Catching up....

Okay, so I skipped a few months in this blog despite the fact I had promised to show photos of Taiwan to people back home. Now, I will try to quickly get caught up and post more images. It was quite some time before I had Internet in my apartment and it wasn't all that easy to keep up with the blog on the computers in the lab at the apartment building. It seems you can't get Internet in this city until you have a phone or at least cable television. Since I didn't watch television back in Ohio, I didn't think it was the best idea for me to get cable here in Taiwan, although I hear there are a few English speaking channels. After I got a telephone, I had to wait longer for the Internet. Then, discovered that it would require a 2 year contract. Since I am only going to be here until June or July of 2007, a 2 year contract didn't sound like a good idea either. So my Internet is in the name of one of the teacher's at school. It seems this is the way people conduct business around here.... not unusual at all.
One of the truly fascinating experiences I had during the first 2 weeks in Taiwan was when the foreign teachers were taken on a trip to Ilan County on the east coast area of the island. That trip was one delight after another. I began to wish my assignment had been to the east coast. My first impressions were of the beauty I saw as we made our way through the mountains. By the time we headed back to Sansia though, were were along the ocean coast and it was even more astounding than the mountains. Many of these photos were taken from a speeding bus, so keep that in mind as you view them. We had to stop several times as a few of the teachers got violently stricken with car sickness. One of those stops just happened to be beside a huge gold statue in the mountains. There were no towns near by.... just this gold statue standing there in the dense forest of the mountain. Before too long we stopped at a rest area where veteran Taiwanese foreign teachers (ones who had been here for a few years) went and purchased some Chinese herbal remedy for travel sickness as by this time many of the teachers had fallen ill. I was too stimulated by the scenery to think about the single lane curves inches away from steep cliffs. This was all too exciting to me. At that moment, the possibility of our bus rolling over the side of the mountain seemed remote. I didn't travel half way around the world to have my adventure end during the first two weeks. I would have just floated away with a grin on my face and my camera in my hands. It wasn't long before we arrived in Ilan where our destination was the Traditional Arts Cultural Center. As we drove through Ilan, there was no question that we were in an environment very different from Sansia. Here was where I first noticed that many of the buildings are faced with tile. Much more frequently it could be seen that the houses were further apart and some isolated. A lot of the roadside area was used to make shallow pools where some type of fishery might have been conducted. There were flat rafts which constantly kept the water moving in the pools. It was definitely a curiosity for a foreigner. We spent a few hours there but I imagine it would take a few days to see even half of the sights or get a true feel for the lives of the people who worked there and how they came to learn these ancient crafts.