On Sunday it turned out we had an opportunity to get out of the city. Our friends took us along for a picnic on the beach about an hour north of Kaohsiung. Les is retired and spends his days biking or scootering around southern Taiwan in search of interesting places to visit. Today we neither biked nor scootered but instead drove in their cute little van while another couple drove their scooter.

The six of us pretty much had this little black sand beach all to ourselves and it was delightful.

Now that I've looked at the photos I took I see that I just took two of basically the same shot. Sorry. The hill on the left is the north end of Monkey Mountain, where we hiked yesterday. This beach is on the west coast of the island so we're gazing out towards China across the Taiwan Straight. Not much to see but beautiful waves, fisherman on the pier and ships off on the horizon heading in and out of Kaohsiung harbor.

It was a lovely break from the city. Now we're back to spend the afternoon grading papers and making lesson plans to get us through the next 8 days of school until Thanksgiving break. It can't come soon enough!