Day 2 ~ Taipei 101

Yesterday we began the day with research at the Zebrafish lab as well as hiking around the Academica Sinica campus in our free time.  A trail behind the hotel took us up above the campus on a big hill, overlooking the east side of the city.  The landscape is intensely green and lush, which is great to see in December.  At home all we can see is snow.  During the research portion of the morning, we set up chemical treatments and will observe the fish 48 hours post treatment.  After that, we had lunch at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant.  They served us excellent dumplings and pot stickers.  There are very few forks and knives here, everybody uses chopsticks.  That has been difficult for me, but it is a fun challenge and I can tell I am improving.  After a very tasty lunch, we headed to Taipei 101 to see the view from the top as well as the area surrounding it.  The view and the building itself were both beautiful, although it was a bit foggy out so we couldn't see the landscape as well as we'd like.  I was also able to find postcards for my family while there.  The mall surrounding Taipei 101 was filled with extremely expensive and exclusive stores.  It was fun to see the stores, and it was interesting to see that most of the people at the mall weren't buying things, they were walking around like we were.  Very few people were actually making purchases or had shopping bags.  While at the mall, we also met three Taiwanese school girls who stopped us to ask us some questions and video us for an extra credit assignment for school.  They were very friendly, and all wanted to visit America, specifically California.  Dinner was at a local fast food rice place.  The food was great, although the rice was a bit tricky to eat, but that's my ineptitude with chopsticks more than anything else.  We all turned in early last night as we're still all tired from the time change and travel.