La Atelier!

So back from Taiwan! The exterior of the studio is finished, except for painting the door and sealing the deck! The interior is well on its way. The drywall is up! Mudding comes next! I'm so ready to start painting!! YAY!!

Day 5

Well, today was our last day in Taiwan. After a morning lecture, we had lunch!
I had the fried Codfish with beans.

After lunch we did another lecture. Here's Dave posing with his last class.

Then we boarded a taxi and headed for the mountains. Nice bobblehead monk!

We went for an unexpected hike up the mountain. Hey, I was told we were going for coffee in the mountains. I think Dave planned this behind my back!

Dave was heading for the summit I think, so Allen and I returned to the coffee shop.
I had a fruit tea.

While we waited for the others and the bus coming for dinner, we saw another temple.

Then we watched the sun set.

Finally, we had dinner with a beautiful view. Here's the gang after dinner.

Mark, Jerry, Me, Lynn, Dave, Sung Lee, and Allen.

We will be leaving the hotel at 4:00 am to head to Taipai. Signing off for now.
I need to finish packing.

Day 4 - Sitou Forest Recreation Area

Today we went hiking up a mountain. The paths were paved roads, and we only went about one mile to an area called Sky Walk. It was very beautiful, but it was raining almost the whole time. I was glad to have an umbrella. At first, it was just drizzling lightly, and I noticed most of the people had umbrella's out already. Our student tour guide, Alan, insisted that I use an umbrella. I told him I wouldn't melt, and then he told me, but the rain is Acid Rain. I immediately opened the umbrella. Turns out he is correct.

Sky Walk, as we approached.

The walk was a good workout. My face and chest were covered in sweat!

The view on the sky walk.

After lunch, we went to the Science Museum where we saw an
IMAX version of Dinosaurs in Chinese.

After the show, we stopped to get Bubble Tea. Otherwise known as Pearl Milk Tea. My picture didn't come out too well, so I found one below online at Wikipedia. There are little balls of tapioca in the tea. This is why the straw is so fat.

Dinner was pretty good. I ordered a Beef Tenderloin which was good. The appetizers were Octopus and some kind of fish. The Octopus wasn't too bad, but whatever the fish was....I didn't like it. For desert we had fruit and Tirimisu. Below is a picture of the Dragon Fruit. This was the red version. I've had the white version here as well. It's really good. Tastes a bit like Kiwi.

Tomorrow we return to teaching our last two lectures. Then after dinner, I'll be packing up and getting ready for our trip back to Taipai at 4:00 am!

Day 3 - Sun Moon Lake

We started our sight-seeing today. There is a Mc Donald's next to our hotel, so Dave wanted to see if it tasted the same as in America. The menu is different, but it looks like there are some items that are the same as the U.S. He ordered an Egg McMuffin without the Canadian Bacon (he is vegetarian..only eats egg an cheese - no meat!)


He said it tasted just the same as in America!


Then we had a driver and a Graduate student intern pick us up and drive us to the lake. The interns here are all English Major Graduate students. So they act as our interpreter. Our driver knew a fair amount of English, too. He was very nice and suggested we go to another place after the lake, if we had time. On the way we saw many trees that look like palm trees, but were not, and MANY banana trees! The look like they grow wild here.


Once we got to the lake, we boarded a Yacht for a lake tour. The weather was nice, but quickly changed around the lake during our trip.


Here we are on the Yacht: Dave, Me, and our student intern, Lin. She said her name meant zero in Taiwan.


Our first stop was a small island in the lake. There was this owl sculpture. Lin said if an owl appears in your village, it is a bad omen.


This is a view of the small island from our second stop. Second stop was to visit a small temple.


This temple was to honor a Taiwan man who visited India in the 16th century and brought back many things to Taiwan.

There was a very large incense burner in front of the temple....

and some animal statue seats.
Our third stop on the trip was a small aboriginal town. There we did some shopping and had some Taiwan ice-cream.

After our Yacht tour, we had lunch at a hotel restaurant. Lin said the meal was part of the package tour. Here is my platter of food that was brought out. Starting at 2:00 and going clockwise, there was a salad of vegetables, fried tiny shrimp, rice, mushrooms, bamboo, and center was edamame with wild boar.

After lunch, Dave wanted to do some rowing. So he rented a boat and rowed out into the lake.

It started to rain while he was in the center of the lake.
It seems to rain here every day in the afternoon.

By the time he got back to the dock, where we waited with our umbrellas, he was soaked!

Then the driver took us to a potter kiln. It looked like a school where the students were learning to make cups and plates. It was huge. I took many pictures. There was a kiln in the shape of a snake. Very long. It rained the two hours we were there.


There were displays that looked like a gallery. Displays also to teach the process of pottery.

After we left we stopped at a temple that was destroyed during an earthquake 9 years ago.

On our way back to the hotel, and then dinner, Lin got motion sickness as we drove down the mountain. The driver had to stop 6 times for her to vomit. I felt so bad for her.

Tomorrow we are supposed to hike on a mountain. I will take many pictures.!

Day 2

The view from my hotel window!

I was so tired last night that I went to bed after watching a movie on Cinemax. Yay...English!

Today Dave and I graded 30 student portfolios. Ugh. They really need to learn not to put EVERYTHING in their portfolio, just their best stuff. Some of them had uncompressed files that were 3gb! It took forever, since we had to copy the large files to our laptops in order to see them.
They also need to know how to edit their stories. Most of them were 6-7 minutes long! Most of them were boring! But we did get to see a few good pieces, too!

Then we had lunch and then taught a class in the afternoon. We went to dinner at a Japanese restaurant where we had Sushi and a 9 course meal! I should have taken pictures of each course, but I forgot. I will start taking pictures of the food before I eat. Japanese food here is alot like Japanese food in America. Chinese food here is NOTHING like Chinese food in America!

On Day 3 we are going to Sun Moon Lake ! No work today! I will take lots of pictures and post some of them.

Taiwan - day 1 continued...

Here we are at the beginning of the day..we had to be ready by 9:00 am for orientation. I think I managed to get 3 hours of sleep. With no alarm clock in the room, I'm relying on my cell phone that is not working right now (thank goodness because the surcharge is $1.99 a minute - U.S. dollars.

Here is the view down from my window...look at all the scooters!


This is a tree on campus..pretty weird..nobody knew what kind of tree it is.


After lunch today, we were given these bowls of fruit seeds, with a gelatinous sphere surrounding them, soaking in a slightly sweetened liquid. It looked weird..but it was really pretty good. I was told it helped settle the stomach after lunch.


One of the other presenters is Mark Farquar, yes, you read that right. He had a character named after him. Yes...you know the evil villain from the first movie. He seems like a pretty great guy. I'm glad I had the chance to meet him.


Here's Dave at dinner. I think he ate about 12 plates of food at the buffet - and all of it vegetarian. Some of it was cooked up just for him. I guess he felt obligated to eat it. Not to mention the entire watermelon he must have consumed and 2 or 3 bowls of ice cream.

Then we headed back to the hotel. Got there about 10:00 - phew!

Well..that's all for now. I'm pretty tired. I think I need to sleep.

Taiwan!

This is the plane we flew from LAX to Taipai, the last leg of our 24 hour flight trip. We were delayed an hour waiting for fuel!


We arrived last night after 25 hours of flight travel, then had to get driven to Yunlin, which was about 2 1/2 hours from Taipai by car. Our driver kept falling asleep at the wheel, so I spent that time kicking the back of his chair and asking him if he was ok to drive. I don't think he understood me, but at least it kept him awake. The hotel is pretty nice. Here is a picture of the building that houses the Digital Media Program at National Yunlin University where we are doing out lectures.