Updates and Dragon Boats

Well since I got back to Taiwan I've kept busy. Wednesday was Dragon Boat Festival - which is a very big deal in Chinese culture. It is one of the 3 most important festivals celebrated in Taiwan (the others being the Moon Festival and the Lunar New Year).

Dragon Boat Festival commemorates the death of the poet Chu Yuan who was a counselor for the Chu government a long long time ago. Although banished by the King of Chu for giving advice that wasn't much appreciated, he was very patriotic to the Chu state. While in exile, the Chu state was defeated by the Chin state. When Chu Yuan heard this, he jumped into a river and drowned himself.

The local fishermen who liked Chu Yuan heard what happened, hopped into their boats and raced to try to save him before he drowned. They were obviously too late and there were fish trying to eat him - so they beat their drums to scare the fish away and threw things called 'jongzi' (which is sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves) so the fish wouldn't eat Chu Yuan's body.

So to commemorate this, every year the ritual of the Dragon Boat racing is held to symbolize the effort to rescue him and jongzi is eaten in memory of the fishermen's effort to save his body.

There is also another custom which is done on this day (which turns out wasn't Michael trying to pull a trick on us). At exactly noon on Dragon Boat Festival, if you can stand an egg on its end, the coming year will be very lucky. Of course, Micheal told us that we should have THROWN the eggs at the boats as they rode by, which he said was us wishing the boat rowers good luck. I think he wanted to see us killed. So you can see why we didn't exactly believe him about standing the egg up on its end...

The World Cup has been going on (as pretty much everyone knows) and I've been able to watch a good number of the games here in Taiwan. Although I have yet to stay up to watch the 2:45 AM game yet, I think this weekend I'm going to go for it - maybe even tonight as it is the England game (which is right after the US game). And to all of you US haters out there -> USA! USA! USA!

Of course we all know that North Korea will win it all...

I've been also weighing my options about where I will be traveling to. After thinking of all the countries I could go to, I stopped and realized that I have not really even explored Taiwan at all. So although Thailand sounds nice and Japan seems cool, I think I may just end up staying here for the remainder of my time. But that could always change...

Anyhow, the pool is open at my apartment now. It's actually kind of a nice pool, but its been cloudy practically every day since it opened. And the water is very cold. VERY cold. Shrinkage cold...

Too much information?

Oh well. Until next time...