Temple and Glass Museum

Hello,
One of my favorite things about teaching is that we get to go on field trips! Today we went to Lugong, to a glass factory/museum. It was really pretty. It had beautiful blown glass from little trinkets to 4 foot high temples build all from glass. I didn’t get too many pictures, as I had other things I had to do, but I plan on taking Matt there soon enough so he can see it too. My favorite was a beautiful glass water lily pond, with a pretty bridge. There was also a really cool mirror map of Taiwan.

On our way back from the field trip, I saw a temple not too far from school that I had not seen before. So I directed Matt back there when we got off. It was really beautiful, although my pictures are pretty terrible because everything was so big that they couldn’t get in focus. Although we did find a charger for our nicer camera, so our pictures should be prettier now. Our old camera was just a 7 mega pixel camera, and is pretty outdated now. Especially since we want nice pictures of our time over here! Well, there was one nice man who was at the temple who spoke a little bit of English. Basically, it’s a temple dedicated to a general of the gods, as best as the guy could translate anyways. Well, it was pretty so I thought I would put up a few pictures.



By the way, it’s been pretty cold over here! We know you don’t feel bad for us, especially since you have already had a bit of snow, but for us it’s very chilly! It’s now even getting chillier in the evenings, maybe down to the 60’s or 70’s. You see a lot of people here now wearing big puffy jackets, or at least sweatshirts. We wear sweatshirts, and if you are in capri’s or sandals at night you will be cold, as I often am. We definitely will have to get jackets before we can attempt a longer drive, especially if it will extend into the evening.

We have an amusing little story about life here in Taiwan. We live in a quieter area, at least by Taiwanese standards. There is a road out front of our place, and every so often a lane will be blocked for a day or two for what seems to either be a mini-festival or something to the gods, or a funeral. Well, a while back a lane was blocked off for two days, and all traffic was diverted into the other lane. (That at least is not uncommon; lanes here are more suggestions than rules for a lot of streets.) The first night was relatively normal looking; they had food offerings and some traditional music. The second night however was a different story! They still had the tent up, but they were feasting on food, and watching Avatar!! They had set up a big projector, and it was playing on the side of the apartment building. We felt kind of bad driving right through it, but it was too late by the time we knew what was going on.