Guandu and Week Two

Okay everyone I know that it has been awhile and you all probably know how much I miss you all. Anyway, I have definitely slowed my happy whirlwind roller coaster adventure time down quite a bit now that classes have started and I find myself poring over books, flashcards and listening to recordings for hours leaves me with very little time for fun. However, I forgot to post this last event. My friend here Larry, invited me to go last Sunday to Guandu Temple. We were there for an entire day, so when I got back I didn't have the energy to do a post about it.

Anyway, the temple is amazing. Not only is it a very large, old and prestigious temple. It is very unique in that it houses many different deities, many of which I found very interesting. I mean there were people who came to pray to the deity of examinations and I can tell you that that one was very popular. The main deity was locate din the center of the temple and was a protector of fisherman and the seas. It made sense given that historically the area was a very important fishing area. Other deities that I encountered was the one for medicine, which I could very much understand given the many ailments that are about nowadays.

The most astounding thing to me about this temple was the architecture and design. I uploaded some pictures of the place, but I don't think that they will do justice. Everywhere throughout the temple were exquisite and complex handcrafted designs. When I say everywhere I mean everywhere. Every single wall, frame and pillar seemed to be adorned with master craftsmanship. i cannot even begin to imagine what it was like to handle that work or even how long it probably took. All I can say is that if you are coming to Taipei I highly recommend seeing this temple. It is a little out of the way and there wasn't much in the area besides the temple, but I can most assuredly say the place had quite a bit of character.

I also got the chance to do some real bike riding as well. Though I can't say that it was a good thing. For those of you that know me I am old and fat so it was tough. But my friend and I had the chance to ride along the river and admire the scenery.

My second week of classes went a lot better than the first week, but I can feel my Chinese skills improving. The first week I did feel confident enough to have full conversations in Chinese for fear of quickly getting out of me vocabulary depth, but now if its something I don't know then I ask and keep going. It has been a lot of fun here and it hardly feels like I have been here a month already. Time flies and I am just hoping that I can do a little bit more exploring while I am here.