles to create another life form was stunning. I never knew that puppetry is considered such an art form! Its pretty sad that it is nearly obsolete now, especially with how much culture and tradition it holds in asian culture.

The "Ugly Room" in the puppet museum.

There are temples all over the city to pray to various different Gods. The temples are extremely ornate and positioned between ugly industrial buildings. This temple in particular is known for blossoming love. Over 3000 successful marriages are said to have started from this temple.

Just a parting photo for you, delish, right!?