my weekend

I had a very nice weekend, taking a trip up to Pingxi and the small towns on the train line nearby. We got off the train at a stop that had nothing but a little house with a very loud chicken clucking away. The weather was perfect- sunny with a little breeze and not too hot. I've spent too long in the city, and the air up there was sweet and clean. We walked by the railroad tracks, ignoring the signs saying not to walk there. We walked through a tunnel, but everywhere we walked had plenty of space to move over if a train showed up. Eventually we could hear a waterfall, which was probably beautiful, but some jerk owned the only land where you could see it. Apparently, he had been charging 100 nt., which really is too much to see a waterfall on public land, and the government told him so. Now there was a battle between this guy and the government. The upshot being, he chained off the space and no one could see the damn thing. Oh well. We kept walking and eventually came to a little town called shi fen. It had a few touristy things, but hadn't been too built up yet, which was kind of nice. We had an unimpressive but overpriced lunch. The most expensive thing was young bamboo shoots. They were different from bamboo I've had before, and interesting, but I wish I could have had a better cook cooking it. We walked around a little bit, then got back on the train to see the next little town. This one was really small, and it only took a few minutes to see everything. We waited a long time to get an ice cream wrap (taro ice cream wrapped in a spring roll wrapper with cilantro and ground peanut brittle) but it wasn't exceptional. Near the train station I could smell jasmine flowers, which was nice. Unfortunately, while waiting for the train, some guy spilled his milky soda down in my shoe, which sucked. I unintentionally said "THANKS!" really loudly after he did it. He was polite about it and obviously felt bad, so I tried to tell him it was fine, no problem, just a little bit, but I wasn't too happy to have a wet, sticky spot on my foot for the rest of the day. We finally got to the last town in the area, another tiny little place. There was a nice, old japanese wooden house that had served as quarters for people overseeing the mining in the area, but they wanted too much money to see a small house so we skipped it. Another long wait in line and we got two fried chicken rolls which were excellent (I will try to get a blog about them on my new food blog soon). A nap on the way home on the train, and all in all a nice day trip.

Now, I'm hustling to take care of annoying bureaucratic issues, including my visa which is about to expire. Looks like I'll be in Bangkok on Friday trying to take care of it. I wish I had a little time to be a tourist there, but to save money it will be all business. Maybe I can drink beer and watch Muay Thai on Friday night. It was nice to pull in some cash at my temp job, but it reminded me that teaching is just a way to make money and not something I'm in love with at this point. A few possibilities have shown up, but nothing definite yet. I'll keep hammering away.