TAIPEI

This past weekend Phil and I headed up to Taipei to meet up with a bunch of our foreign friends. Most of these friends were people we had met at orientation last August. This was kind of like our final reunion. The weekend was planned because a woman who is part of the group put together a Dragon Boat racing team named “Wily Waigouren”. (“Waigouren” meaning “foreigner(s)” in Chinese.)

The Dragon Boat Festival was yesterday (Wednesday, June 16^th) and during the Dragon Boat holiday season the Taiwanese have Dragon Boat races. The teams who enter the races are usually really serious about them...they are often professionals and practice extensively. Our team was new to the sport and had no practice time logged! :) Take a look at the (rather humorous!) e-mail one of our foreign friends got from one of her Taiwanese co-workers:

"I can't believe you are going to roll a dragon boat! Wow~That's really something beyond my imagination. I mean I myself dare not roll a real boat and would never imagine myself rolling a dragon boat. (After you see the keen competition of a race with NT30000 prize, you will know that a boat can really fly.) It is indeed a game of teamwork, and for Taiwanese dragon boat teams, they allow only the professional to be aboard. Traditionally, women are forbidden to even step in a dragon boat. It would be a laborious task to pull yourselves to the goal if you are not trained in advance. And if you don't roll together in the right tempo as a team, your boat might end up circling right there or even moving backward in the middle of the river, not to mention to fetch that flag far away!But I think that would be the fun for your team (which I supposed to be special team for foreign friends?)!"

Well, she was right! The competition was keen and our team was unable to place high enough to move past the first race. The first race took place on Friday and Phil and I weren’t able to take the day off of school. So, we didn’t get the chance to experience it. It was okay, though...we still had a great weekend!

Instead of racing, we spent our time just hanging out with everyone. We were able to watch some World Cup games, which was a pretty cool experience! Like most Americans, we had never experienced the international CRAZE surrounding the competition...people around the world love it! It was fun take part in the excitement!

Aside from that, we also got the chance to tour the Museum of World Religions. This museum was founded by a Taiwanese Buddhist order with the intention of promoting peace and understanding between people of different religious backgrounds. The museum was designed by the same person who designed the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. It was pretty cool!

Well, we hope you all had a Happy Dragon Boat Festival yesterday! :) We did...we got the day off of work! A big part of this festival is making, giving and eating rice dumplings. The picture below is at a store in Douliu, preparing for the festival. What you see pictured is the rice dumplings (sticky rice of different seasonings and with different fillings, wrapped in bamboo or banana leaves). If you’re interested in learning more about the Dragon Boat Festival you can visit this website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duanwu_Festival

P.s. As I was writing up the stuff about Taipei above, I realized we never posted pictures from the last time we visited Taipei in March. During that visit we went to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. It was pretty cool, so I thought I’d just include a few pictures of it here...