Taiwanese Parks

I love Taiwan and I love the people. However sometimes they can get a little bit sick and then your world comes to a crashing stop. Next Wednesday evening will be the Chinese New Year's Eve. The entire country will be traveling home or going on vacation and as such there will be people everywhere. As I have mentioned before, the "Old School" which I am currently teaching at has had a lot of sick children. Out of fear of making every child sick, our boss Frances decided to close down the school a few days before the Chinese New Year so that every child doesn't get sick. So last Wednesday they told us the news that we would not be teaching again until after we returned from our holiday. That means that we don't have to teach again until February 12th. We plan on going on little day trips around Taiwan and just hanging out. When I speak of we, I include Joseph, Laura and myself. The past few days we have explored a few parks, walked around Feng Yuan and been to the cultural center here in the city. Today I went on a three hour bike ride with one of my students and his father. It has been nice getting exercise and just playing around. Were I to be teaching my normal schedule I would have had to work later and longer. So needless to say I am quite happy about my life at the moment and I have these pictures to prove it.

This is near the entrance of the first park which we spent an hour exploring. Honestly I don't have a clue what this thing is but I thought it was pretty exciting. This park was really nice and it made American parks look pretty shameful. It was large and there were two sets of bathrooms, a maze, two gazebo looking buildings, two basketball courts, a garden place, two sets of playground equipment and an awesome rock structure as you will see below.

This pond had quite a few cod inside and it made me wish that American parks could look more like this, instead of the boring grassy areas found in so many American parks. It was nice to see some green space in the middle of the city and people actually using the park.

Laura and Joseph wanted to play on the swings and although the swings were a little small I think they still found them enjoyable. Behind the swings is a river made from the sewer water I'm sure. It looked nice although I don't think that swimming in the river would really be my idea of a fun time.

This is from the second park which we visited on Friday. Although it looks like Joseph is proposing to Laura he really is just asking her on a date. Actually that is a lie too. We have been looking for a way to make mint in our apartment and Joseph thought he had found something. I'm not sure if it ended up being mint or not. I'd ask him but he has his headphones on and he is busy surfing the web.