Weekend in Kaohsiung - making friends

At the end of our third week in Taiwan we escaped the cold and rainy weather of Taipei for a weekend in Kaohsiung. We took the high-speed rail and suddenly it was sunny and warm. Luc gave a talk at NSYSU and met with collaborators, while Amelia and Melissa continued their playground tour of Taiwan.

Amelia continues to be a wonderful traveler. She makes friends everywhere she goes! Here she is, playing with new friends in the Kaohsiung Metro:


YuHuai Wang and I-Huan Lee graciously hosted Luc at the University and took us out for dinner at a wonderful vegetarian restaurant. The variety of food was amazing, and Amelia spent more than half of the dinner exploring the buffet with I-Huan, YuHuai, or other members of our party (students, assistants). We all had a great time!




Back at the hotel (Grand Hi-Lai), Amelia never walked by her giant fluffy friend without saying hello:

And we thought we might avoid the Hello Kitty fascination! Silly us!

We also discovered several wonderful playgrounds. This one is very close to the hotel, in Central Park (near the metro station).


The best one - so far - is on the northern end of Lotus Lake (we'll talk more about the lake in the next post), a 5-min walk from the High-Speed Rail station. The playground had wonderful slides, tunnels, wooden structures, and even a bridge. Amelia seemed to really like it, and quickly made friend with some of the bigger kids...



This little boy really liked Amelia and shepherded her around the playground. We returned the next day, and another group of little girls rapidly adopted Amelia.