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I just got back from the Fulbright Taiwan Midyear Conference, this year in Hualien with a day trip to the nearby Taroko National Park. Here’s one for the travelogue. I had a great, stimulating trip with lots of talk of linguistics (mostly about Classical Chinese), religion, economics, and politics—some of my favorite subjects. This being a Dr. Wu gig, there was also of course ample food, and Taroko was absolutely stunning.

Day 1: Trains, buses, and talk

I met up with everyone in the morning at the Hualien train station. Living in Nanao, I actually live really close to Hualien (about 40-50m) so I just elected to take a local train and meet the crew there. We then drove around to a couple interesting coastal points. (The one taking pictures below is Dale… I’m sure his blog will soon have photos more beautiful than mine.)

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This past Wednesday after the weekly workshop, we stepped outside of the teachers’ center and saw some firemen-in-training doing a drill. They had a huge bucket of water (into which we wanted to throw Kelly).

They turn on the water, run out and extinguish the “fire.”

For some ungodly reason we were standing out there watching them practice for over an hour, most of which was downtime. Most of the practice seemed to involve wrapping up the hoses afterwards rather than focusing on running out to the fire quickly… it didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the firefighters here but, hey, I guess there’s a reason they’re still training. ^^