Good Advice

One of my students, Vincent, asked me if I knew about DEHP today (this is a chemical plasticizer thats been used as a palm oil substitute in drinks made in Taiwan, and it was recently found that it can cause cancer, among other things). He then proceeded to tell me that if I drink it I will become a girl, because it "makes your bird small". Hahahaha! Thank you, Vincenzo.

itinerary

I bought my plane ticket home. come July 22nd I'm hopping a plane that will begin a 28 hour journey which will end in Cleveland. in the mean time, I've got a packed schedule to keep me occupied :

June 26 - Brian Butts makes his Asia debut at Taoyuan Airport

June 29 - last day of teaching street slang and insults to what's left of innocence in the world

July 1-3 - Hualien for river tracing and white water rafting

July 4-9 - Butts goes home, I go to the Philippines to get a) seriously sun burned, or b) stuck in a typhoon

July 9-10 - green island; salt water hot springs and water antics

July 11-15/16 - spending the week in the cities of Taipei and Kaohsiung

July 16-18 - climbing Yu Shan, the highest peak in southeast Asia

July 19 - 22 - saying goodbye to Douliou

July 22 - flight home departs @ 2:30p.m.

hopefully more posts will follow, but in case they don't, I'll see everyone soon!

conquering everything around me

The symbol of Taiwan and second tallest building in the world isn't as bad-ass as it looks. Either that or i'm just way more bad-ass than i look (most likely it's the latter of the two). On Sunday, June 5th, after slurping down disgusting Powerbar packets of 'chocolate' and 'vanilla' flavored sludge that matched the consistency of packeted ketchup (actually, i would've preferred to have taken down a few packets of ketchup), myself and about 6000 others took to the steps of Taipei 101 and ran up 91 floors, 2046 steps, and a height of 390 meters (1279 feet). i finished at a time of 19:37 (my friend Nathan beat my time by 3 minutes, which i attribute to horse steroids i'm assuming he took when i wasn't watching). It was a hot and stuffy, cramped, dizzying climb to the top of this bamboo inspired structure, but all in all, it was a fun event.

(more pictures to be posted later on)