Then we went to Dharma Drum Mountain, a Buddhist school for monks to drum? The place didn’t look overbearing at all and was quiet peaceful. None of that, swooping roofs, red and gold dragons or colorful sculptures. It was really modern, sleek, and minimal.

The Center was inaugurated on October 21, 2005. The buildings in the Center were designed in harmony with contours of the mountain, with brown, gray, and white as their main color, reflecting a humanistic spirit while merging with nature, and featuring a simple and moderate architectural style, making the whole environment and the complex itself a means of teaching.

In addition, in effort to realize environmental protection, ecological construction methods were adopted in constructing the buildings, so as to show respect to, preserve, and protect life and natural resources.

This was taken by someone else. Pictures aren’t allow inside the building.

The picture doesn’t do the place justice. There is a glass window behind the statue that you can look through to see the running water on the wall behind it. There is also a pool of water running around her.

Regardless of religion, it’s a really calming place and the design is really nice.

I bought this awesome mug from the gift shop.

The sillhouette is filled with silver foil and lines eminate from him. Totally my favorite cup now.

Later we went to Black Store, a restaurant my brother keeps raving about. It was good. But I felt so guilty in the end. Which is just about every night now for the past 4 days I’ve been here.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

One of the things I came here for was to get laser eye surgery. My dad got it done a couple months ago and said it was so good that he encouraged me to get it done too. Not only is it cheap in Taiwan, but the guy that did it is famous for it. It’s around 1,500 US dollars for both eyes.

My first day there I just did a bunch of tests for eye curvature, and presciption. My eyes were a lot worse than I thought! Around 890 on both eyes. Those are….asian…eye numbers. I think they use a different scale or something. They also checked the thickness cornea (a little thicker than normal) and how well my eyes tear up (more than normal).

I made an appointment to get my eyes lasered in two days time, which is yesterday. I became increasingly nervous about it. My biggest concern is that I’m a reeeally curious person and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep looking at one spot, or not move my eye. You know when you’re staring at a spot, but you can kind of see the area around it…if I become aware of the area around it, I’m not really looking in that direction right? That kind of stuff.

I had to take some pills…like anti-biotics? I wanted to know exactly what they were, but she just told me to swallow them. One of the pills was to calm me down. They changed me into a scrub gown and cloth slippers and led me into the room next to the operation room. She told me not to be frightened by the machine sounds. I could also hear the screams of the patient. Kidding.

The nurse gave me a teddy bear to hold onto and placed a blanket over me as I slide onto the table. The nurse put this huge sticker onto my face, kind of like a facial mask, but a sticker, and they taped my right eyelids open, and use a wire eye opener thingy to stretch me eye open. That kind of hurt because I have tiny eyes! After squirting different kinds of liquid in my face, she told me to stare at the green light while the doctor did unknown things. I think the scariest part, was the part where the machine cuts the flap. It doesn’t hurt, but you can totally feel the initial cut of the flap as the machine passed over my eye. That’s the blindness part becuase it becomes black and I can’t see. Which made me reeeally nervous because I could no longer focus on the green light, but I had to pretend I was focusing on something and while I was freaking out trying to focus, I worried that  I wasn’t focused and that my eyeball would be rolling all over the place. Then I could tell that the doctor fliped the flap over, and the nurse sprayed more stuff into my eye.

The lights went out and the green light turned reddish orange, in the shape of a starburst. The first split second as the laser starts startled me, because you can feel it, but it’s not painful, just sudden. A slight numbing feeling. Honestly, the sounds of the machine are scarier than the actual procedure, and fear depends on how big your imagination is.

I tried not to think about lasers cutting my eye, focused on the center of the ever sparkling starburst, and held tightly to teddy, my new best friend.

I also had to remind myself to breathe.

After the right eye, they did the same for my left, and then it was over! The actual surgery took about 5 minutes. They led me to a sitting room, where other girls who had it done sat to relax, and one of the girls kept wiping away tears. She asked me if I was crying and I said, “no…” but I thought “at least not yet…” She looked kind of freaked that something had gone wrong because she couldn’t keep crying, and that her eyes really hurt. About 3 minutes later, I understood what she meant. My eyes become more and more irritated. I didn’t really cry, but it was really annoying and it hurt to open my eyes. My dad had to lead me around to the MRT (metro rapid transit) and sat in stabbing pain for the next 45 minutes to get home.

I went to sleep right away (I didn’t know you could sleep while in pain) and the next morning, today, I am perfectly well. I have to wear these eyeshields when I go out to protect my eyes against wind and other elements. This also means that I don’t have to wash my hair myself anymore! I’m getting my hair done at the salon > < Squeeee. I love getting my hair washed in Taiwan because it’s sooo cheap and totally pampering. Not only do you get your scalp massaged, but they blow and style your hair and give you a neck and shoulder massage, all for around 6 US dollars. I would totally skip a meal in the states for something like this.

Anyhow, that’s it! My eye surgery story.