July 20 - 21

This coming up week marked week six of classes and eight of living in Taiwan. For some reason of the nine weeks that we have classes ICLP decided that midterms happen 2/3 through the semester. Since midterms were this coming week my main goal was to study for my upcoming exams. Therefore not much happened during the weekend.

The big event of the weekend was going to visit one of the big tourist-y night markets in Taipei. After a day inside on Saturday studying, I decided it was time to visit Raohe Night market. Thats right, when you look up Taipei Night Markets you always see images of the Raohe Night Market (in addition to the Shilin Night Market).

Raohe Night Market

This night market in particular is one of the extremely busy night markets in Taipei, much more busy than the Gongguan Night Market near me or even the Jingmei Night Market where locals go. Besides the neon lights and flocks of tourists, I could tell that this wasn't like the Gongguan or Jingmei Night Markets. Nonetheless I was excited to go and say that I went while in Taiwan. I'm not sure if it was the insane number of people and being pushed in crowds through the market, but I am happy that I went.

Because I was in the apartment all afternoon studying I figured it was going to be a good idea for me to actually go and walk to the market. For reference, my apartment is about a 4.5 mile walk from the market. It was a really long walk, but I'm happy that I went on the walk. I had the opportunity to go and actually get some exercise, while also getting to see some of Taipei at night.

Between the graffiti, owl statues, and random Christmas lights I thought I saw some pretty cool places. The large rainbow TAIPEI sign is at a park called Songshan Creative Park, I definitely would like to see the park in the daytime, but this was a cool thing to see. I would not have seen these sights if I just took the metro to the night market.

The Raohe Night Market had a lot of interesting food and snacks throughout the street, and I was happy that I went and saw many interesting sights throughout the entire night market.

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Unfortunately, this was the big activity of the weekend. However, due to the upcoming exams this was the big event for the weekend.