Weekend in the Sun

Never fun when you work for a company that has "Quarter End" every 3 months. It's been consuming my "free" time lately.

But we still had a wonderful weekend going to central Taiwan and then to North of Taipei. You can see the pictures on the right. I have switched to Picasa to house my photos, let me know if any of you have viewing issues. There were some changes at shutterfly recently that prevented a fan from saving the picture locally. Well, it can be done, but not easily. So Picasa should allow my viewers to do this. I don't care if people download and do whatever to my photos. I'll let you know if I start charging;)

As for this past weekend. We took the early high speed train to the south and then went on a tour bus up to Sun Moon Lake. It was a beautiful morning for such a tour. Only problem is that a bus going up into the mountains takes a very long time. Next time, we will just rent a car. Don't get me wrong, our tour guide was extremely nice and great. His English was very good in fact! I can't remember his Chinese name, but he had an American name (Peter), a Spanish name (Fernando), an Italian name (Valentino), and an English name (Dalton). I only have American and Chinese names.... I'll work on my other names. There were about 20 of us in the overall tour - some from Singapore and a lady from Chili. So we were not the only ones that required English to be spoken.

Sun Moon Lake is very beautiful. Someone compared it to Lake Tahoe how the big lake is in the middle of the mountains and of course the hotels on the lake are overly priced ($750 US per night). We took a boat trip out on the lake, stopping at the man made island in the middle that floats and has wonderful wildlife. If you get seasick, you don't want to go out to the island. Then we took the boat over to a Temple that's on one side of the Lake. Nice area with some nice big views of the entire lake. Then back on the boat, and finished the boat tour by being dropped off for our lunch at the culture village that's on the edge of the lake.

Lunch was interesting - I didn't take any photos, but might have some from Sarah or Meredith's camera later this week. We were entertained with a dancing show (think Adventureland in the summer) and lunch (think a very cheap Chinese place in the US... but didn't taste that good). Then we had tea (common for people after lunch), and I even tried deer wine. Too bad I tried the wine before I found out how it was made. It was actually really shitty to tell you the truth. They take some basic water, and let it sit over night in slices cut from a deer's horns. Didn't realize there was so much blood in deer's horns. It was pretty disgusting!! Both to taste and to watch.

For the rest of the afternoon we avoided the rain, toured Wunwu Temple (which is shared by both Buddhists and Confucious religions.... proof that conflicting religions CAN get along....), then headed to a paper making factory. This was part of the tour, wasn't our choice. We had the opportunity to make a fan (luckily was included in the price of the tour... would not have paid extra for it) and now have a souvenir from our paper factory;) By this time we were ready for a nap! We took the high speed train back to Taipei, ordered some pizza (Taiwan style) and enjoyed the rest of the evening.

As I'm typing this, there was just an earthquake. MY FIRST EARTHQUAKE. I felt a little up and down motion, then some side to side. Here are the details. A 6.1 about 100km off the coast of Taiwan, about a 2.0 by the time it hit Taiwan. No damage that I see, just two Americans who felt their first earthquake!!

Sunday we headed to Danshui which is about a 30 minute train ride North of Taipei. I was picturing a calm coastal community, instead I found a lively walk along the Danshui river which leads into the Taipei Sea. It's one of the better places in town to see the sunset (which we documented on "film") and then took a ferry ride up to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner. That's where the big bridge and night pictures are from. And like any good Wharf, there was a video arcade to enjoy:)

Hope you enjoy the pictures. Hope you didn't feel the earthquake!

Cyclones are 2-0!!! GO CLONES!!! Let's hope for one more victory on Saturday against the Squawkeyes! And Vikings lost at Green Bay thanks to our shitty quarterback.... Ahhhh - football season has begun. Isn't it fun?????

Back at it... Finally!

Sarah and I welcome our 2nd guest to Taiwan tonight. Her sister Meredith will arrive in about an hour and we are READY for her! House is clean, weather is.... ok for now.... but we always love having company!

We have big plans for this weekend. Going to Sun Moon Lake (for more than a 20 minute stop like last time) and through Central Taiwan. Should have lots of pictures to share. And on Sunday we head North to the beaches and coastal town that is supposedly pretty beautiful.

I blinked and all of a sudden it's football season. College football is already hearing useless sports casters that were good players in college but since they never got a degree (despite the full ride scholarship), they go act like they know how to analyze football. I would be more thankful if they could just form complete sentences. They are discussing Heisman Finalists??!?!? Didn't we just start? But Iowa State is off to a 1-0 start which I'll take for now. Our bid to the National Championship BCS game is still alive!! If you think about it, we're already 1/13th of the way there! Only 12 more wins (includes Big 12 title win) and we are in the final game!!

I don't make fun of your dream, so please don't make fun of mine!

And Pro football is finally here. Most of the sports fans can quit acting like they care about baseball (even though I'm still hoping both Boston and NY Yankees miss the playoffs... it could happen!!) and focus on "America's Sport". I was "thrown" into a fantasy football league last second. Looked at my team today and it's not great, not bad. I should have more time next week to look at making some improvements to my team.

Note that I haven't commented on Palin's selection as GOP VP candidate. Figure most of my readers are Republican (I'm not proud of this btw) so I might as well not try to piss off my audience. I'm sure you can guess my view. If you really want to know, send me an email. I think Sarah's tired of hearing my analysis. Lucky for me, she's in agreement.

I still think I would be an excellent political strategist. It's just a game and I can master that game.

Sorry for the few postings this week - it's been extremely busy at work and trying to stay on top of everything at home too. Good news is that Sarah has her ARC card as of this morning - so she's EXTREMELY official now. Plus she can go in and out of the country now. Thanks for all the prayers in getting her to this point!

My cousin Lindsay gets married this weekend. Hope everyone has fun without us, sorry we can't be there! You know I would if I wasn't half way around the world!

Hey Yaaa!

In celebration of Iowa State's victory last week.... Outkast was in Taiwan singing - I was amazed to see him and I was able to get so close.



Have a good Labor Day!!!