Fun=Rice

Hello Hello,
Dear Readers its me Katherine. Sooo not too much going on today but starting tomorrow the next four days will be really fun and interesting!! This morning we spend our second of three lectures with an awful professor( of course we have three lectures with the only bad teacher). We learned about moving people out of resisted positions with one finger/two fingers/ one hand/two hands. It was not very interesting and he got off topic alot! I also have been walking around all day with a massive knot in my left calf due to climbing an obscene amount of stairs yesterday- which I do not regret because it was the best adventure as of yet. Rachel learned last night that the word rice in chinese is fun. She asked what does fun mean in chinese and was met with the response "fun is rice" This was pretty funny and ironic. then rachel proceded to make up jokes- there is alot of fun in this country- we have fun with every meal- would you like a big bowl of fun or a small bowl of fun etc. With each day we become a little more out of it english wise from talking with everyone and adding chinese words to our vocabulary which causes alot to be funnier than it really should be!

For lunch we got to experience the school's cafeteria. They had a buffet in the middle. You put as much food as you want and then they weighed your food and charged you by how heavy it was. They had chicken nuggets!!! Then we went to clinical. One of the coaches for Tae Kwon Do was the gold medal olympic winner in 2004 and he signed both rachel and I's Polos!!! He also said Rachel was cute :) Our teacher and father figure who tags along on all our trips also signed our other sleeve jokingly! He is great and his two girls are funny (they come along too) this time I had wu shu! It was the best so far. There are three kinds; regular tai chi, tai chi with weapons, and a faster punching kicking kind. The fastest was my favorite but a little scary as they kept yelling really loudly and one of the guy's scream sounded like "DEATH!" Towards the end of the practice our buddy Eric taught us how to spin the long staff around. Our friend Pat even quickly taught himself how to do an aerial. That is a handstand without hands!!!



Next we had pizza hut for dinner and fried chicken!!! Some normal food but I ate way too much. Then straight off to "yoga" none of us wanted to go and the instructor put on upbeat pop music. Needless to say we were all dancing while in our poses. She thought we were bored so decided to change the lesson to an aerobic dance which was really fun! We also had some freestyle dance time which was pretty funny- complete with the sprinkler, shopping cart, fishing, q-tip, washing dishes and all the wierd stupid dance moves one can think of.

After dance class Rachel went off to the gym for play time and came back some time later with huge rips on her hands-ouch! I went back to start my final paper, which has luckily been reduced to 3 pages! Which I still didn't start, oops. Once I got back joyce and a few other students had brought traditional ink and brushes to do caligraphy. I learned how to write my name in Chinese and then our hotel desk man who apparently is a master wrote it wayyyy better!

The next adventure was laundry. Which is surprsingly cheap if you can get away with one load and splitting the drier with someone like i did. Damp clothes but hey air does wonders overnight. 8 am wake up call and busy day at the National Judo Championship and Night Market tomorrow! Goodnight and see you soon!

hiking and hot springs

Today has probably been one of my favorite days yet. Started out with 6:30 am frisbee with a few of the NTSU students (I'm going to forget names but.. Mae, Joselyn, Eric, Fish Ball, Tea-Tea, Ya-ma... yea that's all I got). The field was significantly smaller than what our Jojah boys are used to and they'd probably be less than impressed with Katherine and my frisbee skills. But it was fun nonetheless.

Breakfast was egg and noodles... Katherine can elaborate on that. Having noodles for breakfast is something I'm still getting used to, but it was good.

Class today was about Herbal Medicine in traditional Chinese medicine; mostly about how you can apply a nature (cold, cool, warm or hot), and taste (sour, bitter, sweet, pungent or salty), meridian (like for which organs), and direction (ascending, descending, floating or sinking) to most foods and all herbs. They use those properties to distinguish what the herb (or food) is or can be used for like to treat an acute injury, sprain, fracture, burns, abdominal pain, to prevent the possibility of abortion, reduce lower back pain... yada yada yada.

Our professor said he had one woman who fractured her arm and didn't want to have surgery or a cast so he put this stuff called Zhi Tong Qing Cao Gao on it for about 3 months and now she's fine and has full range of motion. We made some paste out of one of the most widely used powders (Ru Yi Jin Huang San), which is commonly used to treat acute injuries. Frankly I think it looks like infant feces, but it smells like curry (its main ingredient). You spread it on gauze, put a thin layer over it and then place it on the injured area. Can't really attest to it's effectiveness because I didn't have any pain/acute injury that needed healing. But we saved all the leftovers for my buddy (Paul) who recently sprained his wrist. I'll have to ask him if it helped.




Next we packed and loaded up to go to the hot springs. First? The hot springs museum. The "tour" (if you can call it that) lasted about 15 minutes, and the tour guide kept adding s's to words like "the peoples in the areas from a long time agos..". It was cute.

We had an hour to kill which basically just meant going to this playground and sitting down. They had some pretty steep, marble slides that were amusing for a while. Also discovered an abandoned playground behind this tin wall, which Pat and I promptly explored. There was an old swing set and some weird looking concrete slides. Everything was completely overgrown.. but it was neat. It also helped pass the huge amount of useless time we spent there.

Next we went to the National Park and were told (at the beginning) we had 2 hours to explore. Katherine, Katie, Pat and I saw a waterfall on the map and decided to head for that. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Once we found the waterfall there were countless very old and moss-ridden concrete steps that lead EVERYWHERE. Most of which were very steep. We spent a good amount of time just seeing where random steps led before we decided to see where "up" led (the decision at that point was to see what was up and then go see what was down... we never got that far). The "up" was endless and the steps continued to get steeper and less safe. Curiosity as well as a hope of seeing monkeys drew us up the mountain.


We came across some that were almost vertical (and that had clearly not been used in a LONG time) that came complete with rope to help you up. Pat took that way as I continued up hoping the top was close (and that there was treasure?). Pat was painfully disappointed to find out his more adventurous route lead to the same place mine did. By this point we'd been climbing about 45 minutes. A bit later Pat goes "we've reached the top!" as we turn the corner and see steps leading to a shack. Disappointment at it's peak.. no monkeys, no gold, no temple.. just a freaking SHACK.

But then we walked around it and found some village with these cool gardens and a BEAUTIFUL view. Turns out we made it to the very tip top of the mountain and could see miles off. No amount of picture taking could do that view justice. It was breathtaking. When we left the park we saw the hotels that looked TINY and far far away from our view very much large. We wandered around the village for a bit, finding a bamboo forest with plastic bags around them (weird?), more gardens as well as more paths that were all too tempting to take. We had to make it back in less than an hour though so after a few more pictures, we headed back down the way we came and decided to count steps..

How many? 600 steps counting down. 1200 steps total. Which doesn't include the straight platforms or the steps we took randomly before deciding on one path. Approximated about 1500 steps total. And one long trip up a mountain. Stopped for a refreshing beer at the end of the 600 steps and headed back to the bus.. thinking we'd be early (supposed to meet at 5:30, it was about 5:15)...

False. Shortly after we'd left they'd decided to change the time to 4:30. Apparently they'd done 3 calls for us over the loud speakers and had been waiting for us the whole time. Yikes! Felt kinda bad... but we honestly didn't hear ANYTHING and thought we were making pretty good time for the original instructions. Ahh well... it was probably one of my favorite things we've done so far.

Hot springs next... which after some long conversation the majority of us had decided to go with the public, naked hot springs rather than the private 2-to-a-room hot springs... purely for the experience and stories. As luck would have it the women's public hot spring was under construction and we had to do the private baths. Nothing special about that... really just felt like a hot tub that smelled a bit like sulfur. Ahh well.. it was an experience. We ate dinner afterward at a restaurant there with a beautiful view of the mountains... save for the men's public spring (with an open ceiling) that was all too easily viewable from said restaurant. Nothing like wanting to take pictures of the view and being rudely interrupted by naked asian man. Ew.

After dinner we headed back home and are currently chillin in the lobby with a few of our students (Paul, Viola, Mae, Jin Jin, Fish Ball and Yama). They'd planned for us to drink with them but a couple of our students got sick (Hannah and Jena :( ) so that's been postponed. But it was funny having Dr. Huang come in and be like "why aren't you guys drinking yet? I wanted to join you!" and then offered for us to go to his house to drink since people were sick here. Ahh well... tomorrow's another adventure.
-R

too freaking long.

Alright... this is going to be long and awkward because it's Rachel and we have not blogged in a long time. Also a pause because we're currently planning nights of drinking with the students. Tomorrow night is the preferred choice as of yet... this should be interesting. We're going to try some Taiwanese drink. It's apparently very spicy.

We left early Sunday morning for Hualien for our weekend excursion. The train ride took about 3 hours, which with the waking up at 7 definitely meant a long nap. The contortionist in me shown through as I apparently curled up next to Katherine. Once we arrived in Hualien we took our own massive bus to Taroko National Park. We were supposed to be able to tour the gorge but the cruel cruel rain meant falling rocks and danger, ergo no hiking. Which sucked because the gorge was BEAUTIFUL and the trails literally zig-zagged up the sides. We got to do a little hiking... which mainly just meant the tour guide lead us up some slippery steps through what looked and sounded like a rain forest. People took pictures of some gigantor spiders. I kept a safe distance because spiders are the devil. All of them. We also saw the largest snail known to man. About half the size of my fist, cruising along the sidewalk.

We then headed to our hotel (Na Lu Wan Hotel). Some people got super comfy small beds (Katherine) while others got king sized, rock-hard beds (Rachel).. either way with the waking up early and walking around all day definitely made for a good nights sleep (especially since we had to wake up the next morning at 6 am.. that will come later). There was also a single solitary condom in the drawer of the vanity. Once we got to the hotel we had dinner at the hotel's restaurant. All of the chairs were made of wood and steel with cool designs. This dinner was probably the best. Katherine and I discovered we like ostrich, and the kung pow chicken was a nice familiar meal. And mango juice. Yum. The desert also included something that tasted like an apple, watermelon and a tea-jello with sprinkles. Also yum.

After dinner we were rushed to the Aboriginal performance in the Armei cultural valley. Which was basically boys in skirts dancing around and girls in traditional dress dancing around. One of the boys B-lined for Hannah when they invited the audience and stared at her and her butt the whole time. Not knowing that Hannah is currently engaged and getting married in about a month. And she was taller than him. A few of us danced and got pictures with them. Had a chance to buy some handmade aboriginal jewelry/other fun stuff afterward. Yay presents!

We had free time once we got back to the hotel and since they had free bikes, a few of us set out to tour Hualien. Probably not the best idea at night considering traffic laws (besides red lights) don't exist and they care very little for pedestrians/bike riders. I definitely got cut off by a van who thought it was okay to pass between Katie and me when we were like 100 feet apart. I almost died. We stopped at one of the 5,000 7 eleven's in Taiwan (that's the actual number) and got a few snacks before heading back to the hotel to sleep because our next day started at 6 am for "white water rafting". Complete with wake-up call from the front desk.

(Dr. Huang just yelled at Pat for drinking the wrong beer. Apparently it was Chinese beer and "people in Taiwan hate China" -- direct quote)

Breakfast was a Taiwanese version of continental breakfast which various Chinese dishes as well as cereal and toast with strawberry jelly. Having carbs in my life was divine. Checked out quickly for the bus ride to the Rafting place. The rain really put a damper on the whole thing. As did the fact that 90% of the 24K route was calm water. And the other 10% could hardly be called rapids. The scenery was beautiful though. We exited right before the river flowed into the Pacific Ocean and ate at the little cafe there. They had some really precious stray dogs there, one of which was the cutest puppy I've seen in a long time. I really wanted to take him home. He would even sit when you told him to. There was also an enclosed space where 7 teensy puppies and their mother were kept. We gave them our leftovers and the puppies were so starved they ate the vegetables, rice and tofu :(. It was heartbreaking.

A long and winding drive through the mountains to some small village where we bought a few little trinkets. A lady at one of the shops gave me a good luck bracelet for buying something. We then drove a little more to Li-Chuan Fishery, which is famous for their golden clams. We walked around and learned a little bit about the Fishery before having dinner there which was another one of the dinners with a plethora of different dishes on a lazy susan. I've never had clams and thought they were pretty good... although I couldn't stop thinking of that scene in Alice in Wonderland with the walrus and the carpenter where they lured the small clams to eat. Then headed back to the train station for another long train ride back to Taipei. Which we said we'd spend studying for the midterm we had today.. but really just included chatting with a bit of studying origin points. Back to NTSU and immediately to bed because we were all so exhausted.

This morning we had our manual therapy class which consisted a lot of learning about qi and detecting qi. Which is difficult but funny because apparently Katherine has a lot of qi and Jena has very "cold" qi... the professor literally ran away from her. The lecture was also frustrating because our professor would speak in Chinese but would not wait for the translator to finish translating before talking again. He also would talk to us in Chinese like we could understand what he was saying. Which is not even slightly the case. We took the midterm after class which I thought was pretty decent. The extra credit was what is "your welcome" in Chinese.. which (thank you Joyce!) is boo-ka-chi.

Alright I'm getting tired so the rest of this and going to be summed up pretty quickly. Clincal I had Wu Shu. Which is so tight. Videos were taken and will probably be posted. I don't see how they don't tear all their ligaments when they do their spin-jumps. Dinner was all duck, not too bad. We had tortilla's to put them up. Katherine will probably post pictures of all the food.

We also had a surprise lecture about how to use Kinesio tape.. which was actually pretty cool. Kinesio tape here is so much cheaper here than in the U.S. They even gave us each some to take home. I'm currently covered in pink and black kinesio tape. It's pretty cool how it works.

Hot springs tomorrow. The rules are either you have unlimited time in a pubic spring that is split up by gender and you have to be naked, or you can choose 1 buddy and have 50 minutes in a private room. Both choices have their own awkward aspects but I think we're going with taking a few shots beforehand and doing the public one. Who knows how this will turn out... but it will certainly make for a good story.

Ah well.. frisbee tomorrow morning and I have to wake up at 6. ugh. But it will be fun.

DAY OF FUN!!

Hello all,
sorry for our being slack last night, I think our post would not have been intelligible we were so tired. Today however we are both full of energy probably due to the exciting and fun day trip we took. This morning we had a bakery breakfast which included a croissant, chocolate cake, cheesecake brownie, ham sandwich, and a pastry with chocolate inside and sprinkles!! It was just what everyone was craving. We also had grape juice which was amazing because I am certainly having a shortage of fruit in my life over here.

We then took a bus to Yingge to the ceramics museum which was beautiful! We then ventured up the street to a pottery shop where we threw clay and made various bowls, pots, and vases. The owners were incredibly good and helped each of us and did demonstrations. I had to start over with new clay because i was enjoying playing too much i ended up ruining my first bowl- oops! Then we had lunch in the shop- probably the first meal I really didn't prefer- it was still good just didn't want it. The owners let us each pick one mug to take home too! everyone here is so hospitable its crazy; for example, we were combining rooms to save money when we are gone for our over night trip tomorrow and the inn keeper said just to leave everything and he isn't charging us! And at dinner we each got to take home our little glass with the Taiwanese beer label on it!




In the town they have a shopping alley which has shops every few feet mostly filled with pottery of all sorts. Everyone in our group bought tons of stuff and presents for loved ones. We only had an hour to shop otherwise we certainly would have bought about double. All of the pottery and tea sets were beautiful and not outrageously priced! Before we left to get back on our bus we stopped to watch these little kids dance a traditional aboriginal dance from the Philippines. After they finished their performance they asked us to join in another dance which of course Rachel and I obliged. It took me about the first minute to figure out exactly what steps we were doing!

After Yingge we headed out to another town to ride bikes on the green way. We rented four person bikes and rode around. There was tons to see- beaches, shops on the side of the road, stray dogs (which are everywhere) cars, scooters, and other bikers. There seem to be no traffic laws here at all sometimes we fear for our lives just crossing the street between classes its ridiculous! Little kids on bikes and scooters were cutting us off the whole time! We saw the most adorable pet dogs while riding one golden retriever was carrying a basket in its mouth what was in it i have no idea. The other was just a cute little fluff ball with a curly tail.



After bike riding we were off to the fish market! They had fish swimming in tanks, dead fish, fried fish, fish on sticks (I feel like i'm in forest gump). Rachel had a nice encounter with a puffer fish! By this time we were all sweaty, salty, and sandy I will never enjoy a shower more! They also had the coolest bridge and the waves were huge! We went to dinner at a restaurant near by and at dinner Rachel and I tried our first Taiwanese Beer; SO GOOD! It may be too plain for some of our friends but it perfect to us! Dinner was family style again including; shrimp that had "frosting" and sprinkles and tasted like dessert, bowl of green onion/Chinese spinach/garlic, chicken, tofu chicken soup stuff, rice shrimp mix, clams, and lots of other stuff.



Can't wait for our first over night trip to Taroko Gorge and Hualien for white water rafting, hiking, aboriginal dance show, shopping, and stuff :)
Night night
-K
P.S.- I went back and added pictures to the other posts too!

bu hao yi sih

Today we started our day off with these burrito looking things, but the outside was made of rice and the inside had various things depending on which one you got-- like eggs, pork... and other good stuff. More milktea to drink, but they also had us try "chinese coffee" which smells like reeses pieces and tastes like a babe ruth, soybean tea (milk?), and "the seed of job's tears" (direct translation from one of the electronic dictionary's because we couldn't figure out what they were trying to say. Turns out they were talking about jojoba beans). I prefer milktea, but the jojoba tea and soybean tea weren't that bad. Chinese coffee is too sweet to have more than a few sips.

Original Point Therapy was next. Our professor couldn't speak English so Dr. Huang translated the whole thing. Pretty nuts. Our professor did a few demonstrations on us. I told him my shoulder's hurt and he did OPT. My thoughts? It hurts like hell but works. It was interesting to see that they use OPT for everything. They use it when someone is having a myocardial infarction and said it has worked 100% of the time (they said they'd video tape it the next time it happened to show us). But anything from acne, to dementia, cancer, tumors.. they'll use OPT. Obviously not the only thing they do, but it's one of those things where it really doesn't hurt the patient to try and if there's a possibility it will help, it's worth a shot. The way they put it was if we have someone who's suffering a heart attack, we call 911, but you have several minutes before the ambulance arrives so why not? I'm not yet comfortable enough to do much besides the origin point of the head on myself (for headaches and more).

Another interesting thing they pointed out is that when you get a fever you should apply warmth (~98 degrees), rather than cold. They have these packs that are made from adzuki beans ("red beans") that you can tie around your back (for fever) or there's one that sits on your head like a headband (fever or headache) that Kat and I really want to get. Supposed to cure a fever in like an hour.

Lunch delicious (and we learned how to say delicious) and to drink we had a black tea float! It's pre-prepared and is just black tea and ice cream.. but melted. Probably my favorite thus far. Next was my first round of clinicals ever. Katherine was in the Athletic Training Room and I had Taekwondo. Delay taught Gina and me how to tape ankles while the athletes were getting their tape jobs done. Apparently they use taping way more than braces-- as seen when one of the students taped a guy's leg who'd torn his PCL but hadn't had surgery yet. Taekwondo is insane. Wang-wang told us that last week at a tournament she saw two tibial fractures. They definitely use padding... I can't even imagine what sort of force you'd have to exert through your foot to snap someone's tibia. Each sport and each athlete at any level practices 3 hours a day, so we sat through practice from 2:30-5:30. Someone needed an ankle taping.. but other than that, we just watched. Their coach won a gold medal for TKD in the 2004 Olympics. He is by far the most spry human I've ever seen. Kat said she got Russian e-stim back in the AT room as well as got asked out by one of the athletes ("pub... dance... lots of wine?") ha.

Second tai chi lesson wasn't as brutal as the first. We learned the whole routine (which isn't even the actual whole routine, just a chunk of it. But it's all we're learning) and found out we're performing it on June 1st. For whom? No idea, but something tells me it's going to be a free-for-all... who doesn't want to see silly American's try to do tai chi? Also learned that the faster song and silly dance is called "you are my flower"... our master really like to do it. Especially the "sorry sorry" part. Which I'd never seen but just so you don't feel left out go on youtube and type in "Sorry Sorry" by Super Junior. It's a 14 person Korean boy band. It's amusing


Good end point. Tomorrow we meet at 7:30.. ugh.
-R

Zao An!
Good morning to all of you in GA and the U.S. but here it is Wan An goodnight. Our vocabulary grows by the day, not much might I add but we are trying our best. Chinese has different tones that change the inflection of your voice during the word which are hard to remember because English is level across each word. Not too much to add, Rachel got most of it. all the different teas we tried were so good, maybe I will start drinking soy milk because of this new discovery. Our breakfast was basically a burrito with rice instead of a tortilla. Tomorrow we get potato cheese omelets and chocolate toast should be interesting.

Tai Chi went well, Rachel didn't mention that our whole group broke down into three people groups and then each group performed in front of the entire class (master and Taiwanese students included) It was a little embarrassing but Rachel, Pat, and I did pretty well. I mastered that one fan flick I had such a hard time with yesterday!!!!

The Athletic Training Room was my clinical assignment for the afternoon and lets just say it was definitely different from at UGA. Here in Taiwan athletes can't miss even one day of practice even if injured. this makes rehab an extremely difficult challenge since you don't have even one or two days for scar tissue to lay down and edema to drain and add on top of that the micro trauma added from the continual practicing. Alot of the modalities are the same such as e-stim, ultrasound, traction, and short wave diathermy. We were messing around and I had Jena do Russian e-stim on me- NOT PLEASANT. This type is used to teach the muscle when to contract during motion after it has been immobile or has atrophied. It is a strong shock and you have to contract at the same time (which actually lessens the pain). Today I also watched a NTSU student do kinesio taping -really neat, google because I can't really explain it well.

We were going to play Frisbee golf with some of our buddies tomorrow morning but we have to meet at 7:30am so that canceled the 6:30am game, we shall try again on Wednesday!! Also neither of has mentioned how incredibly hospitable all of the students and staff are to us. they pick up and deliver each of our on campus meals to us and even take the orders before hand! Also, one NTSU students walks with us to every class, off campus meal, activity, and would have come got us for frisbee. Can you imagine trying to talk U.S. students into taking on those responsibilities on top of clinicals, class, and life!?

ok enough blabbing, I'm exhausted and have a long day of class tomorrow and a yoga class then possible frisbee throwing with buddies. last note the base of my skull and behind my ears hurt due to the OPT and my particular instructor ignoring the pressure to comfort part of the technique. oh well :)
slaap lekker (Dutch for sleep well)
-K

First Day of Classes and Tai Chi

Hey!!
Rachel and I are just back from our first two hour Tai chi lesson with fans! It was so pretty although not when we do it. Our master and all her students lead us step by step through a dance routine. The fans look so cool when the whole group snap them open. There was one move that i kept twisting my wrist wrong and could not for the life of me get the fan to work and if i got it to work then it was facing the wrong way. My new friend "Cola" spent literally five minutes with me trying to get it right. I will just have to practice more. Also I clapped and moved my feet in rhythm with the music when learning a different Chinese dance- surprising for me right??

Earlier today we had more egg cakes and milk/tea for breakfast then a three hour lesson on traumatology and care. We learned all about acupoints, chi, and cupping which is a technique called "cupping" and it uses a cup and fire that pulls the air out like a vacuum. Rachel and I were volunteers and now have a big circle bruise on our shoulders-pictures to ensue. Our teacher was so interesting and spoke really good English, he also gave us a small sample each of his herbal version of icy hot for massaging.

Next was lunch at a Japanese pork chop restaurant. The food was soo good! I think I have pretty much mastered the chop stick technique. Then more class similar to mine for athletic training at home and then our professional connection. This time was spent teaming up with our host students and competing in balance and agility drills. We also had a taping contest against our buddies and I won!!! Then quick dinner, chicken rice and cabbage. Tomorrow we start our clinical rotation and have another Tai Chi lesson. May be a long day of just class and clinic but our first weekend trip is coming up! People with Camaras on their lap tops skype Rachel and I. 9am-11am (GA time) is best!!
-K



We've decided Katherine is good for listing what we've done. And according to Joey Rosskopf I'm more awkward. Whatever, hope yall are enjoying my rambling. Our first class with Dr. HGB (hemoglobin.. ha!) was awesome, he was so goofy. I had the traditional cupping done with the fire along with "scraping" (moving the suctioned cup around)... so mine looks more like I was severely beaten, whereas Kat's is a perfectly bruised circle. Despite the post-bruising, it did help with the pain in my shoulders.

The thing that blew my mind the most was the acupuncture demonstration. Our professor asked who had some pain and Hannah, who's had ACL reconstruction and had gone running earlier that morning, volunteered. He put a needle in her shin and taped it down, asking her to rate on a scale from 0-100% how much the pain was still there. With the needle in her shin she said it was about 40%. Then he put another straight in at the base of the crevice in your elbow, which she told us made all the pain go away. It was nuts. I can't wait to learn acupuncture.

We've already learned a few pressure points-- for like resuscitation and nausea. It's really interesting to see how different Athletic Trainers are here-- like they're allowed to deal with broken bones; actually the majority of fractures are handled by the ATs.

Our lunch dessert looked like fish eyes in a jelly... and tasted like sweet tea. There really isn't much else I can say about that.

Jojah boys will appreciate Katherine and I have agreed to play frisbee Friday after class. Definitely going to look silly. But not as silly as we looked doing what I can only describe as Chinese-Tango involving acupoints. Don't worry, it probably wont take much past a few beers to get us to demonstrate upon return. Tai Chi with a fan is so hard. Fail on my part. Okay.. once again I'm completely over blogging. Sorry yall, aint my thang. -R

nǐ hǎo

nǐ hǎo everyone!
Rachel and I completed our first full day in Taiwan. We began by having our last American style breakfast of Frosted Flakes! We then walked to the main campus buildings to meet all our host students. We had a little meet and greet including a dance some of the students made up for us and a matching game of their names and faces. They gave each of us a t-shirt, polo, our own chopsticks, a NTSU mug, and a pin. All the students are so sweet and have been watching us painfully struggle with the pronunciation of very simple phrases :) Rachel is really good at it and we now know about 5!

We had a tour of the whole campus including their huge gymnasium which includes their athletic training room, judo, gymnastics, volleyball, and basketball. We had a surprise this after noon- a foot massage! It was painful to me but good because I had some knots in my calves but Rachel was cracking up because it tickled. The campus is beautiful we got a better look at it when we went on a run after dinner. Speaking of dinner it was amazing! All will be happy and surprised to know that Rachel and I ate some of everything, fish balls, trip (cow's stomach), all kinds of fish, and tons of things I have no idea about. One of the girls decided our theme for this trip is "what are you eating?" "I don't know but I'm eating it anyways" The restaurant we went to is a "hot pot" style where you get all the raw foods and throw them into the boiling broth together and then eat it all. We could choose from regular or spicy broths. We had different cream puffs, jellos, and haagen daz ice creams for dessert.


After dinner we went to a night market which everything you could think of to eat which all smelled delicious except for the stinky tofu which was horrid smelling. They also had games, shoes, clothes, watches, and leather items. Rachel and I had to visit the 7/ 11 to use the ATM and get money in NTs the currency here. The exchange is about 31 NTs to 1 U.S. dollar. Can't wait to do some shopping and find you all some great presents! -K

Me next? Just barely. I can't really add much except for at the chinese-fondu place Dalei, one of my buddy's "school sister" (basically a mentor) made us try her rum raisin icecream, which I'm sure we have but I've never tasted. Tastes like frozen rum. Literally. It seems a theme here to take two things that have completely different tastes and consistencies and mix them... i.e. chocolate pudding that is jello consistency. Doesn't sound weird, but tasting it you can tell there's just something a little off about jello tasting chocolatey. Nicknames here are probably one of the strangest thing's I've encountered thus far-- with the top one being Fish Ball. Something about that.. I don't think I could ever bring myself to call a person Fish Ball. That or one of the girls didn't even tell us her real name, just told us to call her Child. Let me tell you... trying to call for someone by saying Child is a weirdness you'd never thought you'd encounter. There's also a Wang-wang (which we're told means something along the lines of forgetful), Garfield (and yes, the reasoning is what you think... it's because she's big. No euphemism there. Can't really live in this country with a soft shell). I can't think of the rest right now, there's also a good number of nicknames that are just American names-- Paul, Joyce, Kris, Mae. Alright blogging is weird.. I can only do this for so long. OH.. and there's a TON of stray dogs here. I've never seen a dog just wandering around, sleeping under a tree or on the side of the road. I see stray cats all the time... but there's something about seeing a stray dog that really pulls at your heart strings. Until the NTSU students remind us they're gross and not to touch them. Sad puppies. Tomorrow morning classes start... sweet. -R

I don't do blogs-- but we're here.

(our inn Pu Yuan)
Hokay. So we JUST got to NTSU (National Taiwan Sports University) and it's about 11:30 pm Monday night. So we've spent all of Monday and most of Sunday on a plane. This is probably going to be the least interesting post because 1) I don't blog 2) I just took my medicine and for those of you who have seen me on that... I get real loopy real quick and 3) we honestly have not done much besides sit on a plane and try to learn a few Chinese phrases from all the students who were sweet enough to meet us at the airport.

We left ATL around 2 pm Sunday and a 14 hour direct flight up the coast and over Russia to Tokyo ensued. There really isn't much to say about that except there was a man sitting in front of us that (for all you LOST fans) mirrored John Locke exactly. Pretty creepy. We talked to him a bit and turns out him and his buddies work in the oil fields in Singapore and the make this grueling flight multiple times a year. He casually informed us he has ~1.5 million skymiles. We're still floored by that. We also had a ginger flight attendant-- her first inquiry being if we (Pat, the only boy, and me) thought being called a ginger was a bad thing. She ended up sneaking us two free bottles of wine later on (which were taken as soon as we went through security in Tokyo... bummer).

Flight from Tokyo to Taipei was supposed to be 4 hours but honestly felt like at least 6. Yep, definitely getting loopy. We introduced ourselves to the students on the bus to NTSU-- I'm not good with having 20 names thrown at me in English so trying to remember them in Chinese for tomorrow is not happening.

They gave us this stuff called "Bubble Tea" as soon as we got to the dorms, it's basically green tea with milk and these tapioca "bubbles". Absolutely delicious. We've been told we'll have a regular supply of this bubble tea, which I'm very pumped about. Next they gave us these "egg cakes", which are definitely in accord with the statements from previous Taiwan travelers that the food here is absolutely delicious.

Tomorrow we have a reception and a "surprise" and hopefully getting our two student buddies. That's it for now, dreamland's calling. Katherine says hello. So do the other 11 girls and 1 boy on this trip. 晚安(wan-an... goodnight!)

-Rachel