Moon Festival Weekend

 
“Wow!” I whispered to myself as I gazed upward as far as my neck would allow. I had just stepped out of the MRT station along with my family and friends from school and there it was, jut right there towering above me in all its magnificence: Taipei 101.  For those of you who don’t know, Taipei 101 is a very famous building. It is the tallest building in Taiwan, in fact, it was the tallest building in the world at one point. It has 101 stories, hence, the name Taipei 101.


My friends were dying to take me to the 101 for a while, so, we decided to go on my friend, William’s birthday. So, there we were, starting on our grand adventure and tour of the famous tower.
Stepping into the fastest elevator in the world, we zoomed up to the 91st floor, the highest floor visitors can access. I gazed out the tall widows down on Taipei. The city is HUGE! Massively tall building and skyscrapers poked up from every space on the ground. Freeways were jam-packed with buses, scooters, and other vehicles. The site was breath-taking! Best of all, they sky was really clear so you could see everything, everywhere!

“Come on, Enjoli!” my friend, Vivian beckoned me. “We’re taking a group photo!”
And boy, did we take group photos. They insisted on taking a group photo at every turn! Haha! It was fun though. We did all sorts of poses. Now I’ll have lots of pictures to remind of the good memories we shared.
After we had finished touring and taking hundreds of photos, we went back down and had some lunch. I had a rice burger and a mango bubble drink (Of course. Bubble drinks are like my favorite thing in the world!).

 The next day was Monday, BUT, I didn’t have to go to school because it was “Moon Festival.” So what did we do? We had some more fun. Along with some church friends, we went to the beach! About an hour’s drive away, we went to the beach to snorkel. We had to climb over rocks for about a half a mile until we got there. I felt bad for the men who were trying to hold the cooler. Finally we made it though. As soon as my mom gave the ‘ok’ because our sunblock had dried, we rushed down, jumped of the rock, and swam around.

It was a whole other world under the water! Tiny, bright-colored fish swarmed around me, bigger fish swam for cover in the coral, and little crabs crawled over the rocks. We forgot to bring bread, but we smashed up some leftover sushi and gave it to the fish. They went nuts! They flocked all around us as they gobbled up the tiny pieces of food. 
The water felt amazing and I felt like I could swim forever, but, my stomach soon won and I reluctantly crawled out to eat some lunch. 

As I was eating, someone asked me teasingly, “You going to jump of that big rock over there like those people?” while pointing to a huge rock cliff that people were jumping off of, into the ocean.
“Are you kidding me? No way!” I exclaimed. Soon, I finished my picnic lunch.
“Are going with me to the cliff? You can at least jump from the smaller rock!” my Dad questioned while motioning to the huge rock looming over the water.
“Well, okay.” I agreed. I plunged into the water and swam with my dad to the cliff.
I only hesitated a second as I jumped into the salty waters. When I came back up, my dad was climbing up to the highest rock again.
"Come on!" He said. "It's not too scary!"
Filled with some new-found courage (that came from where? I don't know.) I scurried up behind by dad, along with another friend, Shin. I stood on the edge and looked down.
"Uh... This looks really scary..." I said nervously. I waited for my nerves to calm ( which they never did completely) and then finally my dad started the countdown, "3, 2,1!"
"AHHHHHHHHHH!" I screamed all the way down until I hit the water.  Sputtering, I came up.
"That was fun!" I grinned as I climbed up to do it again. I did it four or five more times before we had to leave.

It was a fun weekend. I really feel bad for all of you back in the States who don't get a Moon Festival weekend. :p