Taiwan is the bomb diggity.

Long day today, but that was expected.  And I suppose to be expected from every day on this trip.  Day started earlier than I would've liked, but that seems to always be the case.  Day started out at the OCAC meeting a few important people, listening to a few speeches, watching a video, listening to Brandenburg play in the background, getting a little cashmonay as the officials made it rain, and feeling glad I skipped out on heels as other more fancypants girls suffered their journeys through storyland.  ^_^

After splitting into groups, Hedy's group started out going to long san si temple.  There, among temples, gods, prayers, info, a tour, and market food, I saw a sort of Korean boy group, which in itself is cute, but cuteness level went up 2397023 points upon realizing the boy circled looks like Russell from the Disney Pixar animation Up.  So we basically saw a movie star today.  Picture enhanced to accentuate resemblance.

Asides from being incredibly cute and adorbs, seeing the Korean group in Taiwan showed Taiwan's openness to foreigners and their welcoming attitude.  Not only seeing a foreign group but also seeing the group in a location so essential to Taiwan, both culturally and religiously, I feel is a testament to the cross-cultural acceptance and learning that the OCAC president so thoroughly emphasized in his speech today.

Later, Kevin & I had the pleasure of winning the lotto to get the massages in our group.  Hooo boy.  I should've known it'd be painful from the start.  The start being soaking my feet in what felt like boiling water.  Following the soak, I'm pretty sure the masseuses had a good time squishing, poking, prodding, and pounding the feeling out of my feet, being egged on by none other than our counselors.  Going into the massage, my greatest fear was that it would tickle.  Pain didn't really cross my mind.  Once the other kids left to look around the night market, whether out of pain from seeing our pain or boredom from not having a massage of their own, the masseuses let up and the massage was definitely much less painful.  Here is Kevin pretending it doesn't hurt, what the masseuse is doing to his head/neck.

Regardless, the massage was a fun new experience for me, much unlike the more spa-like massages I've had in the past.


Anyway, I'll either be very sore tomorrow morning or mad relaxed.