One Week

I must begin with the disclaimer that already I am growing weary of updating this blog. It can be rather time consuming, and my memory is so poor some things aren't worth writing because large chunks of information are missing. I've been meaning to add pictures for days now and I probably will not put any on this blog tonight, either.

Oh well, I'll write what I can. Yesterday (Saturday) after lunch i went off to experience some temples. Shandao Temple was stop one, however I did not access inside the buildings (which are huge, like ten or twelve stories), just took some crappy pictures from the street.

Stop two on the train route was far more fruitful. Longshan Temple is one of (if not the) oldest temples in the Taipei area. It is multi-religious, so to say; people pray to buddhas, deified teachers, and other gods. It is tough to take any artful pictures there as it is jam-packed with people praying, making offerings, sleeping (all outside). What floored me was the architecture. The roofs are excrutiatingly beautiful, sky blue and emerald green dragons, incredible red tiling and every beam on the inner roof told a story through imagery. At first I couldn't imagine how anyone could pray or have any spiritual concentration with so much action taking place but after making my own rounds of reverence and gratitude my attitude changed. A connection is made; connection with the fellow prayer-makers, a connection with the temple and the location, and a connection through time, with all the people and all the prayers, hopes, wishes and emotions that have passed through the gates. I hardly think anyone leaves dissatisfied from such a place. Oh, and who would have thought that a temple would house the largest concentration of beautiful girls? Everywhere, just everywhere!

Saturday night, after dinner, the five of us in the room went to a night market (I think). Maybe not, to be honest I can't remember. I'm beginning to think we didn't go to a night market. Who knows what we did? Not me.

Anyway today (Sunday) we met two other summer program students and headed to the National Palace Museum. It's supposedly the largest collection of ancient Chinese artifacts in the world, and I'd believe it. Everything from the early Neolithic Age to the end of the Ch'ing Dynasty in the early 20th century, all has it's place and description. Imperial funiture and curio boxes, neolithic pottery, bronze age pieces of literally all kinds, jade in almost every exhibit, seemingly a whole library of chinese books, documents, paintings, and calligraphy, stunning reliogious pieces, it was breathtaking. And all for only NT 80; that's under $3 US.

We made our way to a night market tonight. A large one, too. Carnival games, tons and tons of foods of all kinds (I had the pig heart soup), arcade games (I had to play some DDR), and a large avenue of shops full of useless materialism (but it's fun to see). Oh and the market cut right in front of an interesting temple. The main goddess is Ma-tsu, a goddess of the sea. Very lovely.

I'm feeling too enervated to go on. Maybe one of these days I'll actually discuss how I'm feeling or express some thoughts of mine. For now we may assume that no news is good news.

Oh yea, I think my parents with my aunts and uncles left yesterday for the West on a motorcycle adventure. May the skies smile upon them as the road befriends their bikes and leads them to happiness. The Buddha is attributed as saying 'It is better to travel well than to arrive.'