Day Two

Wow! Is all I can say. I finally got some sleep, and we had a very filling breakfast of noodles and a sandwich. We headed to school afterwards, and then went with the group to the Palace Museum. It was eye-opening. Before today, I'd never had the opportunity to see any Eastern art up close, especially the earliest examples of bronze objects found in China. I'll admit that most of the bronze and early iron age objects did'nt amaze me. The ivory objects, however, did. We saw the "Mona Lisa" of the Palace Museum. It was, in short, a large ivory ball, with 16 other freely rotating ivory balls inside, none of which, were connected to each other. The intracasies and attention to detail in the artwork was incredible.
After finishing up with our tour, we went to eat at a restaurant next to the museum. It was very different from what I'm used to eating. I think the most interesting thing I ate at the meal was a soup made from rice, that was solid. Taipei 101 was definately the highlight of my day. Sadly, due to weather, the top 10 floors were closed, so we went up to the 89th floor, where I took almost one hundred pictures of the aerial view of Taipei. It was absolutely stunning. Also we traveled in the World's Fastest Elevator, it took us from the 88th floor to the 5th floor in 40 seconds.
We then took a bus to Memorial Hall, which I found out was a memorial made for Chang Kai-Shek. We got the opportunity to take pictures of the huge statue made in his honor, and observed the changing of the guard.