So the last post I wrote was concluded with a cliffhanger. So here's what happened that Friday. We did have the first round of our tug o'war competition, which sadly we lost. However the boys in our class won so we weren't total losers as a class. That Friday was a club day, and instead of going to dance club I snuck into the singing club. I was supposed to sing, but that has been postponed until further notice thank goodness. There wasn't too much singing and I just chatted with some of the students.
      Saturday I had been invited to go to a nightmarket with a classmate and her parents. I tried some new things like winter melon tea and fried swee potato, or at least I think that's what is was. There's always lots of good food to try at the nightmarket.
       Wednesday the 7th I went to a banquet with a lot of Rotary Clubs in the Taipei area to honor the Rotary International President for the 2014-2015 year because he's Taiwanese. However right before the dinner as I was racing down the stairs I tripped and temporarily dislocated my kneecap. Whoops. It popped right back into place though and I still went to the dinner. It appears to be fine now still just a little sore. Friday the 9th was not the end of my week sadly, as I had to be at school on Saturday. However my math/homeroom teacher bought my entire class bubble milk tea because overall we placed third in the tug-of-war contest.
      The reason I had to be at school on Saturday was it was my school's birthday! I arrived bright and early, alas in school uniform, but the first hour or so of school we just listened to a bunch of people talk about things. I'm not sure exactly what all the speeches were about but I'm sure they were lovely. The majority of the day was spent outside in the heat. Each class had a table set up and they were selling mostly food. My class (205) was selling chocolate dipped marshmallows and sodas that had dry ice incorporated in them so the drink looked like it was emitting fog. Other classes were selling: tea, ice cream, noodles, milk tea, sausages, fried chicken, etc. Around 12 we started cleaning up so that we could be finished by 2. The day concluded with some more talking, but my class won the relay race so we got a nice little certificate! After school I was able to finally go to the top of 101. Finally. We went at a super great time because we were able to see the city right before sunset and when it got dark and all the lights came on. It was gorgeous. After 101 we went out for some hot pot, yum.
       This past Saturday (17th) I had culture class with all the inbounds from my district. We took the train to Pingxi, the town that's known for the floating sky lanterns. After about an hour or so on the train, we arrived in the pouring rain. We all walked, it was too short of a distance to say hiked, over to Shifen falls and took tons of pictures. While there we had some traditional soup which was perfect on such a rainy day. After the falls we walked to what I think may have been a musuem? But we watched a film on Pingxi...but it was all in Chinese. After that we finally got to make lanterns of our own!! It was suprisingly easy to make, just gluing together some tissue paper and attaching a small frame, but those things get some serious height. The question all of us had was where the lanterns actually end up. Which remains unknown. Dinner then we took the train back home.
      Sunday and Monday I hung out with some of the other exchange students which was a lot of fun. These past few weeks my class had been extremely focues on practicing for the English Singing competition. I've had to come to school early and stay late. I'm hoping we win with all this extra work because I've heard from people in other classes that their classes haven't even started practicing yet. Later on this week I think I'm going to shopping in Ximen with some classmates. Sunday I'm going to the country fair, basically all the inbounds set up information about their countries to help current Taiwanese outbounds decide where they want to go.

I hope everyone who celebreates Thanksgiving has a good one, eat some turky for me because no such holiday here.
-Abbie