As an aside, the times are changing around these parts. The second rice harvest is starting, fields of green appearing brown the next day, vehicles once idle are now active, farmers are back in the fields, and the general tone of the village has changed. Soon the vistas will be brown in totality. Then, the tides (well.....no tides.....but wet fields....) change again and flowers will be planted to kick in some more nitrogen to the soil, churned back into the soil and soon enough the first rice crop of 2010 will be planted. Then the cycle continues. Plant in January, harvest in July, plant in July, harvest in November...flower break....plant in January, harvest in .... .
LEFT: Grandmothers present a dance during the opening ceremonies, which wa full of twists, turns, jumps and twirls. It was actuall pretty exciting to see them 'get down'. However, they did three dances after this one...and by the time the last one came, the novelty was gone and the thoughts were along the lines of 'get on with it'! Still, impressive.
RIGHT: Our bikes, locked away in a nook beside the english staircase. The other language is Taiwanese dialect.
LET: Electioneering...everywhere. We once attended a wedding on the West coast and, right in the middle of dinner, inwalks a candidate with his flock of electioneering compadres. right in the middle of dinner...at a wedding of someone they didnt know....they walked in and went table to tabel handing out cards, pamphlets and trying to raise votes. We were shocked, but everyone seemed to understand, or expect this. Weird. So, the shock wasnt oerly great when, this time around in the world of elections, a campaign party walked around our sports day and did the same thing. During speeches, there was a group flogging their political party. Weird. I think that in Canada they would have been politely asked to leave, then forced to. Here, it is almost a sign of pride that the festivity - a wedding, a sprots day, a funeral, etc - was worthy of a candidates visit.
Weird.
RIGHT: A cmall child in Amis traditional clothing awaiting his turn to race, and dance.
LEFT: A group of students (grade 2) waiting during the opening ceremony. Each grade dressed up in a different theme, tied in with their class studies. One was "no smoking, no betel nut chewing", another was "brush your teeth"... . Behind the kids you can see the parents of the students (Guan-Yin has, approximately, 45 students at this time, from grade 1 - 6 inclusive). The parents are wearing the school uniform.
RIGHT: Funny sign that was on a kids bag.
LEFT and RIGHT: Us, posing with some of the kids at Sports Day. Crystal is with grade 5 and 6 kids, Trevor with grade 2. the grade two class is the kids I, Trevor, eat lunch with everyday. I share a desk with the small boy to my far right in the picture. He is finally speaking to "the foreigner"...albeit in chinese and not yet in English (the grade 3 curriculum only goes as far as the alphabet and counting 1 - 10, and perhaps a few words like 'desk', 'happy', 'sad'...)
LEFT: Trevor taking epic strides in his race, leaving the rest behind in his dust (ok, ok, the end result was third place....). 
LEFT and RIGH: Running, putting feet in front of feet....Crystal brought home the bacon on this one, with an assertive first place finish. I wont add that her competition was barefoot, possibly drunk, and probably not exercised since last years sports day. :) Actually, that was one lady, the rest put up a fair fight, and she done grand.
LEFT: Crystal getting her first palce prize.
LEFT: Trevor taking epic strides in his race, leaving the rest behind in his dust (ok, ok, the end result was third place....).
RIGHT: This is the whole school...I should count to see if there are actualy 45..that citing above was a guestimate.
LEFT and RIGH: Running, putting feet in front of feet....Crystal brought home the bacon on this one, with an assertive first place finish. I wont add that her competition was barefoot, possibly drunk, and probably not exercised since last years sports day. :) Actually, that was one lady, the rest put up a fair fight, and she done grand.
LEFT: Crystal getting her first palce prize.
RIGHT: Us, with the cumulaitve prizes for the day. 4 packs of toilet paper, 3 bottles of soy sauce, 1 pack of paper towels (not sure we needed these at all...) and 1 pack of kitchen cleaner. Much better than ribbons and trophies....these prizes are actually quite helpful to the families of the students, and are much appreciated. This is a very rural, impoverished area, most kids dont own running shoes, a change of clothing or anything of the luxuries we are accustomed to with CDN students. However, the smiles never fade, the curiosities never falter and events like this come in very handy for them.
The first harvested rice field of the year!
