Friday, October 24, 2008

Hot Springs and Culture

This past weekend Jay and I went on a Hash House Harriers excursion to a place called Bailaoi, which is about 4 hours south of Taichung and in the beautiful rugged mountains. It happened to be the 10th anniversary of the Taichung Hash. So we had been looking forward to this for a while. I of course had trouble convincing my job to let me have the Saturday off, keep in mind I only teach one 2hour class in the morning and they couldn't seem to feasibly find a sub for those little two hours, so being the good employee that I am I came into work and found another hasher who had a car to drive me down later, while Jay went down on the bus early in the morning. We arrived at a very remote place with tons of hot springs. It was amazing. Unfortunately I arrived too late to make the first run on Sat. but Jay was able to enjoy a treacherous two hour mountain run. That evening we indulged ourselves in traditional Taiwanese food and beer as we all relaxed around in the hot springs. Jay and I stayed with most of our friends at another foreigners house/hostel by the river. It was beautiful to wake up to clean air and the sound of the water. The next morning we all got ready for another run which was an A to B run and ended at another hot spring. It was a very hard mountain run that included climbing directly up about three waterfalls and climbing multiple mountains. It was a fairly short one but had beautiful scenery. We enjoyed more natural springs afterwards and then headed for the long journey home. A lot of our fellow hashers found out this weekend that we are leaving fairly soon and it was very sad to see their reaction. They must actually enjoy us.... because they were very upset that we were leaving. But it is so great that we have made such good friends here. I think they are definitely the people we enjoy the most and will miss the most. We have had a lot of great times with them. I think they might even miss us more than our work but who knows. Unfortunately this entire weekend I did not take pictures and I anxiously await the pictures that other took and I will put them up as soon as I receive them.

This week Jay and I went to dentist for the first time and for the both of us it cost a total of $6, pretty amazing huh? I have never been so excited to go the dentist before. And lucky for us we both came out with clean teeth and no cavities. I think Jay and I are both pretty lucky we have never had one cavity between the two of us. I plan on keeping it that way. As for other news we just are waiting with anticipation for our marathon in one week... very nerve racking. For those of you who don't know about it. The length of a marathon is 26.2 miles of 42 kilometers. And this particular race is in the Toroko National Gorge which is the main tourist attraction in Taiwan and Jay and I haven't experienced it yet. And I still am not sure if we have picked the most pleasant way to do so, but I definitely think we will see all of it, in its entirety.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good luck with the marathon! Glad to see you're still doing well