KENTING

This past weekend, Phil and I and another foreign English teacher (Karin) traveled down to the southern tip of Taiwan to an area known as Kenting. Two foreign English teachers that we met at orientation live down there. So, we all stayed with them. Their names are Andi (Andrea) and Peter. Ironically they’re both from Minnesota and both went to Concordia in Moorhead while we were at NDSU. It’s a small world!

We had an absolutely wonderful weekend! The weather was perfect and the scenery was gorgeous. We started off our day on Saturday by renting scooters and doing some scenic driving.

(Peter and Karin)

(Andi, Myself, Karin)

After our drive, we went to Kenting National Forest and went on a hike. Peter ended up seeing one of his first grade students (whose English name is Ben) at the start of our hiking trail. Ben decided he was going to be our tour guide. He led our group throughout our entire hike, telling us stories in Chinese (that we couldn’t understand) the whole way! :) This kid was so cute! He’d often clap his hands to get us to hurry up, he’d let out big sighs when we didn’t take the paths he wanted to take and there were times he’d turn around and count us to make sure we were all there. It was a fun hike with some beautiful scenery. Before we left Kenting National Forest, we made sure to treat ourselves and Ben to some ice cream!

After our hike, we spent some time at the beach! Not to rub it in or anything, but how’s the weather back home?!?! :)

We spent Saturday evening at a beautiful hot springs resort. We had never been to anything like it before! There were pools of all different temperatures, ranging from very cold to extremely hot. There were pools of all different scents, colors and jet activity. There were even pools of tea to sit in and pools with fish to eat all the dead skin off your feet. It was very fun and extremely relaxing!

We spent Saturday night doing some traditional Taiwanese barbecuing back at Andi and Peter’s place. This is similar to grilling in the States, but the grills are much smaller and it’s a much more time consuming process...it’s definitely meant to be more of a social thing versus simply just a way to cook some food. (In one of the pictures below you might notice a red scooter...this was Phil's pride and joy throughout the weekend!)

We spent all of our time in Kenting on Sunday at the beach. It was a gorgeous day for swimming and relaxing!