Family Picnic

A few weeks ago some of the girls in our apartment decided that our family needed to have a picnic along the bike path. I decided that since I am a member of the family I should probably go and enjoy the ride. We started off with a lunch at the park benches. We brought along our own meals of sandwiches and shrimp fried rice, well I brought along the shrimp fried rice. Joseph choose to bring along a sandwich as you can see.

We had to conclude our meal with a little song and dance number. Sara, Joseph and I all had to perform the song and dance routine and you can access the amazing video on Joseph's blog. But if you prefer to not take the time you can simple gaze at the picture below. This was inbetween numbers, actually it might have even been the finale of one of the songs.

We soon got bored of the song and dance routines and proceeded on our merry little way. Be ye warned of the next few pictures you are about to see. Apparently in Taiwan a person shouldn't be taking pictures in the cemetary, but we pulled a few strings and snapped a few shoots anyways. The picture below is from one of the graves or rather headstones I suppose. It is quite elaborate and kind of puts the the American graves to shame. You can really see the awesome little dragon creatures on the front of the graves. If anyone knows what these graves translate to be please let me know.

While we were in the middle of the cemetary we decided to pose with our Taiwanese man bags. I am ashamed to say that we have had them for almost two months now and this might be the only picture I have of the bag. The bags are quite convinient, I suppose that I am beginning to understand why the Europeans travel around with the bags. In America we have cars to carry around our stuff, but since we use the scooters and buses as transportation we need a bag, or rather a manpurse. You'll also might notice the flowers in our hair that we were given by the ladies.

While leaving the cemetary Joseph got a little tired and so Emily Joy had to give him a lift over to his bike. Miraculously Joseph recovered his strength when he returned to his bike and was able to return home safely. Joseph actually has more pictures like this than you would imagine. Hopefully you're imagining more than one.

Following the trip in the cemetary we stopped for some Taiwanese ice cream. Sara got really excited and accidentally dropped her ice cream into the little stream. Rather than making her fish it out of the stream the man was kind enough to give her another scoop. Luckily I have my camera pretty much everywhere I go so I was able to capture this moment.

The day ended with a beautiful sunset over the polluted canal. Everyone went home with a great smile on their face and we all felt a little bit more relaxed and ready to teach on Monday morning. I am beginning to understand why people love to get away for the weekends. Even our little day trips around town tend to give us all the energy we need to continue teaching. We certainly do not get enough sleep to give us the energy so we have to find it some other way.