5/15 - Friday

Once again I'm a day behind my blog posts. It's Saturday night and I'm ready to talk about Friday night. We're told we will have internet access in Japan in our rooms, so hopefully I will be better then. For now I'll have to continue posting from outside our hotel room (where it's 88 degrees at 10:45PM and humid!)

Friday we took a 3+ hour bus ride to a company called Taiwan Biotechnology Inc. They are a subsidiary of AGV Beverage. The company makes drinks that are meant to improve your health, e.g. lower cholesterol, etc.... Their plant was really amazing! It was 95% automated. The automation allows them to keep a sterile bottling environment. They told us that the bottling area is as sterile as a hospital operating room! They fed us there while we listened to a presentation. The food was great! It was rice and turkey (and a few other odds and ends in the mix).


After AGV we went to Cheng Chung University and visited our pen-pals. I continue to be impressed with how well everyone seems to speak English. We ate more food with our pen pals and made a scented perfume purse. These purses are said to ward off evil spirits.

We stopped for food at the 2nd largest city in Taiwan on the way home. Some members of the group ate at Chili's. Melody and I continued to be brave and went to a local eatery. What a mess. This particular location did not have people that spoke English serving the food. I "thought" I knew what I was doing, as I had eaten the pork on a stick before. However, this time it turns out that you are supposed to take the pork of the stick and drop it into a broth as a soup. The lady tried to tell me, but I couldn't understand a word. She took my bowl and filled it for me to save me any more trouble ;) She then tried to ask if I wanted noodles or dumplings with it (in Chinese). She kept pointing at the menu (in Chinese). Thankfully our professor was nearby. Charlie was able to translate and save the day for me. :-)

We went out again at night. We went to a bar called Barcode at first. However, after waiting literally 30 min for 1 drink we were left. We ended up back at the same bar we had gone to a few nights before - Barbados. The bartender was impressed that I remembered her English name (Alison). I mentioned that it was our last real night out and she was sweet enough to come up and tell us a story. The short version is that the bad man went to hell and the good one went to heaven. The really impressive part is that she was cutting a piece of folder paper as she told the story and the pieces of the cutout spelled out Hell and then had a cross. I had her sign the cross for me with her real name. Here's the picture: