7 with a Squiggle
Just finished my second week of Chinese lessons. It has been a challenge to say the least. Of the eight people who started we are down to four regulars and there’s a person who shows up a couple of days a week. The 3 other regulars besides myself are all Japanese. So seeing as they know the characters already, on Tuesday my teacher basically dropped Pinyin (the English alphabet pronunciation). Wake up call for me. I’ve been struggling all week to catch up and stay afloat. It seems like every other day I contemplate quitting, but I’d like to get my Chinese good enough to at least get around town, so for now I’m sticking with it. All in all, I have learned over a hundred characters in two weeks. Basically I can introduce myself and tell someone where I am from; oh and count, haha. Not bad.
Wednesday evening after class, I met up with a fellow teacher named Ralph to cycle the long way home. He showed me a bunch of side roads and alternate routes from a few of the schools I’ll be teaching at. Nothing too long, probably about a 15 mile evening, but awesome none the less. It was then I realized I was going to enjoy cycling here; even at night when you can’t see anything.
It’s been an adjustment getting used to being back in school as well as on the bike. I’ve been gone from both for too long, but it’s great to be back. Hopefully in another few weeks, I’ll be back in the swing of things and not be so tired from trying to juggle them both.
Today I went on a ride with Ralph into the mountains past Daxi. Started at 6am and headed east towards Longtan, where I teach on Fridays and Saturdays. We took a mixture of awesome back-roads adding a few extra miles. They were well worth it to avoid the traffic. The weather was perfect; the typhoon (basically a tropical breeze) finished up yesterday afternoon. Cooler temperatures and a slight breeze followed us into the mountains.
We cut through Shihmen Reservoir park and took a little break at the top of some stairs to admire the view. Afterwards, we weaved throughout the back of the park into the mountains and onto Hwy No. 7, or otherwise known as the northern cross-island highway. It’s a sweet road, and I hear I haven’t seen anything yet because it only gets better. After a couple of kilometers we turned off onto 7 with a squiggle (Ralph’s name, and appropriate). We climbed this road up throughout the mountains and then proceeded to have an awesome 12km downhill. The mountains are so accessible from home it’s insane; I will be getting my climbing legs soon!
Shihmen Reservoir
View of the Valley back towards Longtan and Chungli
Once back in the valley we cut through some rice and leek farms on tiny farm roads. So cool, except almost being killed going around some of the turns. Too small for cars. We followed these farm paths for close to 10km before entering Longtan again and heading back to Ping Zhen (home).
Valley
Sweet bridge that led us to the farm path
End of the farm path and back to crowded roads...
Of course my first trip in Taiwan on a bicycle wouldn’t be complete unless I almost got hit by a scooter (seriously they need to look to the right before they pull out) and got a flat about 5 km from home. The good news is that it happened near a 7-11, which I found out is incredibly nice to cyclists and keeps a floor pump and mini tool kit inside for free. Sweet! 7-11s just went up a notch on the cool scale when I found this out. The ride finally came to an end and I can’t wait to get back out on the road!