Lugang Part Two

Lugang is such a convenient, fun place to visit that Matt and I couldn't resist going to the other weekend. We were hoping on a trip further away, but the weather has been making things difficult. It has been raining a lot lately! It hasn't been cool. We dont want to get caught in heavy rainfall, it can be very hard to see then. Its not like we have windshields! Anyways, we went last Sunday to Lugang. It was very crowded, but it was a lot of fun! We got to see another mini-Matsu type parade. Just a little one! Im not sure what the significance was or anything, but there were several people in costumes, and fireworks galore. No one cares that it is day time and you can't enjoy them, but that is not what the purpose of the firework is. We had some tea, poked around in some shops, and finally bought a pair of guardians, or what we call guardians anyways! We will get a picture up of them soon, but we havent taken one yet. We explored the old area, which is very narrow and has a lot of very interesting houses. We had a sausage (Yum!) and tried this other thing. Don't know what it was, but we put a picture up. It is sort of a bread thing, with veggies shoved in it and meat. Seems normal enough, but the bread is very odd texturally and their choice of veggies is quite unique. Dont ask, I dont know. All in all, it wasnt terrible though.

We also got to see a really cool talent show! At first there was a group of ladies dressed up in the costumes of the dieties, and they were doing some dances. And not the traditional kind that I was expecting! There was one, I really will have to make sure that I find on the internet, but its a really huge Youtube sensation here. We did the song and dance for a Kindy show when I still taught it. So I was pretty excited to hear the song, and then we saw them dancing! It was kind of akward and clunky since they had on these huge suits, but always pretty hilarious. Matt was convinced we had to stay to watch the next act. The next act was a group of kids who did tricks using some kind of a toy. I think of it as like the Chinese equivalent of doing tricks with a yo-yo. We never saw these toys back when were in the States, but it might have been ahead of our time. A few Brits we work with who are older than us say that they had seen them when they were younger. A lot of kids here play with them. Most people call them diablo's and these kids are really talented! It was very cool to watch! Matt's day was made when he saw a kid of about 6 years old wearing a...you will never guess it...Minnesota Twins shirt! We have never seen anything MN Twins since we have been here, and most people who are baseball fans know nada about the Twins. It's all about the Yankees here (BOO!) and to a lesser extent the Red Sox (smaller Boo). That day we saw three American baseball shirts, and they were a MN Twins, Chicago White Sox, and Seattle Mariners. I was able to sneaky snap the kid and get a picture as proof that we really did see it!

Then we went to my favorite place of the day trip, the Wunwu Temple. It is a surprisingly beautiful complex. Very old, with many huge, knarly old trees. Of course, with my luck, this is where the camera battery decided to die. So, we only have a few pictures of the temple complex, and in my opinion not the most beautiful parts. Oh well, it is less than aa hour away, we can go again. It is very large, more of a park then a temple. It has a beautiful fountain, there was some musicians set up playing very cool tunes, and a lot of grassy places and benches. They also had bathrooms! A big deal in a country that has very limited public facilities. Religious places are one of the few places that most likely have a public bathroom, other than restaurants that have alcohol or places like McDonalds. But this is a whole different issue, which I can talk about a lot! But this was a very beautiful relaxing place, until it started to rain, in which we figured was a sign to head back to our city of Changhua.



See you all soon! I hope everything is going well back home, and hopefully we will have a good Sunday, and I will have another blog up for you soon. If not, Kenting in a week and a half! I can't wait!

The Definition of Irony

So we had a very ironic thing happen to us this week. We were very happy that two of our co-workers decided to purchase our second scooter! We could use the extra money to get some stuff when we are home visiting you all :) So we went with them, got the name and registration changed, and gave them the bike! Yay! Eight hours later we are coming home from dinner, and our scooter dies. We pull over, try to restart it, it works for about five seconds and dies again. We try again, same results. Of course we are in the one place in Taiwan where there is not a scooter shop on that block. (Scooter shops are everywhere here! No joke, there is usually one every two blocks) We walk the scooter to the closest shop, and it turns out that the whole engine is shot. Eight hours after we sell our back up scooter, the one we kept is dead. We have never had any issues with our scooter before, other than a flat tire one day. So, here I was having to walk to work in the just shy of hundred degree heat with lots of fun humidity because our back up scooter is ours no longer. Thankfully repairs in Taiwan are quick, and on the scale of back home, cheap. We got our scooter back with the engine fixed (I dont actually know what they did), new brakes, and new tires within 24 hours. So we are back to scooting around, but we will not be taking that little mini vacation up to Taipei this weekend that we were hoping for. We were going to go hiking by a beautiful river only like 30 minutes away from Taipei, an easy day trip, but oh well!, another time. Oh, our bad luck! Our coworkers felt pretty bad too, although we told them they shouldn't. If that isnt the definition of irony, I dont know what is.