During race #2
We started out the weekend with our first race early on Saturday morning. We were racing against 3 other teams - a legal aid foundation, RT Mart (a superstore here in Taiwan), and another unknown Taiwanese team. The conditions were good with the current going in our favor and our team won by over 30 seconds (out of a 3 1/2 minute race!) It was really exciting to see all the other teams around too. There were numerous teams of course from Taiwan from various high schools, companies, and government offices, then there were also teams who traveled from the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, the US, and Japan, as well as various expat teams from South Africa, France, and Holland.
Me and my coworker Rachel
Hess treated us to a nice lunch at a Taiwanese restaurant, where of course way too much delicious food was ordered. Each 8 person table ended up with about 4 heaped plates left over! The food we did have was great though - shrimp and pineapple, cold pickled cabbage, various types of tofu, 3 cup chicken, fried rice, deep fried mushrooms.... We had a bit of time to kill before we had to head back to the river park for the opening ceremony (no one could figure out why the opening ceremony wasn't at the beginning of the day...) so we popped over to our team organizer's house nearby for some sun and drinks on her rooftop. After a few hours (which included group work on the daily crossword puzzle!) we all taxied back to the park. Walking the last little bit over the bridge, we saw some curious items in the stream tributary: computer keyboards, furniture, a few dead looking rats... :s yuck. The opening ceremony involved a few fun performances by one of the Filipino teams and some juggling. Very fun!
Our whole team
Sunday we had our second race against other teams who made it through to the second round. It was a bit windier, and a lot hotter (not a cloud in the sky and about 34C/95F with the usual high humidity.) We raced hard but came in 3rd, so we didn't make it to the final round. There's a tradition with dragon boat to trade uniforms with another team and the team that won against us came over to trade with us! I'm still not sure which team they were, but basically you look for someone your size, then right then and there you take of your sweaty, river-watered shirt and switch! Their outfits looked nice, although being black they were were scorchingly hot and even stinkier than ours...haha.
Catching the flag
Later that evening we went out to a pub for some dinner and drinks where coincidentally the French Open was playing. It was great meeting new people and getting to know them more this weekend. We're all Hess English teachers, but everyone has a different story. And of course, we traded some teaching stories and inadvertently played 'who has the grossest kindergarten moment story!' Then today was the national holiday so everyone was off work. We all attended the closing ceremony where shockingly no one suffered from heat stroke (except an Australian). . . today was even hotter and we were all crowded in like cattle in direct sun!
The whole weekend was great fun, and it was really cool to take part in a traditional Taiwanese activity!
