We left early to spend the morning in Taipei, but I am sure you don't care about that. The important stuff began when we boarded a bus to Pingxi, a mountain town whose claim to fame is the lantern festival. A quick history lesson. Latern's were used to give warning to the villages in the mountains when their was danger on the way. This would give them enough time to retreat to higher mountains or secret caves. Now-a-days people write their wishes on a lantern and send it up to the heavens for the gods to grant them. The longer you watch your lantern fly into the sky, the more likely you wish is to come true. Environmentalists hate the lantern festival because of the amount of trash it litters throughout the countryside. But I'm a tourist and that is not my problem to worry about. (This information is according to David's brain and in no way reflects reality.)
We bought our own lantern to write our wishes on. Of course the girls wrote stupid things on the lantern like peace, love, and happiness. Yuck, gag me! Waste of wishes if you ask me. I wished for real, important matters. Such as Mizzou athletics. I simply wrote M-I-Z on the lantern and am waiting for a Z-O-U response from the gods. If the NCAA tourney is any indication, this whole lantern festival thing is a fraud.
After we decorated our lantern we sent it up into the sky with everyone else. The send off point was in the middle of town on train tracks. When a train came through the entire area temporarily cleared and once the train was gone, we resumed.
Later in the night was the famous lantern release. You may recognize pictures of this event from blogs such as... this one. Amy, Sarah and I risked death to get a good vantage point for the release. It was most definitely worth it. Ill let the pictures do the talking.
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| Taiwanese people taking pictures of the white people. |
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| Pictures don't do it justice |
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| I bet that guy didn't think that a lantern might catch that tree on fire when he climbed up. |
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| I really wish I had a better camera. |
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| Every inch of the sky had lanterns |
My lifetime bucket list is shrinking by the day. Eh, I'm sure I will add more by the time I head home.
Other random happenings;
-We had a 6.1 magnitude earthquake the other day. Freaking nuts. Books flying off the shelves. Kids falling down. Teachers screaming. It shook pretty hard. It was the biggest earthquake in Taichung since the 1999 earthquake that killed over 2,300 people. 1 or 2 died from this earthquake. Not good!
-I am going on a long weekend trip to Kaohsiung starting this Thursday.
-I will officially get home in early August.
-Go Royals!
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