Day 6 & 7: Homestay in Lin-Kou, Gold Mountain, and Juifen Mountain

 Although we have been in Taiwan for only one week, it has felt like much more time has passed.  We now had some down time with our host families.  We would return to a new high school on Monday.  Saturday was spent getting to know my host family.  Mr. and Mrs. Yeh are both math teachers at Lin-Kou high school and they have a 10 year old daughter who is in 5th grade. It was nice to have a quieter day today, because I was so exhausted from the past week. 

On Saturday I went to the local fruit market, watched Sherlock Holmes with the family (they were so nice to let me watch it in English, while they read Chinese subtitles), and then I joined them at a dinner hosted by their friends.

On Sunday we took another excursion.  Jacki #1 joined me and my host family as we traveled about an hour away to Jinguashi and nearby Jiufen Mountain.  As with many areas of Taiwan, we had to travel up a very winding road - my dramamine has come in very handy.  As some of you know very well, I DO NOT do well with motion sickness, ugh. Before going up the mountain, we stopped a beautiful waterfall to take pictures.



Gold Mountain Waterfall with my host family


Jinguashi is a town in northern Taiwan, known for it's gold and copper deposits.  Jinguashi is home to the Gold Ecological Park. The Park preserves some of the area's Japanese era buildings (Emperor Hirohito's living quarters and a shinto shrine amongst others) and contains a museum which tells the story of gold mining in the area.   I had no idea that Taiwan had so much gold.  The gold is what once attracted many Europeans to Taiwan and during the Japanese colonial period, the Japanese set up a very profitable gold mining business.  Even after WWII and the Japanese left, Jianguashi remained open. In 1987, the mine officially closed and now remains a tourist hotspot.

We had a wonderful lunch with spectacular views high in the mountains, went through a gold exhibit and I was able to touch a block of gold worth $10 million dollars, and then traveled through the remains of the gold mines wearing our hard hats.



Views from our lunch




Jacki had the best herbal tea - so soothing





Touching the big block of gold!

 


Inside the mines




Sitting in an old mining cart on the railway


 Next we went to nearby Jiufen Mountain.  Here, we got to experience much of Taiwanese culture with it's quaint streets, awesome views of the Pacific ocean,plentiful tea houses, street vendors, and snacks galore.



Inside the narrow streets of Jiufen




An extrememly popular dessert in Taiwan - flour balls with red bean. They go crazy over this stuff!

 



Amazing views of the Pacific Ocean from a teahouse we stopped at

 On our way home that night, we drove along the coast and captured some great pictures of the sunset and scenery. Jacki and I chatted in the car while the family past out from our busy day. We returned home that night to eat some pizza and Taiwan beer.  It was nice to have a little slice of life from home. Back to the grind tomorrow with our first visit to Lin-Kou high school.



View from our drive along the coast back home