My Personal Sanctuary

As my first entry, I'll start by explaining my blog. It's about places that I've been to and would do anything to be there again. I also might have some random snippets in the end about some of my favorite books or songs. Like I said earlier, this is my first entry and it seems fitting that I start with probably my favorite place in the world and my second home, Taiwan.

When I visited Taiwan this winter break, I finally realized why I love the place so incredibly much. It's not because of the delicious variety of foods, cheap clothes, random concerts, or even the little goodies that every country in Asia must have, although it doesn't hurt to include those things. I realized I love Taiwan, rather, because of my idea of it. To my family, Taiwan has grown to become our own personal haven. It's the one place where we can finally be together and forget about all of our worries except getting fat and not having enough time to spend with each other. Our parents don't even care what late hours of the night we come home because all the subways and taxis can give us a safe ride to wherever, whenever we want (for a very cheap price, too!). It's hard to put my awe for Taiwan into words, so I'll show you some pictures.



This is one my dad took of one of Gao Xiong's subways (can you believe this is the ceiling of a SUBWAY?). It has this beautiful stained glass ceiling covered in crazy humanoid figures with trees sprouting from their chests or birds soaring out of their hair.



My dad took this once again, and it's also of Gao Xiong (which is the city my mom is from). Apparently they keep their New Year's celebration lights on for a week or two after it's over. I want to spend New Years in Gao Xiong someday because, well, just look at the picture! It seems amazing. The few times I spend New Years in Taiwan, I'm always in Taipei. And although it's cool seeing Taipei 101, the world's tallest building, explode into flames and fireworks, I want to see something new.



This is where me, my brother, my sister, my cousins, and some friends spent New Years. It's sort of an underground loungeish place called "The Wall." The entrance is covered in graffitti, and that's me, my brother, my cousin, and his friend waiting for others to arrive.



And this is the Taiwanese instrumental band, Sugar Plum Ferry. I don't really like the English translation of their name, but I don't know how to type in Chinese and most of you won't understand anyway, so it will have to do. We watched them perform on New Years at "The Wall." Their music was pretty incredible, although they were very ... hmm how do I say this? Different. From most other bands. For example, their bassist (the guy in the middle) played the whole two hours with his back turned to the audience, and when they finished, he walked unceremoniously off stage without a word. But when their guitarist (the guy on the right) finished, he was on the ground writhing and twitching almost as though he were having a seizure, scraping his guitar against anything he could get his hands on.

Well, that's about it. I'm sorry that this first entry was so long. I could go on forever about Taiwan, but I think this should be enough to give you a general idea about my thoughts and how simply amazing the place is.

Tiffany