Waterfall Trekking and Working Too Hard

Waterfall Trekking and Working Too Hard

I’m back! After a long blog hiatus, we are back. Still in Taiwan and thriving more than ever.

              In May and June, I was working full time in my internship, but I was also taking 6 courses online for my degree in Guelph. After a while I really didn’t have time to do anything else! School became my only hobby. Sleep became a luxury. Some days I was at the lab for 12 hours straight. Somehow, I still managed to squeeze in hang outs with friends, but that was the only brief reprieve I had from the insane amount of work I had to do.

 I decided to do all this, at the same time, just to see if I could, to see how much I could do. I could have postponed the school semester, but I didn’t want to delay my graduation. I also really wanted to work on the internship project. So, I managed everything for two months, and somehow it all got done and I made it out in one piece. Now, since it is summer vacation in Taiwan, I do not have to do work for the internship until September when there is the final presentation, so I’m *only* taking 6 courses. How relaxing!

I learned a lot from overloading myself, and most of all, I learned I will never do anything like that ever again! When I made the decision to take 6 courses, and work on this internship project, I made a conscious decision to sacrifice my mental health and my happiness to be able to do everything. That is exactly what happened, and since it was short term, I was able to push through it, but the stress of everything took such a toll on my health that by the end of June, I wasn’t sleeping well and had a lot of muscle pain. In fact, I realized that if I spent as much time doing things as I spent stressing about doing things, I would get a lot more done!

Having too many responsibilities didn’t actually help me get more done (in the long term), because if you don’t take breaks, your body will force you to take breaks. I find that when I don’t take breaks and work too hard, I get sick. I don’t sleep, and then I don’t work as efficiently the next day. I have to take time off to recover from being sick, and that usually ends up taking more time than I would have needed for a break.

So, I learned, the best way to get the most amount of work done isn’t to do everything. You get the most done when I balance the perfect amount of rest and work, know yourself, and know your capabilities.

I also found that when I was working and doing school, I hated school. The projects just seemed to drag on and on when I just wanted them to be done. That was because I was so burnt out, I had no energy left at the end of the day to learn. Now that I’m just doing school, I spend a lot more time just learning, and I remembered how much I like my program, I like my classes, and I like my degree.

So, now that we’re back to enjoying life, we can get back to blogging too!

Some of these memories and adventures are a little outdated, but eventually we’ll get caught up to the present day. Alas, if only I had enough time to have all this fun and write about it all as well.

YuanJue Falls

In May, I went to Taipei for the first time in 3 years. I took the sleek, fast new train into the city, marveling at the glass doors and the futuristic design. If Canada had a train system like Taiwan, I would never fly anywhere. I might not even drive! I would just take the train everywhere, or bike.

Since I didn’t have to work in the lab in July and August, at the time I was also considering moving to Taipei for those months. I’ve never lived downtown, and I thought, maybe now would be a good time to try it out.

However, when I arrived, I was immediately affronted with the bustling crowds, fancy bakeries, wide but busy streets, with cars, scooters and busses going in every direction. Low hanging clouds enveloped the high-rise buildings, so the streets seemed encased on all sides. I immediately realized that I’ve never lived in a city because I don’t want to! The hustle bustle, busy, nature-free life is not the right one for me.

Dong Hwa University, where my internship is located, has a large campus, but a small student body. Large trees and dense forests cover the campus, along with two lakes. It rains a lot, but only for half an hour each day, and the rest of the time, the sky is clear and you can see mountains all around you. From my dorm room on the fourth floor, I can see the central mountain range and the outer one separating the valley from the sea; it’s like being in a postcard every day. Students all ride bikes or use scooters, since the campus is so big you could spend all day walking around it and still never get to your class. The university is located about 45 minutes outside of Hualien City, in a town called Zhixue, which is one street long.

              While in Canada, living in a town of one street would be extremely boring, towns in Taiwan are much different. In Taiwan a town of one street is full of restaurants, fruit and vegetable stands, tea stores, Seven-Elevens, and even a dive shop. People say there’s not much to do, but I find that in small towns, where there isn’t much going on, you can get to know people on a much deeper level. If I lived in the city I might go to the movies with my friends, or go karting, or to the mall, but in a small town, we’ll just drive around, climb up a random mountain, swim in the river, or talk and walk around campus. The second options sound much more fun to me.

              Whenever I told people from Miaoli I was living in Hualien, they would always say, “Hualien?! But there’s nothing there!! You must be so bored.” (One friend actually gave me shampoo, conditioner, and a hair dryer to take back to my dorm because she was afraid I wouldn’t be able to buy those things in the town.) Then when I told people in Hualien I used to live in Miaoli, they said, “Miaoli! Nothing happens in Miaoli! It’s so boring there.” I disagree with everyone as I thoroughly enjoyed living in Miaoli and I thoroughly enjoyed living in Hualien.

              However, as soon as I arrived in Taipei, I knew I would never be able to live there. The fast pace of the city, people everywhere, hurrying to get places, the grey, tall buildings, and sad sparseness of greenery, was all too unfamiliar, too much, and would make me depressed if I had to see it every day. And Taipei, relative to other cities I’ve seen, is pretty nice. I have learned, then; I am definitely not a city person!

              However, I do enjoy going to the city for short trips. On this trip, I was particularly excited because we planned to go to a waterfall. When I was on exchange, there was one waterfall in Taipei that exchange students weren’t allowed to go to, but many did anyway and had a great time, but I was too much of a stickler for the rules to go. Now that I had no rules to contain me, I was going to make up for all the things I couldn’t do on exchange, and I was free to go to Yuanjue Falls! (Not to say I didn’t do many things on exchange!)

              I met up with my friend An from exchange, and we rented a scooter from the street, where apparently, many electric scooters are parked, which you can rent for a day if you have a license and an app on your phone. When you’re done using the scooter, you park it anywhere in the city, record the place in the app, pay online, and go on your merry way. There are also You-bikes all throughout the city providing a similar service. Busses run regularly, and there underground is also an option. There is no shortage of public transportation in Taiwan.

              We drove off to the falls, An weaving in and out of traffic. I took the time to get used to the new scenery, noting the architecture and landmarks I had visited 3 years before. There was Chiang Kai Shek, and that arch like the one in Paris! And Da’an park! And –

Bam! With a jolt I rolled off and over the scooter, crashing into the pavement as the scooter went one way, and An went another. In front of us, the scooter we had crashed into was laying on its side, with an angry woman trapped beneath it.

I quickly got up and inspected the damage. Nothing hurt, An seemed fine, and we turned the scooter upright, helping the woman with hers as well. She scolded An for his negligence, and then the stoplight turned green and everyone went on their way.

“I think the brakes on this scooter are bad because the battery is starting to die,” An said, pulling to the side of the road. “I should have checked that before.”

“Don’t worry about it! No one got hurt,” I said. A real scooter accident! So many of my friends had been in scooter accidents, and now I had experienced one as well. I was taking cultural appreciation to the next level.

“I swear I’m a good driver,” An assured me. I didn’t doubt it until he said, “That accident, if I had turned sooner… it wouldn’t have happened. Last time I got it an accident it was for the same reason. So next time I’ll make sure to turn sooner.”

Wait a minute. “Last time?!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean last time?!” One scooter accident is one thing, but enough that you can start to seek out patterns, analyze your mistakes?! That seemed like a few too many.

“Look on the bright side!” An said. “Now you have a good story to write about in your blog. (I can’t argue with that logic.)

We found a better, fully-charged scooter, and took off again, though this time I gripped the side handles, my knuckles white. What’s life without a little risk, right?

This sentiment definitely carried through when we got to the waterfall. We parked the scooter near a temple, and since by this time, the rain had started to pour. We left our shoes under the cover of the scooter and set of down a trail to find the waterfall.

We heard it before we saw it. Several long, steady streams cascaded down into a small pool, and then travelled in-between large boulders to a second pool lower down. We walked down the path to the foot of the waterfall, where a small gazebo and a little park had been built to enjoy the view.

When other exchange students had visited these falls, they posted pictures directly in the falls. Determined to re-create that exact experience, I set about climbing up the falls to the first little pool. There were a few suspicious looking ropes tied around boulders that gave the impression these falls had been climbed before. Luckily, as an avid rock climber, I was able to find cracks in the rocks and use a mixture of steady, solid foot holds, as well as quick, dance-like steps to climb the boulders. With the help of the sparse ropes, we were able to get up the falls with only a few mishaps.

It was here that I discovered a new exhilarating hobby, one I always suspected I would love but never had a chance to try. In Canada, rivers are wide, flat, and slow, but in Taiwan, rivers travel around giant boulders, fall from great heights, carve out paths in the rock. This is why Taiwan is one of the best places in the world for a not-well known sport called river tracing, which is exactly what is sounds like.

While unexperienced river tracers should hire a guide to for safety, this waterfall was relatively small, not too powerful, and a perfect place to try out the sport. We climbed all the way up to the first pool, and though An was concerned about how we could get back down, I wasn’t worried. After splashing around in the waterfall, I climbed through a small tunnel in the rocks and found a path that led straight to the trail, no rock-climbing necessary. Good thing we didn’t see it earlier, or it could have ruined the fun!

              After that, I resolved to go river tracing as much as possible while I was in Taiwan. However, on my most recent journey to the river, I had just located a good place to take my shoes off and walk around in the water when I noticed a 3 foot long, large snake slithering up the river, over rocks and into the oncoming water. I guess this is a sport that’s popular not just with humans! That deterred some of my eagerness to jump in every river I saw. Still, if you ever find yourself in an area with cascading, fast-paced, narrow rivers, I recommend you try it out!