Eatin' Chicken Feet and Duck Brain

I just finished reviewing over 1,000 photos from the World Cross Country Championships in Amman, Jordan this past weekend. Man I wish I could've been there! It looked very exciting and I saw some familiar faces. German Fernandez, the great white hope, did pretty well by placing 11th. He was hoping for a medal, but then again so is everyone in the race. Everyone at that race is so incredibly fast. One of the Americans who competed in the senior men's race is a 27:40 10k runner and he finished 60th. Really puts things into perspective...wow!

So it's been a very interesting last few days...not sure where to begin. I can start with my blog title. It was my friend Chris' birthday on Friday so all of the foreign teachers and some of the Chinese teachers went out to a Taiwanese market and celebrated. The menu: chicken's feet, chicken rectum (no joke), duck head complete with brain and tongue, duck neck, duck liver, duck blood, and that's about it for the odd items. We also had something that's like Chicken Lo-mein but it also included octopus, squid, and oysters. And of course rice. I did sample the brain, neck, tongue, feet, and rectum. Although they all sound quite gross, they really weren't that bad. They weren't that good either. It was all deep fried and very greasy so all the different parts just tasted like over-cooked, greasy rubber. But it sounds exotic so it's fascinating to talk about :) Then four of us proceeded to play a basketball arcade game together and we almost broke the record that ONE person had done by themself. We were very proud of our accomplishment.

Yesterday, I went on a day-trip to Ilan, on the east side of Taiwan. And what a trip it was! The drive there took about three hours, and on the way we went through one of the longest tunnels in the world. It took at least 5 minutes to drive through it. Needless to say, I was not able to hold my breath through it the whole way. Once we hit the ocean, we went South for at least a half hour, winding along the side of cliffs that plunged straight into the ocean. It was as scenic as Hawaii, so I was as excited as a kid in a candy shop. The run started about halfway up a mountain at a highway pull-off. We ran up a fire road for the first 20 minutes or so of the run. There was a part of it where the course had been marked with an arrow to go straight off of a cliff and I came up to it thinking "no way" but it turned out to be a joke. On these Hash runs I never know what to expect so I sort of thought they'd be crazy enough to do that. Anyway, once we got to the top of the mountain, we started winding through the jungle, rolling up and down many hills with steep staircases. Then began a long descent of what felt like thousands of stairs. It took at least 20 minutes. It got pretty tiring but it was pretty crazy. We reached a flat section in a small town where we wound through farm land, ditches, streams, and landfills. It was at this point in the run that I thought we were almost done. Not quite...

The trail started climbing a mountain once more. I found that my stair-climbing ability had declined greatly after the first mountain. These stairs led through the jungle again, following a very nice, quiet, and peaceful nature trail. The temperature was perfect all day. It was around 65 degrees with a light breeze, perfect for running. This trail seemed to go on forever but the end was worth it. It led to a viewpoint about 300 feet straight above the ocean. In both directions you looked, you could see the island diving into the ocean. Hearing the roar of the waves was the best part. That was the first time I've heard that since I've arrived. The trail then descended a labyrinth of very steep staircases, finally ending at a little fishing harbor in Nan Ao. The Down-Downs took place in this harbor, with all 200 Hashers that participated. It was great! See the pictures for a 1,000 word description of the scene.

The Bash afterwards took place at a temple a few minutes walk from the harbor. They served rice, crab, lobster, pork, tuna sashimi, some other fish, vegetable stew, vegetable tempura, and a dessert that was some sort of fruit soup. The names of the people I can remember at my table were Recycle, Cash, Hamilton, and Math. These are of course not their real names but their Hasher names. After the meal, the other white guy at the run (yes one finally showed up) asked me if I had eaten the fish. I told him I had and he said in the future, never eat the fish at an outdoor restaurant. He said it has parasites that foreigners are not used to and we can get very sick. And of course, I found this out after I'd eaten the fish. Oh well, it's been almost 24 hours since I ate that and I'm feeling fine. We hopped on the bus after the meal, and I slept the whole way back. Another amazing Hash run! They gave me a bandana, watch, and badge too so those are some pretty sweet souvenirs. In all, the run was about 15 kilometers long, but with how much I was bonking the last half hour, it felt like a lot longer than that.

I was supposed to go on a tour today with my doorman Mr. Sen but the weather was not very good today so he bailed. I did have a funny experience this morning trying to figure things out with Mr. Sen. At 9:15 this morning, I got a phone call from Mr. Hur, the doorman on duty. He spoke to me only in Chinese for about one minute, while I just laughed because I had no idea what was going on. He kept repeating the same phrase over and over and I had no idea what he meant. I hung the phone up and got back in bed. He called back about five minutes later, seemingly repeating the same conversation again. I kept on saying "Wo ting bu dong" which means that I don't understand. Frustrated, I hung up the phone again. I figured this was related to Mr. Sen somehow so I called him on my cell phone and he told me was wanted to cancel. A few minutes later, my bird-chirping doorbell rang, and it was Mr. Hur. He motioned for me to follow him while he kept rambling in Chinese. He took me to the doorman stand and picked up the phone and dialed a number. He handed me the phone and it was Mr. Sen. He proceeded to tell me he was cancelling as if we hadn't spoken five minutes prior. Then Mr. Hur rambled some more and kept saying "goodbye, goodbye." What a morning that was! So today was simply a personal day, laying around the apartment and being lazy but getting some much needed rest. I talked to Andrew and we may be going camping next weekend in Fulong so hopefully that will make for a good story or two. Thanks for reading my rambling.

Oh one other thing I just remembered with Mr. Hur. My landlord had told me that you can take your trash out after 5 pm. I took mine out at 5:10 and Mr. Hur came up to me and started yelling at me in Chinese. I kept saying "wu" which means five and he shook his head a lot and kept saying "liu" which means six. I hung my head in shame and carried my trash bags back up to my apartment.