Moon Festival 中秋節

Moon Festival, or Mid-Autumn Festival, was on Wednesday (Sept. 22).  And I can honestly say that it was the best Moon Festival I have ever had.  We had no school at Berhan, and because of how my schedule is, only a half day on Tuesday.  All ten of us teachers went to Kenting.  I'll tell about that later.

Moon Festival in Taiwan parallels the Autumn Equinox.  The moon is at its fullest and roundest.  The traditional food for the holiday are moon cakes, which symbolize family unity.

The Day After...

Typhoon Clouds

I like the clouds yesterday evening.

Typhoon Fanapi!!!!!!!!!

Church was cancelled today because of Typhoon Fanapi.  Early this morning, I got up to take video of the extreme weather conditions.  I was a few seconds too late to catch a piece of sheet metal flying past my window.  The wind speed was insane.  Fanapi was tearing a good one.  A little later, I saw a tree fall down and the wind carry a cat about 25 feet.

Watch the video:

Alright, maybe that's what I wish would have happened.  Church, indeed, was cancelled because of the typhoon.  We were all thinking, where's our typhoon?  Today seemed like a normal day, maybe slightly windier than normal.  It was a nice day to relax.  I surely appreciated the down time.

To scoot about in Taichung

Saturday, Erin, Kristi, Laura, Libby, Lien and I went to Taichung.  We were going to rent scooters in Fengyuan and drive there, but there were no open scooter shops to be found.  So... by train we went.  Lucky for us, there was a scooter rental place right next to the train station in Taichung.  The first thing that they asked us for was our international driver's permits.  Which we don't have.  The two scooter people talked to each other in Chinese and then asked us how long we will be in Taiwan.  We said six months.  They talked amongst themselves again, and then said that we could rent their scooters.  Yipee!  I was a driver again, and Kristi was my passenger.  Laura has her own scooter now, and Lien was with her.  Libby also rented a scooter with Erin.  Libby probably had the most interesting scooter experience.  Her first time driving a scooter was the night before on a deserted road.  Taichung has few deserted roads.  Heavy traffic and crazy drivers were her match.  It may not have been as beautiful as driving to Guanziling, but it was still very fun!

We found a restaurant where the seats and benches were swings suspended from the ceiling.  It was so cool!  The food was really good too, but Kristi and I (we shared a meal) were so surprised at some of the portion sizes.  Our salad had about four little pieces of lettuce.  Our dessert (Italian pudding with fruit) had a mere sliver of kiwi, not even a sliver.  We were amused.

After lunch, we went to the Tropical Rainforest greenhouse at the botanical garden near the National Museum of Science.  It was really beautiful.  I loved the variety of plants and flowers.  We will have to go back and do the museum another time because it was going to close soon by the time we went to purchase entrance tickets.

Costco was our final destination for the day.  I had pizza and mango smoothie and it was glorious.  Traveling is always fun, but the scooter riding just tops it off.  We got lost a lot, but it didn't matter, because we were on scooters.  Love it!

Houli Zoo Field Trip! 后里鄉

On Tuesday, my kindergartners had a field trip to a little zoo in Houli.  I had the option to go along.  About 45 children went, 6 secretaries and 9 teachers.  It was such a weird little zoo and so much fun!  The kids got to feed a horse and a hungry hippo.  Each child was given a little bucket of food (like All-in-One for horses).  The hippo came up to the fence, opened his mouth, and the children threw the food in.  It was really funny.  They got to ride a pony.  A select few children got to sit on the ostrich's back.  Allison got to ride the ostrich!  I was so jealous.  What a unique opportunity!

A lot of the animals wandered freely.  There were deer, cows, a water buffalo, an ostrich, a pelican, etc.  The other animals were in pens or cages.  The pelican was a menace.  It was much bigger than I thought pelicans were, and he wandered around getting into trouble.  At one point, he had his beak in the rabbit pen and was trying to eat the poor rabbits.  He bit a couple of people while we were there too.

I got to hold a wallaby, 2 parrots, and a 12 foot snake!  I am not going to lie, my heart was pounding a little bit.  The zoo was so much fun, and the kids were so cute!