Royal Lees Kaohsiung

... a real cool little island southwest of Kaohsiung. We rented two scooters and some snorkeling equipment and paroozed through the reef and saw many different little fish and some strange creatures that local fisherman/tour guides had caught. After that we were wiped so we came home and got some amazing pizza from a hut and called it a night. It has only been 3 days since we arrived in Kaohsiung and it feels like we have been living here for a while, this place is great.<br>

... pulled up this ridiculous song about harmonizing which had no relation to buddhism. I was so mortified by the embarrasment of hearing this song that I literally had to cover my face. It was the longest 2 minutes of my life. THEN she played it AGAIN and made it a sing along... no thank you. I was thinking, just shoot me. Really terrifying.<br><br>Tried to recover from that by going to the sutra calligraphy hall during our free time, but ...

... about the relic and construction.<br>-we have to create and present a 'personal project', for which I've chosen to investigate the aforementioned animal compound. Why are they caged (animals are equal to humans, so it seems bad karma to cage a wild bird- you may be reborn as one!)? <br>-free time- went to see the Buddha relic tooth, being held in a nearby building until the construction is done. Had to prostrate 3 times (can ...

... jo lähestyä junan lähtöaikaa, niin otettiin taksi alle ja mentiin sillä pikakyytiä asemalle. Taksi juna-asemalle maksoi 100 dollaria, että ei paha... Ei muuta kun junalla kovaa kyytiä takaisin Taipeihin, kaupasta muutama vappuolut ja hotelliin kylpemään ja iltaa viettämään. Tämä ei nyt ehkä ollut mistään parhaimmasta päästä tämä trippi, mutta tulipahan käytyä! :-) Ihan hyvä nähdä tälläisiäkin paikkoja, niin osaa arvostaa sitten niitä puhtaita vielä enemmän!

... frames or artwork. We head back to the house.<br><br>After a short time at the house, some liam-ou, and ma-jongg we head out to buy boots for Irene. We walk to the sanduo shopping district. We go to Sogo (a huge department store with 10 stories or something like that) and Irene finds a really nice pair of black ones. She asks if I like them. Does she really need to ask? They are freaking FMBs. We walk through the night market where the scooters ...

... awake during his talk, but the combination of dim lighting and a topic that did not particularly interest me led to my demise. Thirty minutes later we were back downstairs listening to talks about hydrology. There are definite differences between presentations styles in the US and styles in Taiwan. In the US, we try to put very little text on our slides and instead use many more maps, graphs, and pictures. In Taiwan, the dominate style is text based slides with ...

... Anping and explored the market place. There were a lot of food vendors and merchants peddling their wares. We bumped into Ted and Alan who were shopping to. Alan went off to get Shuying while Patrick tried to keep track of Melinda, Ted, and me. He had his hands full. None of us seemed to be daunted by our lack of language skills and we kept wandering off. Patrick was a logistics officer in the Taiwanese army when he did his military service so he really is pretty good at herding cats ...

... Bronzegefaess in dem Raeucherstaebchen stecken. Dieser Duft ist in jedem Tempel sehr markant, aber ich finde es ganz angenehm. Innen drin gibt es einen Hauptaltar mit einer Gottesstatue, oft goldfarben, meistens mit Haaren und Bart und mit echten (traditionellen) Kleidern. Vor der Statue stehen viele farbige Blumen und nicht selten Schalen mit Opfergegenstaenden, wie z.B. Obst und anderes Essbare (Chips, Suessigkeiten, Brot, ...). Desweiteren gibt es ...

... Dafu** war das Wett** heute brilliant, kein Woelkchen und 28 Grad. Moechte nicht wissen wie heiss es hi** im Somm** ist. Zum Beispiel kann man den Lotus Pond besichtigen, wo es einige Tempel gibt. D** Teich ist ab** praktisch ausgetrocknet und die Tempel sind ziemlich kitschig (und ich hatte gest**n genug Tempel:-) Das Lant**nen Festival ist hi** ein Springbrunnenfestival. Und naechstes Jahr gibt es die ...

... den wir jeden Nachmittag von 3 bis 5 geniessen durften. Gleich zu Beginn wurden wir ab** leid** mit ein** phonetischen Umschrift, dem sogenannten MPS *Mandarin Phonetic Symbols* od** BoPoMoFo *wie ABC* gequaelt. Es basi**t naemlich nicht, wie die Umschrift Pinyin, die auf dem Festland gebraeuchlich ist, auf lateinischen Buchstaben, sond**n auf komplett and**en Zeichen. Es heisst, dass Taiwan dieses System 1949 ueb**nommen hat und mitl**weile v**sucht ...