Cold and Wet

(Another Sunday retrospective.)

It was like Kenting all over again. Windy and wet, and, as an added bonus this time, cold--oh so cold, especially on a scooter. We layered up--t-shirts and sweatshirts and rain coats, that is--but still, our first drive out was miserable: hands numb in the wind, face and eyes stung by the rain, turned to stinging pellets by the velocity at which we were traveling. To make things better, we got lost.

Eventually we flipped around and headed for an emergency 7-11 run, where I slapped down about $10USD for appropriate Kinmen driving gear: knit gloves, the ever-present plastic poncho, and, in the first time I can remember actually wanting to use one, a heavy-duty face mask. With Karina's borrowed sunglasses to top it off, I was set to drive.

Which was a good thing, since it's primarily what we did. We first tracked down National Quemoy University, where Brittany was going to run, and picked up her registration materials. There, Rachel saw fit to lose her ATM card to the BOT machine, inspiring a series of phone calls to the company and Fonda which ended in us leaving to come pick it up later.

From there, we followed a local into town to the cultural shopping district, where we wandered around looking at their emblematic knives made of old artillery shells--as the closest outreaching of Taiwan to China, this place has seen a lot of shelling--and stone lions and peanut candy and beef jerky, the latter two purchased from a very nice lady we spent a while chatting with, we met up with Nick and wandered into a nearby restaurant called Jessica, which was oddly decorated in a combination of Chinese and Taiwanese national emblems--uncomfortable to say the least, given the political history here.

We decided to see more of the island then, and set out to see Kinmen's other famous product, Kaohliang Liquor. We went to the factory, where we learned that they do not have a factory tour, so we just looked around at the showroom and then took off again, first to meet Nick's friends, Evan, Miles, John, and Jason, and leave our souvenirs with them, then off to see a beautiful and beautifully-lit cave system near the sea. It was absolutely gorgeous.

Next it was back towards town, where we found Nick's friends eating an early dinner at another 7-11. We joined them in sitting around, chatting and eating for a while, then we headed back towards our home-stay, though first grabbing a 7-11 dinner (for me, yogurt, nuts, juice, and a Snickers).

Then, as Brittany, Rachel and Karina insisted on watching a horror movies regarding living killer ventriloquist dummies, I re-watched a few episodes of The Office and How I Met Your Mother on my computer, and we had another early night, trying to conserve heat and preparing for a very early morning, one which promised to be, if possible, colder and wetter than this one.