Lucky News Hotel Taoyuan

... to us. <br><br>While we were there we also came to some performances going on. There were some aboriginal drummers and 2 different dance performances. We sat and watched them for a while. It is always fun to see the differences between their dancing/music and ours. <br><br>After we had made all our purchases we made our way back to Taichung. It was a nice day trip and I was able to get a little bit of Christmas shopping done along the way. <br><br>Sunday:<br>I now have ...

... my uniform was from). So many students walked right past me...and only clued in when approached them and spoke English to them. It was great! We had our Halloween party that day and the students all told ghost stories. October 30th to November 1st were the Gloria English School Halloween days. We taught normal classes the first hour and then had parties and went trick-or-treating from class to class during the ...

... I also purchased a Canon 8.0 megapixel IXUS camera...which takes awesome pictures and video. Right before my first SCUBA outing I purchased an underwater case for it (since it already has a special underwater photo setting). Anyway, after two outings I had amassed quite the collection of photos and videos. I am also going to be traveling a bit in the next few months. I have a 4-day long weekend planned with Meghan in September (we'll stay in ...

... case you missed it ;). This then led me to think about striking out and getting my own apartment. I didn't want to go live by myself, I did that in Brazil...and you don't save much money. I then thought of getting a roomate....which then led me to start thinking of candidates. My candidate list was very short. It only had one person on it, really: Meghan. I knew we got along very well because in the times we were together (usually day-tripping somewhere) we never really had any ...

... crack me up and sometimes I am laughing so hard I have a hard time teaching properly. I have this one kindy class in which one of my students is called Chi-Chi. The other kids spontaneously started called her 'Lychee' one day. So now when I call her up to play a game...everyone is like 'go, go lychee!'. Seriously...how can one keep a straight face through that? In my other kindy class I have kids with strange names: 'Bright' and 'Smile'. I like calling them up together ...

... to the northern desert and southern fjord region, I also did not get to one of the most remote and isolated places in the world - Easter Island. It is so far and expensive to travel there, even from Santiago (Chilean capital). I always hold great fascination about an isolated, faraway, and mysterious place and Easter Island has all the qualities. And, don't you think those huge stone heads (Moai) are sort of cute? I would like to be in the same pictures ...

Today saw a sluggish start with minimum overnight sleep for me and a suspected overdose of MSG affecting Liz. The morning was spent snoozing - an outrage when in a new city for such a short time! - and attempting to change our flight tomorrow to a later time. What a challenge that proved to be! Locating someone within an airline connected with our round-the-world tickets was not straightforward even with the Chinese speaking servives of the reception ...

... role in the community. A lot of the work is also directed at representing the interests of the Indigenous Peoples in Taiwan. Many priests in the rural areas are aborigines, mostly from their respective tribe. Nowadays the churches in the mountains lose members in the same way as the villages inhabitants, mostly young people taking up work and looking for a better future in the cities.] In this specific church I am staying now ...

... drummers and gongs as well. The last day of Chinese New Year is celebrated in Taiwan with the Lantern Festival. The streets are filled with amazing displays of different coloured lanterns - mainly red, (another surprise!) but there can be huge 'picture' displays too. Lanterns can be simple sphere shapes, or can be very ornate. There's a big display in Taipei every year filled with lanterns of that year's animal, so look out for giant pig ...

... day in Thailand, we think the water used might have not been clean. We've learned from our lesson in this 1 short week: be more careful of what we drink and eat (I thought I was invincible and nothing can disturb my digestive system, but boy was I wrong), try to eat a more balanced meal (I got a canker from too much fried spring rolls and spicy food), drink more water (got a little dehydrated from the kayaking ...