Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year. At least, it's happy for me, because I'm of from work for a few more days!! Ah, vacation is great.

It has been about a month since I have last written here, but it seems like much longer. I have the great weight of procastination shame on me.

Up to Chinese new year, I have been working and studying chinese. On weekends I ususally attend my church and hang out with friends. I also try to do writing on the side, but too often it gets backtracted. Well, since new year has begun (Chinese that is) I have been having a fairly good vacation. On Thursday, I went to a Taiwanese Aboriginal park. It consists of a village composed of huts that resemble the houses of the aboriginals who lived in Taiwan before the Chinese came ( and who still live here, many on the eastern side of the island.) I had a great time there. We attended at aboriginal concert, and got to see them singing and dancing in their cultural dress. There are 12 different tribes here in Taiwan, and some of their clothes were very beautiful. Very vibrant and colorful and exotic.

On Friday, some Taiwanese friends and I climbed to the top of Monkey montain. Its was a nice fun climb. We saw several monkeys, and I got frisked by one who thought I had food. On the way down, that is where we ran into a little trouble. We started going down, but took a different path then we had on the way up. It ran on for a while, and then stopped at several string of razor-wire. Not to be detered, my friends said it hadn't been there before, and that we could simply climb over it (it was on the ground). Somewhere in my mind, at this very moment, sparks started to go off. They lit up my mind and cast light the the sign that spoke "danger". I couldn't help remembering that an army base lay close by.
We continued anyways, and came to a dead end. The path was completely covered with fallen trees. Someone had purposely blocked the path. Not to be detered, we continued by leaving the main path, I with my heart sinking every moment. The words "exiled" and "expelled" kept popping up.
We found a road, but it was blocked by another string of razor-wire that was lying on the ground. As we were climbing over this, a car came racing up the road, and stopped where we were. My taiwanese friends were informed that we were not suppose to be there, and that we were indeed on the army base. After a little negotiation by my friend (for the taiwanese officer wanted us to go back the way we came), a soldier got out and escorted us down the road to the gate and help us find out way out. I'm just glad we didn't get into any real trouble. So the moral of this story is if you think you maybe getting into some danger and a little voice inside of you says you should stop going the way you are, you should probably listen. That little voice is probably right.