I went down to the World Trade Centre on Thursday afternoon with Josh and Wal to order a new board. We met up with our contact, Alex, explained what we wanted, ordered the boards and left knowing it will be at least 4 weeks before they are ready.
We stopped in for a couple of beers at the Tavern on the way home, which subsequently led to a few more at the Brass Monkey before we got home to Tienmu, so Wal and I had to pull out every team teaching trick in the book on Friday morning! We were fine after a while, but a bit slow for the first couple of hours!
Cass is off to camp tomorrow, so she’s been busy packing and getting ready today. Typhoon Shanshan has been slowly tracking up the east coast of Taiwan for a week or so and the rain I mentioned last week has only slowed for a few brief moments. It looks like it is finally heading away, which Cassy is very relieved about, as her 5-day camp is not known for its level of luxury! She has managed to score a cabin for all the nights, which is a relief and will avoid the tents as she has volunteered to get up and prepare breakfasts each morning. She has all her stuff prepared for other activities she usually does and still pays a certain amount of homage to the old peer support stuff we did at Grammar. Apparently, some of it can still a pretty good job of entertaining the grade 8s over here, so why not?
Mr. Lee finally arranged someone to come in and re-paint our bedroom through the week after another letter politely asking when this might happen! The outside wall had leaked in a typhoon last year and our walls had become wet, the paint blistering, powdering up and generally trying to fall off the wall. It looks great now, and we took the opportunity to get the wall hanging Chad and Cathy had given us years ago a dry clean. When this gets back, we’ll have our room back to normal, new and fresh.
I’ve surfed both today and yesterday in the typhoon swell, trying to 1. find a spot slightly sheltered from gale force winds, 2. with a half decent wave and, 3. away from the prying eyes of the coast guard, who issue quite a hefty on-the –spot fine if you go into the ocean when the coast has been closed. Ross and I played the dumb foreigner once a couple of years ago, but I don’t know if you could get away with that these days. Anyway, suffice to say, we got a pretty good surf, met our mystical pointyhat master (!) and had a good laugh. I gave Carl a ring quite late just before we went out today, but he was out on the bike track somewhere.
Photos today: Cass says hi to the girls in the octagon (sharing even in 30 degree heat!!), I use the famous “high pressure shower” in the typhoon wind and Josh and Wal meet up with our Pointyhat “Master”.