Nissan and Fried Chicken

I'm writing this on Sunday, so I'm just going to go ahead and give the highlights and necessary details.

We flew out of Kaohsiung Friday afternoon around 4pm, and I realized that it was my first time back in the Kaohsiung airport since I arrived here in August, and the first time ever that I've seen Kaohsiung from the air when I actually knew what I was looking at. I had fun catching glimpse of Qingshan as we took off, and look down at Cijin; Karina even caught a glimpse of her apartment from the plane window. Great fun.

When we arrived at Kinmen, we randomly ran into Nick, a friend from Taipei, and learned that he had a whole group of friends coming from the mainland for the race. We agreed to meet up later, then hopped in a car with our arranged ride whom we assumed would take us to our home-stay, but who instead took us to...a Nissan dealership. We piled out with our bags, and learned that we were renting scooters here, now, luggage and check-in aside.

We hopped on our scooters to discover that Kinmen is cold this time of year, and we still had halfway across the island to drive before we could go inside, and had to eat before we got there, since there was nothing near where we were staying. We found a wannabe KFC joint (you know, typical Kinmen food and such) and ordered some chicken while we tried, unsuccessfully, to give Nick directions to where we were. We gave up when we realized he was a good 10km away from us.

After the chicken saleslady led us to our home-stay--a GORGEOUS traditional house inside the cultural village here--we settled in and met our co-inhabitants, some Kaohsiung-dwelling Americans who work at Morrison Academy and who were also going to run the race. Also, our home-stay has no inside heating, and is, indeed, half outside itself.

After that, it was trying to keep warm and an early bedtime for us.