My Taiwan Adventure

You know you're more tired when you think after you sleep through 2 alarms and a phonecall. Saturday morning my bed was my best friend and I didn't see the sun until noon. I spent the rest of the day lounging about and puttering. Nothing great happened but I accomplished some much needed de-stressing.

Sunday was a day of a different colour. Together with 5 other English teachers I went to the north coast Green Bay area. The plan - paragliding! Our contact - Peter. Peter wears a very American bandana on his head, smiles a great deal and takes your money. He is obviously the photo op part of the operation. After a bus trip where we took over the back and sang obnoxiously in off-key English we arrived in Wanli to have Peter pick us up and take us to the jump site. As we climbed the hill we passed a Patriot missile battery - a mere few hundred feet from the drop zone. Interesting....

With a quick 2 minute stop to write down our names and passport numbers on a sheet of paper that was suppossed to give us insurance we were off. I have been skydiving before so I wasn't unnerved. However, I imagine if I had never done anything like this I would be very concerned about the lack of instruction or discussion. They simply strapped us into the harness and said "Go, go, go!" and we were off. I should mention this was a tandem jump.

I was daring enough even to take my camera up with me as I didn't have to handle the lines or anything. It was so relaxing just sailing about the hill face catching the updrafts and then going a little out towards the water and spiraling downwards before coming in toward the hills to sail upwards again. The neatest thing was that after 10 minutes you can land in the same spot you took off from. My driver was a quiet (occasionally grunting) Taiwanese gentleman who's been doing this for 18 years.

After we had all taken our turns in the air (3 at a time) we were again dropped off via Peter's minivan in Wanli and then set about loitering in front of 7-11 until we decided which of the beaches to go to. The final decision was to walk over to the beach that we had seen from the air. It turned out to be littered with trash for most of the beach but we just parked our things on a clean patch, stripped down (with the aid of towels) and hopped into the ocean.

I saw my first flying fish! Actually I saw two of them skipping over the waves after we splashed into the sea. It was so refreshing to have my body immersed in cool water. It was almost as good as a bath. Except when I got out I discovered some kind of light brown film all over my skin. I think it may be oil. We were swimming not that far down from the shipping lanes for Taiwans second biggest port.

What I need to remember when it comes to sunscreen is that I have a front AND a back! I'm a little crispy on my shoulders and upper back. It's part of the risk I guess.

Anyway I'm taking far too long to type this and there are many grades waiting to be done. I want to post pictures of the paragliding but my camera battery is too low to finalize my cd, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow!

Cheers!

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