The first day that I got to Taitung (台東) I went with my host family to visit the grandparents who live alone on a mountain. It was a really cool experience seeing the mountains and the way that people live in the country. The house was really old and the grandparents raised chickens and grew vegetables themselves. Unfortunately I couldn't really talk to them because they were only able to speak Taiwanese and the grandfather could speak Japanese because of the Japanese occupation in the 40's. The third picture is of fruit trees that grow a fruit called "peepah" (which is actually the Taiwanese name for the fruit, I have no idea what the Chinese name is). I probably haven't touched on the subject in my blog yet, so I will do it right now. There are two or three main languages spoken in Taiwan and 14 aboriginal languages. The two most popular languages are Chinese and Taiwanese. Everyone learns Chinese in school, but about half of the population learns Taiwanese as their first language. The two languages are both from China, so oftentimes people can speak both fluently due to their similarity. However, the exchange students for the most part only learn Chinese, so when people speak Taiwanese I cannot understand anything that they say. But almost everyone in Taiwan can speak Chinese, so there is usually not a communication problem. It was really neat to get to go up into the mountains and escape from the hustle and bustle of the city for awhile.