Confucius say...

... don't judge us for disappearing from the blog scene too harshly. Here are our most recent diversions to appease your ceaseless hounding for more dramatic tales.

Below you will see us in front of a lovely back drop of Changhua. You can actually see our apartment building in this picture! We had decided to try out a nice bike trail that day, but we got a little lost on the way there. So we explored Baguashan Mountain for a while before eventually making it to the trail. Usually rain would ruin a bike ride, but this blessing brought in a glorious cloud cover that saved our foreigner skin and took the temperature down enough to not kill us too.

The bike trail we took meandered through a graveyard, which was eerily beautiful. The graves sprawl over the hills in a disorganized manner, but you know that each family knows exactly where their loved one is. The silence on top of the mountain was gorgeous, only punctuated by the ice-cream van quality version of Fur Elise from the garbage truck in the city far below us. I'd have to say riding through this cemetery is one of the more beautiful and enlightening things we've done in Taiwan.

Our next adventure was to make it to the Saturday Night Market on our own, with no firm directions or any guides. We hopped onto the street we knew would take us near the market, and went to town. Eight miles and some lost confusion later, we arrived; and rewarded ourselves with some high quality Night Market deliciousness. I shall call it: Explosion Changhua Corn Dog. It was love.

Then it was time to take our "Super Students" to McDonald's for some food and fun! Every two months we pick our top two students in each class for this night out that Maryland School sponsors. We play games with the kids and practice English with them until our food comes. It's good publicity for our school, and hey- we get a free American meal, I shan't say no to that!

This little treasure is Mickey, behind her is Flora. Mickey is so smart, and is one of our favorite students. Flora is in my 2A class and I just love her to pieces. She's the kind of student who walks into class, immediately informs me she wasn't able to complete her homework, and the she understands she has to use her break time to finish that homework. Then she heads to her desk to start writing in her planner. She's adorable, smart and just the sweetest student I could ask for.


At the end of September we got our first and only 3 day weekend- our school took Sept. 28 (Teacher's Day) off. We had planned a big trip to Green Island off the East coast of Taiwan. It was going to be beautiful: hot springs, snorkeling, small local population. Unfortunately a huge typhoon came through that weekend and we had to cancel the trip. Fortunately full refunds are given for typhoons! Since that weekend was also Moon Festival, we weren't too bummed since there were plenty of other things to do. For instance: here we see Ray attempting to BBQ some corn on our $3 USD grill. Our apartment complex called in a KTV (karaoke) vehicle and invited everyone out to the common area to BBQ and karaoke 'til they dropped! Because of the typhoon, it was pretty windy, hence Ray holding up the box to try and keep the wind from blowing out our coals. They also didn't have any songs in English for us to sing, but nevertheless, we thoroughly enjoyed our corn, BBQ chicken and watching several 60+ year old Taiwanese men and women stand up and belt their hearts out with varying levels of success. Good times.