I Finally Made It

I finally made it. The journey was an incredibly long one, and not without it's challenges, but I'm here safe and sound.
My total travel time including getting to the airport, layovers, flight time, and the bus ride to Fengyuan was around 26 hours!! 

My flight arrived in Taipei around 6:30 am on Wednesday morning, but with the bus ride and more wait time I didn't get to the school until around 11. I was pretty tired, I was able to sleep a fair amount on the plane so that helped a bit, but when you jump forward 15 hours it's kind of hard to adjust. 

When we arrived at the school we promptly carried our luggage up four flight of stairs to where we will be staying. No rest for us. We then went our right away and got our pictures taken for our work permits. Pretty! I was pretty much ready to crash by this point, but they were having our rooms repainted so that wasn't really an option. We did get to go out to lunch. We went out to a place just around the corner form the school. It was wonderful, I got fried noodles and some pork dumplings. Yum. It wasn't a bad price either. It cost me  NT$90, which is about $3. Then we all went a little further up the street and ordered a bing sha. Which a pure fruit smoothie. No additives, all natural, and mine was all mango:) 

The afternoon continued with a tour of the school and the city. We strolled around a local park and viewed the local elementary school. The elementary school was huge! We were told they have a couple of thousand students enrolled. A couple of thousand!! That is insane. 

I can't say how we passed all the hours without one of us falling asleep but we returned to the school around 6pm and went directly our to dinner.

We were finally able to move into our rooms around 8 pm. After moving in and taking a shower I was finally able to sleep.  It was a long day and full of news sights, smells, and noises. Fengyuan is a pretty big city and adjusting to the culture and the humidity will take a while, but it's going to be great.

Back to the Airport

Back at the airport and apparently my bad luck with flights continues. Not only was my flight home from Hawaii delayed and we had to change flights and then had a layover in San Fransico for over 6 hours, but here I am again at the airport and my flight has been delayed. So instead of leaving at 8 pm I will be leaving at 10 pm. Not too bad considering, and it doesn't cause me to miss my connecting flight to Taiwan-thank goodness- but it does mean less time at LAX to check in my bags and get through security. I'm hoping that everything will go smoothly and that my flight to Taiwan won't be too bad even though it is more than a 13 hour flight. I'm both excited and a little nervous and am ready to be on my way. 

I'll let you all know when I arrive in Taiwan and I'm sure I will have some stories to share and maybe some pictures too.

Hawaii, I Think I Love You

Beautiful weather

Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay

Hike to Diamond Head

Polynesian Cultural Center

Amazing luau and local food

Swap meet at Aloha Stadium

Pearl Harbor

Baptisms at the Laie Hawaii Temple

Jungle/waterfall hike

Kailua beach

We crammed a lot in to 5 days and it was wonderful. Of course, there were the typical family vacation arguments but overall it was a wonderful vacation. We were worried that with our flights delays (see previous post) that we wouldn't be able to do everything that we wanted to do but it ended up working out almost perfectly. 

One of the highlights for me was definitely snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. The water was beautiful and warm and there were fish everywhere. It really was incredible. Haha I also found out that being underwater freaks me out. It took almost all of my concentration to breath at a regular pace. It took me a bit but I was still able to have a great experience. If you ever go to Hawaii, this is a must.

Loved the Polynesian Cultural Center!  Such a fun place and the entertainment was absolutely fantastic. The whole environment was impressive and the different shows and demonstrations were great as well. Definitely another favorite.

Okay, so I could probably go on about everything I did because there literally wasn't one thing that we did that I didn't like. 

 

Hanauma Bay

 

PCC

The trial on our waterfall hike.

Guaranteed I will be planning another trip to Hawaii sometime in my future.

Vacation (Mis)Adventures

For those of you that know my family well you may have heard some of our interesting vacation stories. We definitely don't have the best of luck. Car troubles make up the majority of our vacation misadventures. This includes broken air conditioning in 114 degree weather, a broken passenger window due to drifting off the road, a van totaled in a flash flood, blown tires, missing exits, and other fun stuff associated with road-tripping. All in all these experiences have resulted in some memorable vacations.

Today my family left on our annual summer trip. This vacation is a little bit different than most because it is the first time the whole family has been together in over 4 years. It's kind of a big deal. Plus, it might be a while before we get to go on another family trip together since I leave for Taiwan and who knows where we will all be a year from now. So, we decided to go all out and booked our trip to Hawaii!!

I feel like the initial packing and getting ready for the trip was fairly stress free...

and then we got to the airport and the memorable vacation experiences began.

Our flight out of Salt Lake was delayed, which meant we would miss our connecting flight to Honolulu. We preceded to work with the airlines to find any flight to Hawaii as soon as possible. It looked like we would have to wait until Sunday evening or Monday morning. Needless to say everyone was in low spirits and we were all a little frustrated. I mean this is the biggest vacation that we have ever gone on, and probably ever will go on. I tried to stay positive and my Mom and I worked with an airline attendant and were finally relieved when we found an overnight flight from Las Vegas to Honolulu. Yay! Our vacation was saved!! Unfortunately this didn't mean we wouldn't have any more problems. We all had to exit the terminal and check in and go through security again(fun stuff). It was rather hectic but we were feeling better as we started boarding our flight to Las Vegas, until we discovered that they double booked my brother Rob and my Dad, because they have the same name. 

Are you kidding me?

Seriously, this would happen to my family. Luckily there was room on the plane and everything worked out. We all made it to Las Vegas. I can tell that the stresses of this vacation are already wearing on us but I think we'll pull through. We are now waiting to check in for our flight to Honolulu, which leaves at 1:55 am. We've had our share of troubles so I'm hoping that we will be fortunate enough not to experience any more. 

Wish us luck.