Dragonforce: The bird of freedom

The past few days have been filled with so many different and funny things that a blog post is feeling fairly daunting right now. But that's ok, because I'm gonna write anyway. This was my first Christmas away from home, and the fact that it was in a foreign country made it that much more strange. Christmas is sort of celebrated in Taiwan but it's not a big deal. On Christmas day, the school was open all day and we had to work over 10 hours that day. That was pretty sweet. Hmm, well, at least we got paid. Leading up to Christmas, they had two different assemblies for all of the older students at school. Well, they all of the classes divided up into two large groups and then they competed in 6 competitions. At the end of it, I had the privilege of dressing up as Santa Claus and parading around on stage, handing out presents to all of the students. Everyone in the audience knew it was me playing Santa immediately thanks to my fairly bright and noticeable green shoes. The competitions were a great time to watch though and very entertaining. My favorite was the arm wrestling competition in which two of the students were in a battle to the death kind of match (I'm sure that's supposed to be punctuated somehow) and one of the kids' noses started to run and they were both sweating. The match was called a draw after about a minute. Bear in mind, they were both about 10 years old. Very funny. The competitor who was my student just happened to be wearing this very tight and awkward looking white, long-sleeve shirt that day too. It was really funny.

Christmas night, we hosted a white elephant gift exchange in which I ended up with a mouse pad with the words "Bad Batz Maru." I'm not sure what that means at all, but my old mouse pad was starting to get moldy from some wine I had spilled on it so it was a badly needed gift. We opened the rest of our gifts from family and such the day after Christmas and that was great. My roommates were very nice and got me gifts and I made sure to kindly not get anyone anything return. They told me not to feel guilty but now the dozens of people who read this know that I do. However, Christmas is over so I'm making no attempt to make amends.

Today, I spent the day with little Brian's family. It started off with our usual tutoring, but at the end of the session, Brian felt compelled to start making a list of verbs, a list that eventually grew to 70 if you can believe that. It was pretty impressive and he knew how to spell of the words, except "throw up." After tutoring, we hit the road. Our first stop was a strawberry farm. Apparently, strawberry season is in the winter here so dozens of families were out in search of the perfect berry. Then we went out to eat where I again faked saying that I enjoyed everything I ate. I've never really enjoyed the Taiwanese food here but I don't want to say I don't like it so I just try to be as nice as possible. I heard in a movie once that lying about food is not a bad lie. Anyway...

After lunch, we went to a little amusement park. We rode the go-carts, during which Brian and I totally smoked his dad and sister in the race created in our minds. Then we took turns operating miniature tractors they had set-up to move sand around in a sand box. It was an extremely dangerous set-up though because it was directly adjacent to another ride and if you extended the arm of the tractor fully, you could easily hit nearby people. I didn't see any accidents but they were for sure waiting to happen. Then we did the bungee-jump sort of thing with the trampoline and the harness and ropes on either side that let you do back flips and such. It was a lot of fun, especially since it was my first time on that, but since then my head has not felt right. That pretty much sums up the day with them.

Once I got home, I discovered that my roommate Sam had been out riding his scooter for a few hours in the pouring, cold rain and he returned home drenched and borderline hypothermic. He's gonna make a full recovery though so don't worry. Other than that, I head for Australia on Thursday night so I am eagerly awaiting that little trip.

It's almost hard to believe how soon my Taiwan experience ends. I'm still trying to put all of the pieces together from this whole experience but I think it will become more clear in the months following my departure. More on that later! Check Flickr for new pictures!