La La Shan

Welcome to the Mountains
The overnight trip to LaLa Mountain was legendary.  It was great to have a trip with the group together and enjoy some great activities together. 
The drive to the mountain takes about three hours.  One of the students got carsick so we had to take him back to the dorm which added over an hour to the drive.  Thanks buddy.  Once we finally reached our destination, we could immediately tell how different the mountains are from the city.  The air is thinner and less humid.  It was also a little rainy and foggy so their were times when we were literally walking through the clouds. 
The first stop was a village where some of the Native Taiwanese people live.  They served us lunch of fresh whole fish and wild hog.  All the food had great flavors and we ate it straight with our hands.  After lunch we made a traditional dessert where you pound sticky rice into a thick paste and dip it in black sugar.  Very fun and delish.  After eating, people took turns singing songs from their native country.  Because we have such a diverse group, we heard songs from Taiwan, Vietnam, Kurdistan, Brazil, and India.  Next we took a tour of their christian church where Esther and Danny played some classical music in the sanctuary.  Finally, we toured the Elementary school where K-6 attend.  The school really focused on the local region.  They are extremely in tune with the nature around them.  They study local bugs and insects, grow local vegetation, and even have a lily pad pond to raise tadpoles.   I would have loved to go to school there.  Dr. Jih explained that because they are an aboriginal group, they receive more governmental funding which allows the school to do all it does and have such a low student to teacher ratio. 
Finally it was dinner time and we had a traditional Taiwanese dinner.  This is the 4th time I've been to a restaurant like this.  There is all you can eat rice, and then they bring out lots of dishes that are served family style.  Some of the common dishes are a whole fish, whole cooked shrimp, day lily soup, goat, bamboo, mushrooms, cabbage, roast duck or chicken, and lots more.  One of the difficult things to get used to is that the Taiwanese don't always have a drink with their meal.  Sometimes you get a small cup of tea, but whenever i would ask Dr. Jih if we could order a drink, he would say, "That's what your soup is for." haha. 
After dinner we all loaded up on snacks and went back to our rooms which were really awesome. It was amazing to get to sleep on a real mattress.  This was the only night that the girls and guys got to hang out past 11pm and get to know each other better.  I invented a sumo wrestling game that I'm thinking about bringing to the states. 
The next morning we woke up to have a traditional breakfast...but me and Becky had to have some real food so the cook make us toast, fried eggs, and peanut butter.  It's a good thing too because next we took a 10K trek across the mountain.  The scenery was absolutely gorgeous.  The main attraction of the LaLaShan nature preserve is the old trees.  They are giant trees ranging from 400-2800 years of age.   Literally some of the trees were around in 800BC which is unreal.  The United States has only been a country for more than 200 years so that tree was 14 times older than the USA.  WOW!!  Although there was a steep incline for the majority of the hike, the trails and stairs made it safe and easy to navigate. 
Some of the most interesting parts of the mountain is that the main crop is peaches.  There are peach stands everywhere.  The mountain is also home to a species of monkeys which love to eat peaches, so while we think monkeys are awesome, the farmers don't love them so much.  The peaches are delicious and quite expensive.  Along with just fresh produce, they make a variety of peach products.  One i tried was peach honey tea which was delicious.  The peach wine and liquor is a little on the strong side.