Long Weekend

Last Friday, October 6 was celebrated as Mid-Autumn Festival. This is a really old traditional holiday which involves staring at the harvest moon and barbequing. Not a whole lot different from Thanksgiving. This year it was on a Friday so we had a 3 day weekend, then the following Tuesday was 10/10 - Chinese National Day.

At the very last minute, for any one of many rumored reasons, they decided to make Monday a holiday also to give everyone a 5-day weekend. Of course, it isn't free, we have to have school tomorrow (Saturday) to pay it back. It was also decided too late to do anything fun. If I had known I was going to have 5 days, I might have gone to Japan or somewhere.

Anyway, three of us went to Sun Moon Lake, oft billed as the most beautiful place in Taiwan. It was too late to get hotel rooms at the lake so we stayed in a nearby town. Well, pretty nearby. The weekend was one of those "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" weekends. Anyway, to make a long story short, the lake area is gogeous but not at its best because of haze. We took a boat trip around it and that was fun.

The next day we met up with a woman from my school and what was a sort of unplanned (or misunderstood?) day trip to two earthquake museums. In 1999 there was a 7.3 earthquake in Taiwan, epicentered near the lake. They have done a fascinating job of showing the effects. It was really quite interesting if not exactly what I expected.

We spent the next day back in Douliou shopping, then home to a day of rest. Not bad for an unplanned weekend.

Today is the following Saturday and we had a regular school day. Tomorrow I am going to climb a mountain -- at least I think I am, I'm doing it with the same person who I thought was taking me to sweep her family graves but instead orchestrated the earthquake exhibit tour, so who knows what tomroow will bring?