Alishan

This Friday was our first day off. We were given a holiday to celebrate Moon Festival. For moon festival you eat moon cakes as you stare at the moon and make a wish. To celebrate this excitement we headed off to Alishan. Alishan is one of the most beautiful mountain ranges and forest area with one of the three remaining steep-grade alpine trains in the world. Because it was a holiday weekend everybody was catching trains and buses to head out of town. Crammed, we stood on the train for 2 hours to the city of Chiayi where we took a two hour taxi ride up the mountain going from and elevation of 30m to 2200m. I wish it had not been so late so that we could have seen the scenery. After getting just a few hours of sleep we woke up at 4:40am to catch an old train up above the clouds to watch the sunrise. As I watch the sun rise I again realize how real Heavenly Father is and how much he loves us. After taking the train back and getting a few hours of sleep we headed out to hike the trees trails. I cannot describe the beauty of all I saw so I hope you enjoy the picture. The one where our hands are in the air is the 3000 year old cypress. We are raising our hands because when the Japanese occupied the area they said the tree looked like a person with their arms in the air shouting long live the Emperor.


To head back to Chiayi instead of taking the scary taxi we boarded another old train and rode down the mountain. It reminded me a little of taking the train around Disneyland, except that because of switch back sometimes we were riding backwards. In our ride down we also passed through three climate zones. It was fun to see the scenery change from forest to bamboo to palm tree in our three hour ride. At the train station our group split. Julie and Stori headed home to teach Saturday morning while Mashell, Kristen, and I caught a train to Tainan to visit the former capital of Taiwan.