July 31-August 2

Shorter weeks of classes are hard. Don't get me wrong, I completely love them. But once you have a schedule and routine down for the whole five day class week, switching and condensing it into three or four days is sometimes worse.

July 31 was about as normal as my weekdays have been this summer during classes. I did give my Final Presentation topic to my teacher though. Before I leave Taiwan I will be giving a five minute presentation (in Chinese) about my travel to Guangzhou.

Taipei 101 Sign

August 1 - When it becomes the first day of the new month you often try and take a step back to realize what has already passed. I've lived in a foreign country for two months. I got to see sights never imaginable and so much more. But suddenly, I've only got 17 more days left in Taiwan and 28 days until the start of sophomore year. It's completely bizarre. Something that I realized was that even though I had been living in Taipei for the last two months I had never been to the top of Taipei 101. I figured that had to change.

August 1st also happened to be one of the most clear days of the summer. There were blue skies and nice pockets of pretty clouds. It was time to make the journey. When I got there, I thought for some reason that I'd have to go through a whole security thing like I had to in Guangzhou with the Canton Tower. I was wrong. The entrance to the Taipei 101 observatory was very painless.One of the best parts was how quickly the line for the elevator went. That is because Taipei 101's elevator travels 1670 feet at a speed of 37.7mph in the span of 30 seconds. It was fast.

Here are some pictures from outside and at the bottom of the Tower in the waiting area for the elevators.

A few pictures from the top of the Tower at the indoor Observatory level.

I went up tot he top of the tower close to 5:40-ish and I decided to stay up there for a while as I had plans to catch sunset. Since it was so nice outside with great weather, after a travel around the observatory level with lots of pictures, I ventured up a flight of stairs to the outdoor observatory lookout.

There were some clouds rolling in around 6:25 (sunset at 6:40), but thankfully I was still able to get a nice sunset shot that I am happy with.

While I was standing outside taking pictures of the sun waiting for the perfect moment, I recall hearing a small humming sound that overtime became more apparent. That was when I realized that it was the tuned damper inside the skyscraper. After satisfied with my pictures of the sunset, I went back inside to go find the damper.

The Taipei 101 Tuned Mass Damper acts as a pendulum for the 101 story building and offsets building saw by 30 to 40 percent. Since Taipei is so close to a major fault line, this insertion into the Tower has been extremely beneficial. The pictures don't do this damper justice, but take my word for it. This thing was HUGE.

Friday August 2, definitely wasn't going to beat the day before it. However, after visiting Taipei 101 I went to a fruit shop near my apartment and bought fruit. I conversed with the fruit shop's laoban and asked him his suggestions. I asked “什么水果甜甜的？” --> "What fruit's are sweet?" Granted, I already knew the answer to the question. But I wanted to say that I was able to actually converse with the man in Chinese. I was primarily on a goal to find these weird looking fruits that I had seen all over Taiwan. Finally learning that these fruits, 蓮霧（liánwú) are called wax apples I decided it was time to try them. Since it was my turn to bring in fruit for CET students for Fruit Friday, I bought a few. I know that this didn't really happen on the 2nd, but it was a thing that happened FOR Friday. Anyways the rest of the day was fairly uneventful.

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Alright, I've got a few more posts and then I'm caught up. Time really is flying, and I can't believe that I'm almost done here in Taipei.