My Taiwan Adventure

Well, as you can tell, humidity affects EVERYTHING here. My books all curled the second I opened my luggage and my hair has 5x the amount of volume. It went "POOF" in almost an audible way when I stepped off the plane.

The photo is far from beautiful but I managed to have it taken by a local tourist at the Big Buddah. I'm going to have to travel more or I'm going to write about the buddah until you get sick of it! Actually, I'm planning to go to Lukang today. It is only a 30 minute bus ride to the west, which should put me in sight of the south china sea. I'm scoping out the town both as a tourist and as a potential worker. There is an opening with one of the language schools there.

I am amazed by the amount of people here. The roads literally teem with children in uniforms at the end of the school day. They are all numbered visibly on their uniforms. I guess it helps with control of the population. It is hard to see all these teenagers without apparent animation. Westerners are just "over the top" by their standards.

More photos from my earlier trip:

This little old lady was watching me at the morning market, but I didn't want it to look like I was taking her picture. Steam from something (mussels?) on her table partially obscure her obvious stare.


This is the Big Buddah I keep rambling about. It's guarded by 2 gigantic lions. This is a rare photo in that there is no people on it, in it, or around it to provide perspective.


Here is the temple behind the Buddah. I didn't go inside as I'm not sure on the protocol with temples yet. Besides it's only a 15 minute walk from the house, so I can save it for when I'm bored sometime.

Yesterday I wasn't feeling too well so I spent some time getting these photos ready to post on-line so that everybody could see where I am and what I've been doing. Jeremy "chased" me out of the apartment in the afternoon so I would have to interact with the local culture. I'm not sure I interacted but I went for a very long walk out to the highway interchange. I was looking for the local equivalent of Wallmart.... "Carrefor" (sp?). I must have missed it because it is suppossed to be by the interchange. I ended up coming back without having found it, but I discovered a local grocer and Pringles. *l* Additionally I located my first whole wheat product - crackers.

Jeremy and I went out for supper... wandered about for a long time and ended up, by accident, locating a Buddhist street vendor. As Jeremy hasn't found one before and he's a "pescatarian*" (my spelling here gets more and more sketchy!) so it was a real treat. It was nice to eat something that was not served from a bubbling brown pot that smelled odd. *l* I recognized the tofu and mushrooms for what they were and suspect I'll be making the long, long, walk once or twice more before my time here is done. The Buddist sign is a backwards swastika so you would think it would be easy to spot, but around here where all the signs are symbols things kind of blend into each other. This morning standing on the balcony I actually spotted that very sign across the street where I hadn't seen it before!

Chatted with some "home" friends on-line yesterday morning - it was nice to touch base. Thanks to all the e-mail senders... I really appreciate the encouragement. Now if somebody could just take my hand and teach me Mandarin I'd really appreciate it... off to face the day I go.
Love and HUGS to those who want them.
T. Destiny

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