Tuesday, June 25, 2013

heading south

Just as I thought things we're starting to head south around here (ie the kids are almost on summer vacation from Chinese school but still have to come to KNS every day and are going CRAZY) we decided to literally head south.
In honor of my friend Rachel's birthday we went straight to the beach by way of scooter. Driving a scooter through rural Taiwan is a real treat. Pineapple fields, palm trees every where and poop. I swear every once and a while as we were driving my nostrils were overcome with an immense amount of poop aroma. There is something to be said about not smelling things while in a car!
Other than a few small bouts of rain, the drive was awesome. We got there just in time for the sun to come out. It was a very rough day in the ocean however, so we weren't really aloud to swim. So instead we played games, relaxed, made new friends and drank beer.
As the sun sank lower we headed inland a bit to an aboriginal hostel owned by a friend of a friend who is now a good friend. We settled in and got right to work on the huge feast we had brought with us to BBQ. We have over 20 people with us and enough meat to feed about 80.
As the night progressed we landed on a huge game of adult musical chairs and take a shot if you're out, singing songs with an aboriginal on the guitar and of course a little KTV fun with some men across the street.
It was one of the top weekends yet!
So, here's to new friends and as always a cold beer.














Wednesday, June 12, 2013

running?

In a feeble attempt (thus far) to start my 1/2 marathon training I've gotten in to Hash runs. When you say that to many people they are a little put off. They think we're running to find drugs or something quite ridiculous. Rather, we are running with a large group of people around the city and have a beer drinking get together to end the evening. I decided that free beer was worth running for and gave my first runners trail a try. 
I had done a few in the past but we had only walked them. So we tied up our laces and hit the trail.
This last run was on Monkey Mountain. It starts out with two people running ahead and leaving trail markers with chalk or cards on the ground. To add to the element of excitement we did the run at night. It was pitch black and straight up. We wore head lamps but still often were in quite dark and peculiar mountainous areas.
That evening we ended up running about 8 kilometers and about 2/3 of the trail was straight up that dang mountain. We came in first for the women runners and were quite proud of ourselves!!
At some points I wasn't sure if we were running to get to the beer faster or simply so we weren't caught by the poisonous mountain snakes that we had heard about!
All in all it was a great first runner's trail and I'll hopefully be able to do many more in the future.
My newest friend here and new coworker is Rachel. She's vowed to do the 1/2 with us and help keep me accountable! I'm worried for her. I think she has a pretty big task a head of her!