Today started off on an interesting note. After about 15 minutes of being awake a small earthquake occurred. This will be my third earthquake since arriving in Taiwan. It lasted a good 10 seconds before dying down. It freaked my roommate out a little bit but it wasn’t too bad. We are sitting right on the rim of the Ring of Fire, earthquakes are apart of the existence of Taiwan. After that fun little adventure with Mother Nature, I got ready to go to Alex’s send off brunch. I met up with Johnny and James and we walked over to the MRT. We met up with everyone including Dr. Shaipro’s nephew Isaac, he is in Taiwan to go study Mandarin in Tainaan. Breakfast was incredibly enjoyable, I had some blueberry toast and cheese omelet. I was good to say good bye to Alex, I will miss him greatly. He is a very good friend, I am hopeful our paths will cross again. There was a big trust hug circle at the MRT and we watched him go. He’s probably in Shanghai by now. 
After that I decided that Wulai wasn’t really going to happen. The hiking I was going to do was relatively difficult and in a remote location. No one wanted to joining this weekend, I decided to be cautious and stay here. I instead decided to go with Jillian, Johnny, Daniel, Mikey, and James to Elephant Mountain. It’s a really nice stair hike that takes us up to see Taipei. It was an awesome hike, not for the faint hearted tough. At some points the steps were incredibly steep everyone was a little bit winded. The views were really fantastic and it was nice to be out of the suburban sprawl that has become my jungle. I got to see some really interesting wild life. That includes the spider that was the size of my fist. We essentially goofed off on the mountain until we realized it was getting late.
We walked back to the closest MRT station, stopping for a moment to enjoy a 7/11 snack break. We got back into GongGuan about 4 in the afternoon. I broke off from Johnny and James to go find food. There are a lot more foreigners running around the GongGuan area. MTC has a program that runs for only the month of June, so there are students here for only a month. I met two girls who are living next door, Sally and I believe Utomazi (At least that’s how I remember her name... It is something like that). It’s sorta odd seeing all of them running around, they are traveling in groups of three or four. I am used to being the only group, how odd is that? I went and got a vegetarian dinner. As I was getting ready to eat Sean ran into to me, literally. He apparently had just made it back from Taichung and was also on a quest for food. He saw me sitting there and decided to announce his presence by bodily pushing me, I thought it was hilarious. We ate together and then did some wandering.
I came to the dorms. I have been incredibly exhausted. I will have an early night and a late morning. I just need t catch up on some sleep without the need to go do anything. I may go shopping tomorrow for pants but other than that the day is free. It’s actually quite lovely not having plans. I will say good night, tomorrow’s post will probably be short.
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