Weekend Trip: Sun Moon Lake

This trip was sort of long overdue. Jens and Sebastian had talked about going to Sun Moon Lake for months, since Sebastian had never been to central Taiwan. So they finally settled on a date....and brought along their signifacant others -- which would be me and Sebastians new "girlfriend", Elaine. It was.... an interesting weekend for all of us.

Overall, we enjoyed spending time together and getting away from the city. As always, the lake is beautiful. Quiet, peaceful and green. But we had to deal with stormy typhoon weather which kept us inside for most of the day on Saturday, instead of getting to tour the lake and go on hikes as we originally planned. We also weren't able to ride our bikes on Saturday which was a bummer for me. I was hoping to utilize this weekend for triathlon training, but alas, the weather was uncooperative. Luckily, we had brought along many board games, and enjoyed drinking, snacking and playing in cafes while waiting for the rain to stop.

Additionally, Jens and I were dealing with some stormy weather between the two of us. It was a mixture of miscommunication, misunderstanding, missed expectations, moodiness and low patience from either of us. It was topped off with the realization that both of our love tanks were extremely low. Meaning, our love language, which is Quality Time, was in it's all-time low of the year. We weren't quite sure how to deal with it, but I know we did our best to connect, to communicate and work through the frustration. ( It would be another week before we fully came to resolve and achieved peace and a full love tank again. )

Despite those challenges, we still managed to have fun - staying out late in an outdoors cafe and pigging out on 7-11 snacks, enjoying the misty views of Sun Moon Lake through the rain, afternoon tea on the upper deck roof of a hotel, celebrating Taiwan lover's day at a cute restaurant, and getting FABULOUS weather on Sunday (thank you, God!!!) so that Jens and I could rent Giant bikes to go around the lake (30km) and do an additional 2k run afterwards. Finally, on the way home to Taipei, we stopped at Taiwan's 921 Earthquake Museum commemorating one of the largest earthquakes experienced in Central Taiwan in 1999.

Jens and I have decided that we want to make more weekend roadtrips in the coming year. There are just so many places to see around Taiwan that we want to make the most out of our time while we are still here.