Rainbow Village & The National Taichung Theater

Rainbow Village

Yesterday (Saturday) Megan and I had a fun day touring Taichung with some of our local friends. The original plan was for us to go to Taichung in the late afternoon so that we could see the night market, since we have still yet to see that one, but the plan changed on Friday while we were at work. April, the mom of two of my students, asked Megan what our weekend plans were. After Megan told her what we were thinking April asked us if she could come along and take us around the city. Of course we agreed and thus the day was planned.

April, along with her two children Yara and William, picked us up and the first place we went to was their new house. If I understood April correctly, they've been building this house for 9 years now. It's in the countryside of Taichung and it's located right by both William's Junior High School as well as April's husband's work, so when they move there in December it will be advantageous for their family since they're all having to do some commuting now as it is. The house was incredibly nice. I felt very fortunate to be able to see their home even in its unfurnished state.

Group Picture

April and Yara

Yara (4 yrs old) and Grace (7 yrs old)

William who is not impressed with me

 At the house we met one of our other students, Grace, and her Mom, Karen. With our group of 7 now complete we set out for Rainbow Village.

View of the village as we approached

Rainbow Village is this small string of buildings, the remnants of a village, that have been painted by by a former soldier. He painted them in the hopes that it would save them from being demolished as the city became more modernized. His hopes became reality and Rainbow Village is now an adorable tourist attraction.

Love is the answer to all, according to Rainbow Village.

Moo

Aminals

Sea Shells a danglin'

And of course there were many photo opportunities.

Bunny friend

The soldier who painted all of Rainbow Village was actually there. He was this adorable old man and he actually allowed people to take pictures with him. He's a bit of a celebrity in the area so naturally I had to get one as well.

I was looking at Megan's camera and this was taken with April's, so don't mind me looking in the wrong direction.

Karen and Grace

Grace is such a sweet girl

I love my kitties! <3

April hopping in with us

The whole group finally got a picture

There was a "couples" wall so I made Megan be my other half.

We're adorable. You know you're jealous.

#Inceptagram

Shortly after our couples pic Grace proposed to Megan

Shark Bait Ooh ah ah

More meows

Looks like the guy loves kitties as much as I do. I'm not ashamed.

Yara

Kitty lanterns

Cat...people?

Meow-za

Entrance/Exit

Hot and thirsty car shenanigans

At this point we were all ready for some food so we headed to Top City which is the name of a large mall that Karen and April like to frequent. The food court was incredibly nice. I was overwhelmed with all of the options. Every place looked divine.

A view of the food court.

A Taiwanese style place where you choose what you want and they boil it.

Fresh ingredients on display. Mmmm

Japanese trend of displaying the food you can choose to eat. I ended up getting the steak that's the bottom left option.

Mmmm lunch.

After lunch we went to a different floor in the mall where April and Karen showed us Hygeia. It's an Eco-Friendly Nail company. I had no idea what this meant so I had to ask the workers there a bunch of questions. Apparently the products they sell are all pet and kid friendly, so if they accidentally eat some or whatever it's certainly not good for them but it's not toxic enough to be lethal. Also, now get this, it doesn't smell. You open the bottle and instead of being assaulted by the overwhelming scent of nose hair curling chemicals you smell the faintest floral fragrance. It was actually a pleasant smell too, not a nasty perfume smell either. That was almost a selling point for me right then and there. Megan and I took a look at the ingredients on the bottles and they only had about 5 ingredients, none of which included acetone. Anyway, I might have to get some. It was really neat. They say it comes off quickly but that's part of the Eco-friendly ingredients package deal.

They painted all of Grace's nails.

The girls

Taichung backdrop

 Our last destination was the National Taichung Theater.

Grace sandwich

I need to take a quick intermission here before I continue on to talk about the National Taichung Theater. I need to talk about how fantastic Grace and Yara are. They are best friends and they show up every morning to our SPE classes without fail. Together they are the foundation for our morning class. We know that we can always rely on them to remind everyone else in the class what the rule are, to speak only English, and to help us teachers when we need "helpers". They are the sweetest little souls and we are so lucky to have them. The highlight of this entire day to Taichung was getting to spend time with Grace, Yara, and William outside of the classroom. Getting out of the classroom setting allows us to be in more of a friendship territory and I cherish that relationship that we're growing together.

Favorite picture from the whole day right here.

Picture credit for these gems belong to the forever amazing Megan.

The Theater was not what either Megan nor I expected. It had a grand hall within, which we never had the opportunity to see, but the rest of the building was a museum/interactive art display hybrid. It was unexpected but very cool nonetheless.

Karen explained to me that the interior of the building was constructed to resemble that of an ant hill, so the surfaces were all rounded and there were no doors. This unusual architecture supposedly marked it as one of the most difficult buildings to construct worldwide in the last decade. Apparently it's famous in the architectural circles.

You can see some of the smoothed walls and ceilings in this image.

A better view of the building's interior

Karen

Many seemingly random (yet cool) items were on display.

Saxophones

Dried plants

Reindeer guy

Girls pretending to be at school

There were a bunch of random books resting on a table. Grace excitedly brings one over to me and exclaims, "this one looks just like you!" and points to the woman in the center with the white skirt. I just smile and reply deadpan, "yep, because she's white with brown hair".

That's me in the middle apparently.

Not 30 seconds later she runs back with another book and says, "and this looks just like Megan!" This time I asked her why. She points to the hair and says, "because this". Yep, because she's white with blonde hair this one looks just like Megan. Because that's how it works.

I'm jealous. At least Megan has a pet eagle.

There was this area where people were making their own music boxes. They picked out the wooden pegs they wanted, complete with adorable little characters, and constructed it themselves. I don't know how much it costs, but Megan and I have decided that if we ever go back there we need to do that. These are what some of the examples look like

These were the Disney themed ones.

More neat interior

Zippy staircase

Hey Megan!

Dat be me up der

Yara

Grace

Girls

Taichung

It's a good view from up here

Grace and I found a (fake) birdie.

After 6 hours of adventuring and toting the small ones around in the heat it was time to call it a day.

Some neat buildings on the drive home

View of the city + the river

Megan and I had been craving sweets since lunch so after we got dropped off back home we went out and satisfied out sweet teeth. I opted for the cake while she went for the chocolate smoothie. Thanks 85 degrees C.  When we're in a bind and we need something sweet we know where to turn to.

My cake was most certainly not "Kim friendly". It had chunks of walnuts in it but it was yummy to me.

One can never go wrong with chocolate and whipped cream.