June 18

Today was the dragon boat festival. I mentioned that in my previous post, but I forgot to add that it is one of the three biggest holidays celebrated in Taiwan (along with Chinese New Year and the lantern festival). We started the morning talking to my dad on skype since it was still father’s day back in Washington. We then went out and just outside our apartment they were doing a parade and some type of ceremony in the park. They had a few of the god idols out of the temple and they were carrying them and dancing them around reenacting some type of story. They also had fireworks. It was really interesting to watch and seemed to be very meaningful to the people who were there. 

We then made our way back toward the dragon boat race area. On the way we found a park. When Rebecca and I sat down we saw a man and woman with a long pole getting mangos out of the trees. I looked around and there were dozens of the mango trees. So the kids and I started throwing sticks and ended up getting maybe a dozen free mangos. 

We walked the rest of the way to the anping area and found what is supposed to be the oldest street in Taiwan. It was pretty fun with lots of vendors selling things on both sides of the street. As we passed each vendor they would look up at us and comment on our six beautiful children. The street was crowded with people, so it made quite a scene as we came through. 

The dragon boat races started around 3pm again. This time it was really crowded. We did manage to find a place to sit. We saw a few races, but it was so crowded that it was hard to get a good view. Also, there was a lady sitting right in front of us that couldn’t stop taking our picture. She would have the kids pose together, then individually, then get ones of me and Rebecca. Then she would turn around to watch the races, but 10 seconds later turn back around and ask to take more pictures. It was pretty ridiculous. It was a little annoying, but we could tell it was bringing her a lot of joy so we tried to be as compliant as possible. About 30 minutes into this, a college aged White guy came up to me and in Chinese asked if I was from America. We started talking (in English) and it turns out that he is majoring in Chinese at Minnesota State and was doing a semester of school here in Tainan. He came up to us because he saw the lady and didn’t know if we spoke Chinese and he wanted to know if we wanted his help asking her to stop. I thought that was nice of him, but we really didn’t mind. 

We watched until about 4:30 again and noticed that the weather was getting worse, so we decided to start making our way home. We decided to walk instead of take the bus. About 15 minutes into our walk we were hit by a huge downpour. We tried to quickly put our ponchos on, but we were already soaked. Also, we only had the really cheap $1 ponchos, so they all had holes in them anyway. By the time we got home we were all dripping and tired. We did go out for some dinner, but with it being the dragon boat festival we were only able to find some okay fried rice and fried noodles.

Some lion dancers. We saw a few of these in the different parades, but we only ever saw them walking around - never actually doing the lion dances.


People gathering around for the dragon boat festival ceremony. This is a small one just for the local temple.










Agnes and Elliott were throwing the zhongzi off of this bridge by our house.




The mango trees










At the Anping old street.












We tried this coffin bread. It was pretty delicious, but a little over priced compared to a lot of the other food we get.