Drai's New Ride

Cruising for chicks.

Drai's First Concert

We took Drai to his first rock concert at the high school today. The main reason we went is his new nanny was singing at it but her set was pushed back two and a half hours and we finally ended up leaving before she performed. A couple of the bands were quite good actually. One in particular was doing Santana covers almost perfectly.

These pictures are from him rockin' out...




And the bottom two are from when I took my eyes off of him for 2 minutes. He found Jenny's markers and decided to do some impromptu artwork on his face and the floor.

August

There isn't much new to report around here. Drai is doing very well. He is starting to stand up on his own a lot and can now climb up on the bed. He moves incredibly fast. We went out for dinner last night with Mike and his girlfriend Sandy. I had just finished commenting on how fast Drai's hands were. Then another guy showed up that I hadn't seen in about a year. After about two minutes of watching Drai grabbing things, he said, "My God that kid has fast hands." So perhaps he is destined to be a goalie. Or a card shark.

He has now mastered saying, "Mama" and started saying "Dada" today. He also can say the cats name, "Bao Bao."

Everyone told me I would be amazed how fast babies grow up but I didn't really understand until now.

Taiwan is still recovering from the typhoon. About 6-600 people died in it. Most were buried under mud slides. The majority of the people that died lived within two hours of here. It is pretty sad. Especially watching the news and seeing their president lie constantly about it. I was watching him give English interviews on Reuters and CNN and saying one thing; then turning around and saying something completely different to the Taiwanese media. For example, he said on English TV on the Saturday that they didn't need outside help and could handle it. But then, when everyone died, he asked for outside help. He then blamed his underlings for not bringing in outside help earlier and told the Taiwanese media he didn't know they had turned down the outside help. (Even though, it was he that did so.)Then, he told the Western media that he would take full responsibility as he was president. Then, the next day all the guys under him tailored their resignations but he did nothing. It's very frustrating to watch. All politicians lie but this guy really needs to start getting busted on it. Taiwan needs a Jon Stewart equivalent to expose the punk.

We lost our awesome nanny. She needs a full time job to help her family, so we had to find another one quickly as she only gave us a one week notice. I think one of my students is going to do it. Which will hopefully work out well. She doesn't know much about babies but we can teach her and Jenny is always just in the next room teaching when the nanny will be taking care of Drai. She is a hottie too, so Drai will be happy. I can't hire any ugly nannies. That would be child abuse right?

Typhoon Madness

The worst storm in 50 years. That is what they are saying. It was hands down the biggest I have seen. Two weeks ago, they were reporting that Taiwan would have to start rationing water because all of the reservoirs were reaching critical levels. (We haven't had much rain this year.) After 12 hours, all the reservoirs were overflowing. It rained for 48 more hours after that. The hotel next to the one were staying at in TaiDong fell into the river. You can see that here.

Our house was fine. We didn't leak at all but our neighbor was gone for the weekend and his balcony drain got plugged, so his whole apartment filled up. The elevators in our building stopped working, too. Thankfully, we live on the 3rd floor and not the 20th. The worst thing for us is that all the city's water supplies have been tainted. So we now will not have running water for at least three days. It has only been 24 hours and I am already itchin' for a shower. I usually have two a day and wash my hands obsessively. You don't realize how much you use water until you don't have any.
Dishes. Toilets. Brushing your teeth. Washing your hands. Showering. Cleaning. Laundry. Come Thursday, I am going to be going mad.
Thankfully, I have it much better than a lot of the people in this city. While driving to work today, many areas looked like a war zone. Soldiers were out helping people move all of their furniture out into the street to be taken away. Many of them had water two meters high on their first floors. My physiotherapist said he came downstairs to find his fridge and washing machine floating on their sides. His scooter and car are ruined. 1000s of pigs and cows drown in the floods. Which need to be cleaned up quickly to ward off disease. Actually, today I asked my junior high students if they had seen that on the news. They said they had. I then told them how I had gone there today and found that if you sharpened a stick really well, you could walk around and poke the dead carcasses with the stick. They all kind of nodded but didn't question why I would do that. So I then acted the next bit out while saying, "You can also just stab them over and over with the stick like this... but it smells bad." Total silence. I then started laughing and went on with the lesson.

There were pictures in the newspaper today of hands sticking out of the mud on riverbanks. It is pretty awful. I couldn't imagine being the people trying to clean their homes after that. I said to Jenny, I would just want to move.

Almost every area we visited on our 4 day holiday last week are destroyed. Every place we visited was the worst hit. We are so lucky we drove home when we did. I couldn't imagine being caught in that.

Anyways, I am going to go sit with my stinky wife now. And maybe poke her with a sharp stick.

Cutey

Back Home

Well we made it. Thank God we didn't decide to stay another day at the hotel, which is what I wanted to do. Jenny said that we really had to leave before it hit. We were going to take the long way back but we found out there was a faster, more dangerous but more beautiful road directly through the mountains. I chose that one!

It was awesome. The road was usually about the size of one and a half lanes or smaller and it winded it's way slowly up to the very top of the mountains. Every corner gave us another breath taking view of a valley or mountain top. When we reached the top, which is apparently the highest part of the highway in Taiwan, we were literally above the clouds. Then, the winds from the impending typhoon started pushing the clouds into the valley, which looked amazing as it silently seeped into the gorge. The air was perfect and it was probably about 25 degrees. We then started noticing that the clouds were getting heavier really fast and actually starting to surround us. It was kind of like horror movie fog. If I walked twenty feet from Jenny, I would disappear. We hopped back in the car and started heading back down the mountain but became completely engulfed in the cloud. I literally could only see a car length in front of me. Thankfully, there was hardly anyone on the road. We passed one area that looked more like the Swiss Alps than Taiwan but we couldn't stop because we literally couldn't see anything.
Long story short, we got back to Tainan it one piece. We turned on the TV and were surprised to see that the typhoon had been upgraded to a Super Typhoon and the whole island was to be shut down. I am so happy we aren't on the road today. The winds are insane. Some of the strongest I have seen in Taiwan. Signs are going flying by on the road. I went out to get some tea and was literally being pushed down the sidewalk. I stood on marble and the wind slid me along on it without moving. I wish I had a waterproof camera. I kept trying to take pictures but the rain is traveling at a horizontal angle, so even under cover, I get blasted.
The whole building is rumbling.

These are some more pics of Toroko and the trip home.

Some Vids

Toroko

We arrived in Toroko Gorge this evening. It is on the North East of Taiwan. I now fully understand why the Dutch called Taiwan, "Formosa" when they settled here. Formosa means "beautiful island." The whole trip up was absolutely incredible today. The majority of the drive featured desolate beaches with water shining every color of blue imaginable on one side and bamboo forested mountains on the other. Just when I thought the views couldn't get any better, we entered Toroko Gorge.

Toroko has the smallest, sketchiest, most stunning road I have ever driven on. The majority of the road is barely 1.5 car lanes big. The roads are cut through the marble and limestone cliffs. In the river bed below are massive bolders strewn about everywhere. On the otherside of the road is just a massive rock face. It looks exactly like the painted mountain schemes you always see in old Chinese paintings. Where waterfalls seem to drop forever and little pagodas sit perched on their ledges. A total dreamscape.

It took us 6 hours to get here because we stopped so many times to take pictures and look at the view. We haven't even seen half of it yet. We are staying at a great hotel in the middle of the gorge. It has an infiniti pool on the roof surrounded by the forest and on the bottom floor has a beautiful lap pool, sauna, work out room, bowling alley etc. I would have stayed here at least two days but we just turned on the TV and saw that the typhoon that was heading towards Hong Kong has switched paths and will probably nail where we are currently staying head on. So we now have to cut our trip short and race back through the mountain pass before it hits. I think it will be at least a 10 hour drive tomorrow. Not good for the back. These roads are the last place you want to be driving in a typhoon though. LAME! I am feeling good and really like it up here. Stupid typhoons. I guess I will just have to come back another time. Perhaps with YOU!

Kenting and TaiDong

Sorry, we didn't blog earlier but we were having technical difficulties. We have finally made it up to Toroko Gorge in Hualien County, Taiwan. It is on the North East coast of Taiwan. Toroko is definitely incredible but I will get to it later. Day 1
We borrowed Jenny's cousin's car and drove out of Tainan early Sunday morning. I was dreading driving a car for the first time in Taiwan but once getting out of Tainan, it was quite easy. Except for the odd insane driver, it was quite easy and we managed to not get lost once. We headed down South to Kenting. I forgot how awesome Kenting is. It is only two hours south of Tainan but I never go. It looks like Hawaii but way cheaper. They have lots of great food and amazing beaches down the coast. The first day we stopped at the Kenting aquarium. I wasn't anticipating anything remotely good and figured it would consist mostly of half dead fish swimming slowly about in algae ridden pools. However, it turned out to be the best aquarium I have ever been, too. The whole thing was basically a series of glass tubes that winded their way deeper and deeper into this massive tank. So the fish were swimming above you, below you and next to you. At the bottom of the tank was a massive wreck, which served as home base for the biggest variety of fish I have ever seen. Reef sharks, rays, whale sharks, tuna, the entire cast of "Finding Nemo" and one huge one that was about the size of a Harley Motorcycle. I have no idea what it was. The slightly weird thing though was that as you leave the aquarium, you see all the beautiful fish you just spent hours taking photos of again. Except they are dead and being served in all the aquarium cafeterias. Humans are weird.

We then headed into Kenting, which unfortunately got nailed by a thunder storm. So we ended up spending most of the night in the hotel. The next morning, we were up early and ran across the street to the beach. This was Drai's first time on a sandy beach and he promptly scooped up a handfull of sand and ate it. This lead to one really angry baby. He was also pretty scared of the thunder the waves were making as they crashed on the beach. It was pretty deserted and the waves were massive. Actually, the waves were the biggest I have ever swam in. At least taller than me. It was hard to swim out past where they were breaking and I got tossed a good number of times but it was quite fun. I then swam back in after about an hour because Drai was just not getting into beach time. Just as I stood up to get out, a massive swell blind-sided me and put out my back. (Not impressed.) So figuring our trip would be ruined, I sulked into a massage therapy place. Luckily, they managed to get me back into decent shape. We then drove out to other beaches and checked out the places we normally couldn't if we had taken a bus down.
The next morning, I woke up with an ear infection. Or the beginnings of one. Again annoyed that I just can't seem to catch a break from some sort of ailment, I said, "Screw it. I am not having my vacation ruined by this crap." So we drove across the island to TaiDung. Which was about a three hour drive. It was a beautiful drive but a little sketchy, due to the very narrow road and odd insane tour bus driver. I found a witch doctor at a pharmacy in TaiDung who managed to give me some sort of cocktail which pretty much wiped out any pain from the ear infection. Our hotel there had a nice pool but that was about it. The meals there (which were included) were totally nasty. Even Jenny wouldn't eat it, and she eats everything. The continental breakfast the next morning was even worse. It was huge and there was literally not one thing I would eat at it except white rice. So we ended up having breakfast at 7-11 before heading to Toroko Gorge. Drai has been traveling really well and except for falling of the bed three times, he is doing well. He did manage to bruise his cheek on the last fall though as he hit his head on the coffee table on the way down. My son is retarded.

Bump on the Noggin'

Jenny beats him.