Sad story.

Hey kids, it seems that I can't upload pictures anymore. I'm not sure why exactly (I blame China), and I'm not sure if I can fix this problem (很大的問題）。 I'm already using a proxy to get on blogspot to post. My proxy failed at logging in to facebook too. Sad sad story. I mean, I knew this was how it was going to be (with facebook) but then the proxy business just gave me false hope. And the regular internet wouldn't even load the blogger. This pictures problem is super lame because now there's even less motivation for any of you to read my blog (which you don't anyway). It weird talking to an absent audience.

Just before I got on here, I picked out pictures to put up. However, since that won't work, I'll still use them as the highlight points to talk about here and hopefully not be too boring.

My last week at Tunghai (東海）was rather sad because I didn't want to leave, but also fun as always. On the last day, I had an unfortunate headache, slept through my last class, and then during the farewell party, Da Zhang Laoshi (大張老師）assaulted my face. I had taken medicine two hours before, but it hadn't kicked in, so she did this thing to make my head better. Also, I had drunk a number of bottles of water. So those three things (I don't know which actually did it) finally made my headache better.

After class and the party, we most definitely went shrimping again. The three of us girls asked Liu Laoshi to go again, so we were going to go Thursday. But he changed it to Friday and a bigger group of people went. Courtney and I rocked because we took the claws off the shrimps without using the towel. Also, at the end, Leechew, Courtney, and I prepared and cooked the 30 shrimps we caught. I cut their legs off, Courtney salted, and Leechew skewered. Courtney and I both tried to skewer, but we just couldn't go through with it. Then Courtney cut the legs off and I salted. It was quite sad. But tasty once they were barbecued.

Early Saturday morning the five of us from Puget Sound left Taichung (台中）to go to Hualien (花蓮）for a few days. Courtney left Sunday afternoon to go back to the States, Ryan went on a river swimming trip, and Leechew, Max, and I went to see the famous beautiful gorge over there. Monday we headed back to Taipei, as Ryan, Max and I were all leaving on Tuesday (and Leechew on Wednesday).

So that's the end of Taiwan（台灣）. It really sucked leaving again, but I'll be back in approximately two years I've decided.

Ryan and I went to Hong Kong (香港）to get our visas for China（中國）. Hong Kong was interesting. We had a number of adventures, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes on purpose, sometimes unintentionally. It was rather ridiculous. I was more than tired of living out of a suitcase and was anxious to get to Shanghai （上海）. But we did see some beautiful things in Hong Kong. We went up to the peak to look down on the city lights at night. We went to a couple of beaches on the south side of Hong Kong Island. We went to a couple of the outlying islands, one of which had no cars on it. We hiked across the island from on harbor to the other in about an hour and a half. But the heat was crazy intense and we were practically drenched in sweat. Lovely.

This morning we flew into Shanghai. Finally. I'm staying in the dorms for a few days until I move into my host family on Wednesday night. I was really looking forward to getting settled in tonight, after living out of my suitcase for more than a week. And unpacking. And doing laundry. But no. In the dorms. It shouldn't be too bad. This dorm room is like a hotel. It's basically luxury after the sketchiness of Hong Kong. And I'm nearly out of clean clothes, but I'll wash some in the sink with the soap they've given us. This free soap is excellent, otherwise I would have a problem. So now I'm really really looking forward to moving into my homestay. Also, we have orientation all week and classes start Monday September 7. Then it's my birthday. Yeah!

A few bits of the past month.

Remember that time I was going to be good at this game at update at somewhat regular intervals? Yeah, that worked well.

It's been a busy month. I'm using pictures again to keep things interesting, so I have one or two from the more exciting things that went on.

At the end of July there was a solar eclipse. It was fantastic because we spent like 20 minutes outside looking at it. Then as we were about to have class for the remaining 40 minutes of the hour, everybody started running outside (including all the teachers) because the peak of the eclipse was about to hit. We were using film, CDs, a piece of paper with a pin prick hole, and a number of pairs of sunglasses. Da Zhang Laoshi (大張老師) insisted that it worked best with three.

It was easiest to see as clouds were just barely passing over it. The camera was able to capture with the cloud cover too. Also, I'm pretty sure I nearly blinded myself that from looking at the sun so much.

The weekend after that we took a trip to the beach in the south, Kending (墾丁). It was fantastic and beautiful. We persuaded them to let us go a day early and that also resulted in the renting of a regular sized tour bus to take 7 people (5 Puget Sound students, our teacher/tutor, and A-mo - the boys' roommate slash the work study student at the language center). As the picture shows, we clearly needed a bus this big.

This was one of the most southern points of the island. Just to the right of this pictures are a bunch of rocks that look like a cat. (I really only put this one on to show the next one).

There was a bus full of Chinese tourists visiting there when we were there. Umbrellas to guard against the sun, but sometimes the wind makes that difficult.

The view from our hotel the second night. Pretty much amazing.

The next weekend we went to an aboriginal amusement park. A-mo, his friend, Courtney, Leechew, three other students at the language center and me. Courtney is deceptively tall on her toes and I'm deceptively short bending over, so that we wouldn't be blocked by our classmates' heads.

We saw a show with many aboriginal dances. Then they threw this guy into the water at the end.

Leechew, Courtney, and I have made wonderfully delicious guacamole a few times. So good.

Last weekend (the weekend of Aug. 8th) a typhoon hit Taiwan. The few days before it hit were relatively cool and rainy. It was lovely. Then the day of the typhoon (Friday), when we wanted to play in the rain, it didn't rain at all. This tree has already had a rough time and it was just mid-afternoon.

It started raining again Saturday. It was a little difficult to walk in the wind and rain. The best defense was to use your umbrella like a shield vertically rather than horizontal above your head. We still got somewhat soaked.

This typhoon was actually the most severe typhoon in Taiwan in the last 50 years. This picture was taken Monday outside the language center. I have more pictures of more trees who didn't quite make it through the storm.

We went to study in Mos Burgers (Mos漢堡). We ran into A-mo and some other kids from the language center. A-Mo fell in love with a game on my ipod and may or may not have played it for a number of hours, completely taking over the high scores. We've been working to fix this problem, but I really fail at the game so am really no help.

Okay, so all this was all good and fun (and super condensed). We've done more and I have a ton of pictures, but this is just a blog after all. However exceptions must be made. We had the most epic adventure this past weekend and I'm dedicating a number of pictures to tell the story - and this is even a shortened version for the sake of space.

Liu Laoshi took Leechew, Courtney and I shrimping (釣蝦). Or rather, fishing for big shrimp using small shrimp as bait. It was in a big building with a pool in the center, and along the two sides were a number of spaces for people to sit and fish for shrimp.

Baiting the hooks took a few tries to do correctly, but we were pros by the end of the night. They were very small shrimps and very small hooks.

Once you caught a shrimp, you had to take off its claws before you could take the hook out of its mouth. The first few shrimp each of us girls caught, Liu Laoshi had to take the arms off because we were afraid. After he got the claws off he'd hand us the shrimp and say, "It's your work" to get the hook out (妳的工作). He was very busy and I asked him if he was sorry that he brought three girls shrimping. He laughed and said no, but that we were 可愛 (which means silly when used here). However, shortly after this I tore the legs off my own shrimp and it was epic. The rest of the night the three of us did it all ourselves. Here is a picture of one of my shrimps before I put in back in the water in my net.

This is the monster shrimp that Courtney caught. And it only had one claw. I'm not sure you can tell its actual size from this picture though, I may need to add another later for the full effect.

Here Liu Laoshi is baiting his hook and Leechew is trying to strangle him apparently.

I decided I might want to eat one of my shrimps right off the fishing line.

Courtney and I are posing with another shrimp I caught a while later.

So the trick to catching shrimp is to wait for a ten seconds after the floating thing goes under water so that the shrimp is really eating the bait, then pull it up slowly then quickly to get it to stay on the hook and not lose it. (There really is a skill to it haha). The next picture is ridiculous. Look closely.

Leechew somehow managed to catch the shrimp by the tail, meaning it probably started to get away as she was pulling up, but she caught its tail. The following picture is the tray of nine shrimp I caught.

Here are the nine shrimp Courtney caught (note the monster shrimp with its crazy long claw).

And 17 shrimp Leechew and Liu Laoshi caught. (We only had three nets because we technically squeezed four people into a space for three). But really, if we were separated how would that have been any fun?

So after the shrimp were taken out of the water and put onto trays, Liu Laoshi cut off all their legs. It was tragic how we slowly dismembered this poor things.

Especially since after that they get salted and skewered, while they're still somewhat alive.

Finally, the shrimps are roasted.

This last Sunday I went down to Dalin (大林) to see my host family again before I go. We took some pictures outside of the new train station which has a lovely sign of the name of the town.

At the end of the day, we visited my second host family at their new house in Jiayi (嘉義) - the big city near my little town. So below is a picture of my second host parents, brother, and sister around me and on the left. Those kids were all grown up and I kind of felt old. Also, the other brother wasn't there. On the right of the picture is my first host mother, sister, and father. My brother in this family had the unfortunate task of being photographer.

And that my friends is my story. :-) I only have three more days of class in Taiwan. Then us Puget Sound kids are taking off to see Hualien on the east coast of the island before leaving on Tuesday. I'll be flying to Hong Kong with Ryan to get our visas for China and then we'll fly into Shanghai on the morning of the 30th. I highly doubt that I'll update this before then, especially considering the past intervals. So yeah. Talk to you all later!!