The school year is winding down which means it's getting crazy busy. Time for a road trip! Twelve of us hopped into three cars and headed south to Kenting at the south end of the island where the beaches are beautiful and the air is clear. We left right after school, drove a couple of hours, checked into our hotels and were sitting down for dinner with margaritas in hand by 6:30. Not bad.

Lee and I were up early, naturally, and took a nice walk along the beach in town.

There's a street that's lined with little hotels that look out towards the water:

Half of our group stayed in one of those hotels. They didn't have room for all of us so I found another hotel one street up that was quite nice.

They adhered to the old Chinese custom of skipping floor number four.

Some buildings in the US don't have a 13th floor but here it's the 4th. The word for 4 sounds very similar to the word for death so it's a very unlucky number. Anyway, back to our little trip...

Back early in the fall we came down to Kenting and went to the nice beach outside of town for the day. We spent Saturday back at that beach.

Lee building a sand castle with Lawson.

Lee, Lawson, his mom Casey and Claire. It's nice to have kids along when you go to the beach.

The beach at 10:30 was pretty quiet. There were people hunkered down under umbrellas but not many in the water. By 3:00 the tour buses had dropped off their passengers and the beach was crowded with fully clothed tourists standing ankle deep in the water taking pictures of themselves not swimming in the ocean.

After enjoying the spectacle of watching a few of them getting knocked over by an unexpected wave (Waves at the beach?! Who knew?) we packed up, took showers, ate an early dinner and drove home. We were back in Kaohsiung in time for a nightcap and bed. If we owned a car I might be down in Kenting every weekend.

We don't own a car but we do have bikes and I'm back on mine so we went for a ride this (Sunday) morning. It was already into the 80's at 6:00 in the morning so went went early. We biked down to the harbor, took the ferry to Cijin Island and biked along the shore. There were more ships dotting the coastline than I ever remember seeing. I counted 50.

Here are some random things I made note of today.

This is what the new school building looks like from the front. Lee's classroom is on the far right, third floor corner room. He gets a lot of sunshine streaming into his room in the morning. It's great light but it's hard to cool the room down. My room is on the far side of the building. By the time the sun starts shining into my windows it's the end of the school day.

There are garden plots tucked into unexpected places along my commute. This isn't a great photo but I wanted to show you what people do to protect their fruit trees. Each piece of fruit has a plastic bag rubber banded around it. I think it's to keep the bugs away but people I've asked have given me different answers. In any case it's odd to pass by farms and gardens and see trees that are apparently growing plastic bags.

Some more attractive looking trees are these beautiful yellow-flowered ones:

After school today Lee and I went for a bike ride along the bike path and found these in one of the parks along the way. I felt like it was Mother Nature's way of welcoming me back to the biking world.

There was an absolutely beautiful sunrise this morning. We've had some rain every morning for three days which has been great. The city seems like it's had a nice scrubbing and the air seems clear and clean. In four weeks we'll be packing up and getting on a plane for seven weeks away from the heat and humidity that defines Taiwan in the summer.

I'd like to start off by saying Happy Birthday to my lovely sister Jenner. I hope you spend the day doing just what you want to make you happy.

Bike riding is what made me happy today. The low point was when I crossed Cuiehua, the street where I had my accident. It was pretty terrifying and once we reached the other side I had to stop for a second and catch my breath, but then I was fine. There was very little traffic this morning, which was nice, but it was busy this afternoon and I was still okay. Lee and I are going to try a few strategies to overcome the Cuiehua Road issue. It's an unusual road in that it's pretty busy plus the traffic can build up some speed. At the moment I'd like to avoid it if I can. Unfortunately, it's the road the school is on so I can't avoid it altogether. I'm sure it'll get easier with time.

Now that I'm back on the bike shopping for fruit just got easier. We stopped at the new market on the way home and restocked. Mangoes are back in season - yippee. In addition to the ones I'm used to seeing there are little ones the size of the palm of my hand as well as these huge ones:

Lychee season has just begun so I finally had a chance to try one fresh, not in a can or flavoring in a martini. Delicious!

We also brought home bananas, watermelon and pineapple. An excellent haul.

No typhoons to worry about after all, or at least not yet (the season's still young). Kaohsiung did get a little rain in the morning and other parts of the island got a good drenching, which is good. I don't think anyone will be filling up their swimming pools any time soon but at least the plants got some relief.

I tried to be nostalgic on my walk to school yesterday, but I wasn't the least bit sad to think it may be my last walking commute. I'm thrilled to be biking to work today. I am a bit nervous about the traffic so Lee and I are leaving especially early to avoid the early morning crowds. If all goes well with my psyche then I'll be thrilled. I'm not worried about the pain in my wrist because that's what advil is for. I know my heart's in it, I just want to know my head is alright with getting back on the road.

We're on typhoon watch here on the island. Typhoon Noul has made landfall at the tip of the Philippines and is now heading our way. We really need the rain but can do without the wind. The latest news I heard was that the storm was turning north and may just give Taiwan's east coast a glancing blow, but when I just looked at the satellite picture it looks like the storm is bigger than the whole of Taiwan. It's hard to imagine getting only a brushing with something so immense.

There's also a second typhoon building behind Noul so we'll keep an eye on that one too. We'd planned on going to the beach at the southern tip of Taiwan next weekend. The beaches there were closed today because of the current typhoon and tourists have been evacuated from the east coast islands. Hopefully we'll be able to squeeze our weekend get-away in between storms.

First, let me tell you about yesterday at KAS. There was a formal celebration of the completion of the new building and all the bigwigs of Kaohsiung came, including the mayor and a big delegation from AIT (American Institute of Taiwan), the closest to a US embassy that we have here in Taiwan. There were a lot of congratulation speeches and the lobby was filled with lovely flowers.

I didn't actually hear any of the speeches since they held the ceremony during the school day but you won't hear many complaints from the teachers. I'm pretty sure we've heard enough self-congratulations for awhile.

Friday was also the spring concert. With the completion of the new building there is now a venue for school performances. It's a beautiful space, lots of wood and great acoustics. The talent of the students is really incredible and both of the music teachers are magical. All of the students were great, from the pre-k kids singing "Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes" to the 12th grader playing Rachmaninoff. Here is the middle and high school string orchestra performing excerpts from Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.

Today was spent at day one of my two-day weekend workshop, but this evening I finally got back on my bike. First I biked on the sidewalks of the park next door to the apartment then I ventured out onto the streets and pedaled around the park. I was not surprised to find that it hurt my wrist a bit to hold on and to brake. What I did find surprising was the vertigo sensation as soon as I got moving. It was an odd feeling to see the world rushing by, even though I was only going a few miles per hour. I'm not sure if that's residual concussion symptoms or if it's just getting used to balancing and moving again on a bike.

Besides that, it was really great to ride again. I was so happy I even took a selfie.