As much fun as I had in Taipei, I wish it had happened on another weekend. Last weekend was the Moon Festival! The Moon Festival is a huge thing in Taiwan. On the Moon Festival, everyone in Taiwan has BBQs. So, I was really sad when Yuan-Chi invited me to go to a BBQ at his daughter’s kindergarten teacher’s house and I couldn’t go. But, I got lucky. He texted me again on Sunday and said she was having another BBQ on Monday! Everyone had work and school off for the festival. YAY!! So, I got to go to my first Moon Festival BBQ. I invited Lakyn to come with me since she had never met Yuan-Chi. On Monday the family picked us up to go for a hike before the BBQ. The hike was fairly easy because they have three children but it was so much fun! Look at the view from the top!
Yuan-Chi got us tea jelly when we got to the top. It’s literally jello made from tea and it tastes exactly like youre drinking cold tea. It’s really cool! We ate that and Asian pears and guava before making our way back down. We were about ¾ of the way down when…….we saw….MONKEYS! Lots and lots of monkeys!!!!! They were just sitting in the middle of the pathway. One was eating some fruit, three were playing, and the biggest guy was just watching it all happen. We got really close to them! We didn’t want to get so close because Yuan-Chi said they would think I wanted to feed them and they would get aggressive. So we stayed about 20 feet back. We watched them for a while before heading back down. We were nearing the end and we passed by the bathrooms. And sitting there on the trashcan outside….was another huge monkey! He had his face in the trash picking out fruit, and then he would balance on the edge of the trashcan and eat it. It was awesome. Seeing monkeys is pretty rare and we saw many of them on our first hike!! WAHOO!
After the awesome hike, we made our way to Ula’s kindergarten teacher’s house. We walked into a house blasting karaoke. (That’s also a big thing here.) There are tons of kids running around and we make it to the back where we meet the man who owns the house. People in Taiwan live with generations of people together so the man is Ula’s kindergarten teacher’s father. Yuan-Chi has to translate for me because the man speaks no English. But, we find out that he is a farmer! He gave us pineapple that he walked out back, picked, and cut. I have never tasted anything like it in my whole life. So much better than pineapples in America. He also gave us okra and taro straight from his farm. He works very hard and was so extremely generous and nice. I am so glad it worked out that I could attend a moon festival BBQ! True Taiwanese right here!! ….even though I couldn’t eat anything actually served at a normal moon festival BBQ….minor details (:
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