Orchids

All I can say about today is that these picture of these Orchids do not give justice to these beautiful flowers. If I could I would have bought an orchid to take back home, and I really wanted to too! With some slight technical difficulties at first, we started the day off with a lecture from Yao-Chien-Alex Chang from the Department of Horticulture at NTU on Phalaenopsis production in Taiwan in a local coffee house near King Car Orchid Park. The three most important things he stressed was to never over water your orchid, secondly to provide a lighted environment and lastly the need for fertilizer. If you follow these three rules, your orchids will live for a very long time. He also informed us that the orchids are the largest family in plants, with over 25,000 species in the world. Professor Chang was very proud of the Taiwanese orchid business because it is the only country allowed to export Phalaenopsis to the USA in a medium, becoming the number one potted plant in the US in 2010. The reasons for the increasing industry is due to their tolerance in long term shipping, blooms for extended periods of time-some lasting up to 3 months, and the various colors, patterns and size of the flowers. He even mentioned that in the old days, the orchid harvesters had to hand pick the orchids because the seed of the orchid cannot live without a fungus mycorrhizae relationship. Dr. Shaw at Texas A&M  in our molds and mushrooms class covered this in class and it wasn't until Lewis Knudson in 1921 did mass cultivation of orchids become possible. After the lecture, we all headed over to the Orchid Green House where we had a tour in Chinese. Luckily Professor Chang was there to translate, but I just mostly took pictures.

We ended our day at the beautiful Cingshui Cliff. The sand was not like the sand near the coast in Texas. This sand was mostly rocky, with all types of pebbles with various colors and the water was quite warm. I prefer this beach area because there is no sticky sand that sticks on you but there was alot of salt in the air from the Pacific Ocean. 

After our nice little stop at the coast, we headed to Hualian where we stayed for tonight. Tonight my roommates were Flora, Emily and Cynthia. The room was great but the bed was a bit hard. Not too sure why, but anyways we had a dinner at the hotel's dining area across the street. Then after dinner we all made our way to have some famous mochi. (not too sure if this is how you spell it) But it was very delicious and I think now that may be my favorite snack! Mochi is a common Japanese snack that reminds me of fig newtons but round in shape and with alot more different flavors.

Kidneys! Ewww 

Chicken

Shrimp

Some type of pork that reminded me of pot roast 

Taro and Sesame Flavor 

 Afterwards we started to make our way to the night market, but after roughly 40 minutes of walking we still had not made it yet! So a small group of us decided to just head back because it was getting late and we had to get up early the next morning. Next time I will remember to take a taxi so my feet don't fall off. :) Tomorrow we head back to Taipei for a night and I can't wait to make my bag lighter.