Sunnie and Vincent recently took me out on a couple of different day trips.
The other week, we went to a place near Tainan and took a boat ride up a canal and back. Two of Sunnie's friends joined us (they were her two bridesmaids) for the day. During the boat ride, we supposedly saw lots of interesting plant and wild life - rare forms of fauna and crabs etc. Our guide gave very lengthy explanations about 
everything in Chinese. Honestly, I thought the best part was getting to wear the hats. Remember how excited I was about the hats in Taroko? I insisted we do our photo ops in the hats, and I am pretty sure Vincent and Sunnie found my enthusiasm amusing. After all, the hats here are not considered "cool" - they are what 
the farmers and peasants wear. Maybe it would be comparable in the US to getting excited about wearing overalls and then taking tons of photos in them - except wait, I've done that... :)
Above: (left) Vincent displaying one of the rare flowers to be found; (right) the amazing ecosystem of the canal
Below: (left) us bedecked in awesome hats; (right) us with a dragon boat
After getting lunch at this cute little seafood place, we visited the salt museum.
The museum would have been more interesting if it had had plaques in English. Unfortunately, there was only Chinese, so I ended up milling around and just looking at pictures. Entertaining for maybe 15 minutes, but not for over an hour. As the place was fairly large, we spent a significant amount of time there. 
I tried my best to look around by myself and to appear engaged the whole time, as I always feel bad trailing people and thereby imposing on them to do constant running translations (again, something which is maybe fun for them for a few minutes, but not for a whole museum that large). It was interesting, though, seeing how they used to harvest salt. 
I never realized what an involved and heavily physical job it was. The museum had wax figure exhibits set up so that one could see in 3D what the process used to look like. Nowadays, it has all been modernized. There is a nearby giant salt mound which one can walk up, and the surrounding area has been 
turned into a mini theme park. Oddly enough, the salt mound was made with salt imported from Australia instead of local salt... The salt museum is also famous for its "salty" popsicles. I was skeptical in trying them at first, but it turns out, they are really good! Their "salty" flavor is actually just almonds. I was a little sad when Sunnie told me you cannot buy them in bulk anywhere...
During the Chinese New Year, I met up with Sunnie and Vincent again. This time we stayed in Kaohsiung, going down near the Love River to a warehouse art museum there. The current exhibit, the Delight of Chinese Characters Festival, uses Chinese characters to create image- and wordplay through artwork. I found it interesting because, while I know English can be used in playful ways, I had never thought of the potential in Chinese. With all of the verbal tones and characters themselves, there is unlimited potential for witty play in Chinese. The artists were very clever in creating artwork which integrated both the physical character and the encoded meaning. For example, the word for door - 門 mén: imagine blowing that character up into 3D and making it the size of a real door; the artist used half of the character set on a hinge to swing back and forth in contrast with the wall, so that no matter which way the door was set, you saw both the full character and could walk through the other opening.
Above: (left) the meaning of the characters is shown in the boxes where each thing (dragon, girl, pig) is shown underneath a roof, representing a house, just like the character! (right) this clock shows how the characters for the numbers are symmetrical - only half of the character is there, but you see the whole character from the side view because of the clock's reflective surface
Below: (left) we are sitting on a seat in the shape of the radical for 地, meaning ground; once two people sit on it like us, we form the character 坐, meaning to sit; (right) the shadows cast by the wood piles form a boy and a girl; above them, stylistically painted on the wall, are the characters for the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac
Leaving the museum, we got dinner and then moved farther down the Love River to the lantern displays and carnival festival. For Chinese New Year every year, each school in Kaohsiung is responsible for creating a lantern to be put on display. The lanterns are fairly large - about the size of a sofa or a bed - and made out of soft velvety material. They can be made in any shape desired - this year's most popular design being that of a tiger, as it is the year of the tiger. However, we also saw plenty of Sponge Bobs (all elementary schools) and even one Elvis. Some schools will spend the whole previous semester working on their lantern. Minghua chose a team of students to put theirs together over the winter break. They wanted me to know that the reason why theirs might not win the best prize was because they insisted that the students do all of the work, whereas other schools might cheat and let the teachers make theirs. I guess there are not very strict guidelines for the competition. At any rate, the lanterns were beautiful in the evening. There were hundreds of them, stretching for over half a mile along the river.
While we were walking through the lanterns, we also saw special performances going on. The city had set up a stage in the middle of the river with a large crane stretching out over it. Acrobats did a number of impressive dances, dangling far above the river on a giant ring or being twirled up and down while holding nothing but ribbons. Very beautiful and very dangerous looking. Also, every hour or so, the city set off fireworks from the harbor. Fireworks are one of my favorite things about living in Asia - the Taiwanese set off fireworks for every major or minor event here, and I love fireworks.
Above: (left) Vincent and I waiting for the fireworks to start; (right) acrobat on the ring - hard to tell how high she is since you cannot see the water, but believe me, she is very high in the air
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