Solo Mission: hikin it, mcdonalds, and 28

yo!!

so its been a while since ive had anything interesting to say...well, i probaby still dont...but here it is anyway, ha!

ive been spending the last month hikin and bikin through mountains, teachin kids American culture through fast food and movies, ditchin out on chinese lessons and runnin through weather so hot it makes the trees sweat.

ill start with the hiking. theres a bit of a mountain range about 25 minutes out of town. its famous for growing coffee i guess. theres a ton of coffee joints and little towns throughout. i drive there about once a week on my scooter (i think ive mentioned this before). anyway i actually got off of my scooter one time and started footin it skyward. the first time i got rained out. it wasnt that getting wet bothered me, it was more that we kept going and the higher we climbed the louder and closer the storm was. i felt like i was dodging zeus' inferno. so we were stopped short of the peak. so i went back and finally made it to the top this past week. one of the dudes i work with went with me...poor kid. he was dying but i kept telling him we were almost there. we werent. but he climbed anyway. eventually we really did make it to the top only to see a few power towers and sheet metal buildings. weak. the view was pretty sweet though. on top of that ive been waking up a couple times a week in the way early morning to go biking with a few people. road rashin it through backroads, past rice farms and orange groves, to mountain passes that seem like theyre uphill both ways. this could be the beginning of the training for bikin it around taiwan. youre probably thinking "who does he think he is, Lance Armstrong?" and the answer is yes. yes i do.

moving along...
i've eaten mcdonalds maybe 3 times in the past two years. then i went big mac attack last week and ate a few big macs and hot cakes. the reason i went the first time was simply craving, brought on by lesson planning. said planning revolved around our class theme this term of teaching kids how to really get into the american groove by ordering at fast food joints. twice. it was delicious. i felt disgusting, the kids had fun though. for my older kids we screened some true all-american classics for them to enjoy. we showed 'Big' to our younger teen classes and then stepped up the game in our older classes with 'Me, Myself, and Irene'. awesome.

my birthday was monday, so my students and adelaide (the boss) decided to throw me a party saturday night during class time. a knock on the classroom door brought me out into a balloon filled room of crazily costumed high school kids and a spongebob cake. it was cool, and those kids are way funny. on sunday i celebrated with my work crew. the family i work for wanted to take me out to eat so we drove into one of the bigger cities close by and ate some food at Fridays. before dinner we went to this ridiculously huge 14 floor department store. so i wandered around there for a few hours while the girls did some shopping. after dinner we came back into douliou and thats when i kicked back and had some drinks with the rest of the work crew. it wasnt the usual gangsta-pool-party-bus-through-ya-city celebration but it was a good time. im stayin on that hustle with cruisin to japan in close sight. until then ill try to update more often. take a gander at my life...

random stroll through the sunday morning market

black chicken

i feel like theres something quite baller about eating some shark for breakfast.

all kindsa madness

theres a building going up next to mine

this was on a wall outside of mcdonalds

makin progress

ha! i was teaching clothes and brought some in

what are you wearing?

luke's the man

birthday night, these dudes are from malaysia. they work at the joint i chill at. theyre pretty cool

my boy matt

serious discussion being had

matt and rita

keepin these guys out late

dinner with the fam at fridays

classroom party

spongebob cake

i was focred to wear a birthday suit

this is ken. i ride bikes in the mountains with him...

cuttin cake

a motley crew

all the students together with adelaide

hello!

this is the taiwanese tradition of "lets tell this stupid american guy its a tradition to wipe cake all over the birthday boy"

mac d's

daniel is always smiling

girls ordering; sidenote - we have a "no chinese" rule in class. so when the clerk spoke chinese to another coworker, one of our girls yelled "no chinese!" at her...i laughed.