giant buddhas and hot pink helmets

I wonder if there’s a Buddha that Taiwanese people paipai to to protect them from crazy foreigners on scooters. Today my foot has been officially shoved into my mouth for every comment I’ve ever made about Asians being bad drivers. Pappa Svend has risked his life numerous times while teaching me to drive back home (both my first time, and when I learned to drive a manual)… It’s scary to be the driver but I can’t even imagine what it feels like to be the teacher when a girl is screaming in the driver seat as the car goes in reverse toward a tree rather than forward toward the wide open road (and then instead of hitting the brake she stomps on the gas). God bless my father’s patient heart for ever getting into the car with me after that incident years ago. That’s obviously a blast from the past but I couldn’t help but think of him today when Susan’s sister Sandy came by to teach me to drive her scooter. The first thing we did was head to the store so I could get a helmet. I was debating between a black on with flames on the side or a hot pink one. I opted for pink … it’ll match better with the Hello Kitty stickers I’m going to put all over it. I bought the helmet and then it was time to throw myself into the lion’s den. I was all over the road at first- swerving between the lanes. When a few stray dogs passed through the road I imagined them as pins and me as a big hot pink bowling ball… luckily I didn’t knock any of them down. My skills definitely picked up though and I was eventually able to navigate my way around while staying relatively close to the right side of the road. So now I’ve finally gotten started on all 3 things I wanted to learn while I’m over here…. Chinese, scooters and chop-sticks. Not bad for a week’s work.
I’ve also been pretty busy seeing the sights and sounds of the area. On Friday I went to Lotus Lake which is completely surrounded by Buddhist temples. I felt like it could have been taken right out of Disney world with all the colors and statues. First I walked out on nine-cornered bridge (a zig-zag bridge that the ghosts can’t cross) to the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas. You enter though the dragon’s throat and exit via the lion’s symbolizing the transformation of bad luck to good fortune.

Another pavilion was shaped like an even bigger dragon with a winding body that you can walk though… then you get pooped out at the beginning of a long pier that leads out to another Pagoda. I spent most of the day walking in and out of animal bodies, temples, and eventually a church for a little taste of something familiar.
Saturday was just as eventful. I accompanied Susan to a lunch reunion with her grad-school classmates. We went to lunch in Tainan, a city about an hour north of Kaohsiung and then toured one of the men’s factories where they made this health drink to keep you young and beautiful. I even got a box which they sell for almost $200 as a gift! Most of the people were older (very wealthy) men who liked to drink. This is where I learned the meaning of “campei” which basically translates to “empty your glass immediately or you lose all your street credit.” A lot of the men were introduced as uncle something (out of respect since they were all older) and a few of them said that since they were uncles I had to campei…. also out of respect? I think I was just the easiest and most obvious target. One of the men owned a company that sells bike racks all over the world and another sold fish which he had changed the genetic makeup of so they glowed things like “I love you” or something….. at least that’s what Susan told me. I was definitely dining with the crème de la crème of the area.

~love from inside the tiger’s throat~