Sights Set on the South-East

Another week later, and I still can’t report solid plans for my departure.  I am clearly in an avoidance stage, even though thing are wrapping themselves up for me every day.  This week, my Chinese teacher told me it would be our final lesson together, seeing as her school was about to begin “summer hours” and we wouldn’t have time to continue lessons.  It is weird to think that after studying for so long that it is over.  I hope to continue studying on my own, mainly for my love of languages, but I can’t predict how successful that will be (it would probably do wonders for me reading and destroy my speaking). 

I feel like it has been ages since I have mentioned classroom activities, but there were a couple of lessons this week that were particularly enjoyable.  The first of which was a “blue folder” (supplementary) lesson for my intensive class.  We have just been working on story-building words like ‘first, next, then, after that, and finally’, so I decided to take the story concept into actual book making.  I the students folded their books and then were surprised when I handed them each a pair of scissors and asked them to cut 4 slits in the page to create five ‘flaps’.  The students were then asked to write several 5-part stories, starting each sentence with one of the story-building words, and writing each sentence on a different flap in the book.  The result was a ‘flip book’ that allowed the students to mix-and-match their sentences to create new, funny stories.  The thing that was best about this project wasn’t the idea though, it was the fact that, as I called break and began collecting the books, my students begged me to let them continue working during break time.  How often do children request more work? Especially when it is writing work!  The final products are really entertaining, I’m proud of my little ones.   Even younger than that, I seemed to keep my youngest intensive class pretty entertained with a treasure hunt this week.  I typed a series of clues, each showcasing a preposition, and sent the students on a quest to find hidden letters in various rooms of the school.  The students carefully read the clues, and impressed management as they went from bathrooms, to classrooms, to cupboards collecting their letters until they were able to spell out a sentence: ‘LOOK UNDER A DESK’.  I’d like to say they were surprised to find their reward candy, but some of the students had already discovered the treasure before the game began.

When the work week was over, it was my turn to play.  Sometimes I get a crazy idea, and I run with it, this weekend was a good example of that.  On Friday night, as I was out to a late dinner, I realized I wanted to go to the east coast for the weekend.  Despite the last minute nature of the trip, I even managed to convince a friend to tag-along with me.  A train ride to the city of Taitung, which is in the south-east of the island, takes about 6 hours so we planned to forgo sleep and leave on the first south-bound train (6:53am).  We both dozed off to the steady chug of the train, and woke up only minutes before our destination.  We made our way to Fuli station where we rented a scooter and drove through the mountains to the coast of Chenggong Township, our destination for the evening.  With nothing booked for the day (due to the spontaneous nature of the trip), we weren’t certain what our plans should be.  We wanted to go whale/dolphin watching, but arrived at the port about 45 minutes after the final boat departed, so we had to book tickets for the following morning and distract ourselves with other destinations for the evening.  About 10 minutes from the pier was our other intended destination of the journey: Sanxiantai.  Sanxiantai is a small, volcanic island situated just off the coast near central Chenggong and connected to Taiwan by a long footbridge.  The footbridge takes walkers over 8-arches, which are intended to resemble a dragon (the result is similar to representations of Loch Ness Monster).  Once you reach the island, a wooden boardwalk leads tourists on a short walk, which strangely fails to showcase any of the island’s attractions.  Realizing that we would need to leave the path, we skipped (or possibly a less graceful verb would be more appropriate) across the rocks as the waves and rising tide threatened our path.  We came across a two-forked signpost and followed to the left to see the “sea-eroded cave”.  The snake on the path and rickety staircase weren’t deterrents, but our lack of flashlights finally convinced us to turn back from the pitch black cave and explore higher grounds.  While I imagine my friend would have preferred returning to the boardwalk at that point, I was determined to see the island’s light house, so I kept moving forward, (though halfway up a staircase to the highest point on the island the steep, unending stairs made me question that decision).  Finally, we reached the top and were rewarded with…the most unimpressive lighthouse I have ever seen. It was little more than a shack, but at least the view from the top was photo-worthy.  As the sky began to darken, we realized we needed food and shelter for the night.  I’ve joked that my spontaneous nature will eventually get me into a lot of trouble, but I will say that luck was certainly on my side this weekend.  We could have been stranded with no where to stay, we could have missed all of our trains, we could have been bored, but that wasn’t the case.  We began driving own the road and were directed to a cheap little hotel about 10 minutes away that was surprisingly spacious and well furnished.  Quick showers to remove the day’s sweat, and we were asleep almost instantly upon hitting the pillow (I haven’t gotten that good of a night’s sleep in ages). 

The view of SanXianTai with it's 8-arch bridge and pebble beach. 

Island-bound, walking over the Pacific Ocean.

Sunday morning  we awoke early (by my standards, though I was fully rested due to the early night), and went to the pier for our whale/dolphin watching cruise.  The trip started with a 30 minute “seminar” about local marine life, but with the information being solely in Chinese, I worry we missed the majority of it (though I was able to translate a few of the group poll questions).   The cruise lasted for about 2-hours and took us a fair distance from Taiwan’s coast and into the Pacific Ocean.  We only saw two groups of animals, one believed to be a parent and child Pygmy Killer Whale, and the other identified as several Risso’s Dolphins (unfortunately, although we were very close-by, I failed to catch a decent photo of either group).  When the cruise ended we raced to get our scooter back to Fuli so we could return to Taitung City in time to see one of it’s famous museums.  With luck on our side we returned to Fuli before exceeding the 24-hour rental on our scooter, and made it to the train station in the knick-of-time (so much so that they let us board before buying our tickets, and paged the conductor to hold the doors for us as we ran to the platform).  

Back to the shores of Taiwan after a beautiful day at sea.

Almost time to return the scooter, it's been a long day on a hard seat. 

An hour later we were back in Taitung City, and shortly after that we were at the doors to the National Museum of Pre-History.  While I don’t typically consider myself to be a “museum person”, this site was on my ‘to do’ list so I had to give it a go.  I was very impressed with the design of the entire museum, each room was strikingly unique, and displayed the artifacts perfectly.  The museum is divided into three main sections: Taiwan’s natural history, Taiwan’s indigenous people’s history, and Taiwan’s pre-history.  The artifacts of the pre-history portion of the museum were primarily excavated from Beinan Cultural Park, which is a nearby archaeology site (which inspired the museum’s construction) boasting both the titles of “largest Beinan cultural site” and “most complete archaeological site” in Taiwan.  The Beinan culture was active during the Neolithic Period around the Rift Valley in South-eastern Taiwan.  Most of our information about the tribes of this region come various pottery pieces, stone coffins, and jade tools/jewelry, many of which are now on display in the museum. 

Assembling pottery in a hands-on exhibit at the Museum of Prehistory.

The rest of the evening was only about as memorable as and train journey could be.  We arrived back in Changhua county just before midnight and I stayed awake only long enough to run a load of laundry before sleeping off the weekend.  I still have a few more cities to scurry off to before I leave, so I imagine there are some adventure-packed weeks ahead of me, I can’t wait to see what I get up to next.