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.

We have a door and skylights!

Well, It's been about three weeks..and we were gone on vacation. The weather is getting HOTTER and so the window to work is smaller. But we have a door and skylights now, and the shingles are going up!

The Studio...cont'd

The days are getting hotter....almost unbearable. I'm amazed that Bob is still working on this. It is starting to look great!

The Studio

Here's the progress from yesterday. This is getting exciting!!! ;)

Bienvenu dans mon Atelier!

BACK

FRONT

Well, it is FINALLY happening!! We are building my painting studio, a 10 X 14 building in our backyard which was designed and is being built by my neighbor, Bob Niedergall. I asked him to make it look like a New Orleans Shotgun from the front, so we'll see how it turns out. I started taking pictures of the progress from the front and back...as you can see above.

Nathanael's 3rd Birthday Party!