Play ball!

Wednesday 4 July 2012

Ryan's softball team plays every Wednesday, and today they were short on players and asked me to join them. It worked out so perfectly, to go play softball on a sunny fourth of July!

Slo-pitch

Wednesday 2 May 2012

Ryan has joined a slo-pitch softball league with a bunch of our friends. (I said I'd fill in if they were short, but I don't have all Wednesdays free.) Here's our lovely friend A, ready to strike out the next batter!

Tragedy?

Monday 23 April 2012

The Canucks recently lost out of the Stanley Cup playoffs, and people around here were rather disappointed.

Rioters

Thursday 22 March 2012

At my school. It's a poster with photos of the people who participated in last year's hockey riot. It's really nice to see that they're still looking for these people who embarrassed our wonderful city.

Rider gnome

Monday 26 December 2011

We're in Roughrider country here (that's the local football team, by the way), and you can purchase any kind of Rider-themed merchandise you can possibly imagine. Suspenders, baby clothes, trailer hitch covers, shower curtains, and yes, even garden gnomes.

The boys

Monday 28 November 2011

Ryan's brother and three of his friends were here all weekend for the Grey Cup. I couldn't resist posting this neat picture of them on their way to the game, all done up in their Rider gear.

It was quite interesting, to see everyone dressed up in their own football team's colors, even if they weren't playing. Green was second only to orange (the Lions' color) -- the Roughriders definitely have a very loyal fanbase!

Go Lions Go!

Sunday 27 November 2011

Ryan is a big CFL fan, so months ago, when we learned that the Grey Cup would be in Vancouver, we bought tickets. Ryan was really hoping his Saskatchewan Roughriders would make it, but no such luck this year. Instead, we got to watch our home team, the BC Lions, win! (A much better party, I think!)

The crown of Vancouver

Thursday 6 October 2011

The new football/soccer stadium that was just finished here in Vancouver. Ryan's really excited because the Grey Cup (Canadian Superbowl) is here this year - we already have tickets.

Sea kayaking

Wednesday 14 April 2010

Ryan went diving today, so I went kayaking over the smooth teal waters around Kas.

The Swim

Sunday 20 September 2009

Here we are at the Sun-Moon Lake Swim, the largest group swim in the world! This year broke records, yet again, with somewhere around 25,888 people swimming. (I say somewhere around because, what with 8 being such a lucky number here, I somehow doubt that there were exactly 25,888.) It is three kilometers from one side to the other, and those three clicks are very crowded. Luckily the water is just the right temperature and the Taiwanese are much friendlier swimmers than they are drivers! (I was considerably slowed by people noticing a foreign face in the water and wanting to chat.)

Ryan and I separated at the beginning, but an hour and a half later, climbed out at the exact same time - and I never noticed swimming near him!

It was a really fun day, and a fantastic experience, even if we both had an embarrassing week-long swim cap tan line across our foreheads afterwards!

Playing tag

Friday 28 August 2009

I went outside with my kids today to teach them tag, but - and I don't know if this is a language thing or a developmental readiness thing - it didn't go over real well. Okay, no problem, I figured I'd give them 15 minutes to run around. Hmm, no we went in a few minutes later - it seems Taiwanese kids just don't like running around outside. They're conditioned from birth not to get dirty and that they can hurt themselves doing anything. (The rich kids of this overprotective generation, anyway.)

Taiwan is My Country

Tuesday 28 July 2009

Here is another side of the games - the political side. You see, even though Taiwan is hosting the games, and Kaohsiung city pretty much paid for the whole thing out of their pocket, local athletes are not allowed to compete under their country's name or flag. They are called "Chinese Taipei," which is a huge slap in the face as far as names go, both for the Chinese part, and because this isn't Taipei, it's Kaohsiung, and people down here are proud to be southerners.

There has been some protesting, especially by this group here, but not nearly as much as I would have thought. I think most Taiwanese are just happy to be hosting the games, to maybe be getting some international attention, to have more foreigners to shout "hello!" to for a couple of weeks, and have decided to let the politics lie. But I know if this were my country, I would be awfully mad about the whole thing.

At the closing ceremony, the mayor (an incredible woman who has done time in jail for her pro-independence activities) slipped a bunch of references to Taiwan's democracy and freedom into her speech, which was fantastic.

Rock and Roll Dance

Monday 27 July 2009

Okay, the World Games are over, but I have one to two more shots that have to go up. Here is the other kind of dancing we saw on Saturday, Rock and Roll. The dancing itself was really boring, but it was punctuated with lots of very cheerleadery flips and spins, which was pretty cool to watch.

Closing ceremony

Sunday 26 July 2009

Okay, I didn't put one up for the opening ceremony, I figured I'd better have one of these spectacular shots for the closing ceremony. Here, everyone in the crowd is holding up led lights, and they are releasing floating "hope lanterns" into the sky. (Where they all end up, who knows, I just hope that they are enviro-friendly!)

Dance Sport

Saturday 25 July 2009

Ryan and I went to see Dance Sport today, where we saw some of the Latin and Rock and Roll competitions. Here is the Russian team - they were definitely a favorite with the crowd.

Tchoukball

Friday 24 July 2009

Today at lunch, Ryan and I went and bought tickets at the door to see tchoukball, a sport which was created to embody non-aggression. In tchoukball, you players may not touch each other, or even attempt to block the other team's attempts to make a goal. (It felt like a lot of taking turns between goal-scoring, and as you can probably imagine, it is a very high-scoring game in general.) I don't think I'd want to play it, but it was interesting trying to figure it out. And their dramatic jumps at the net made for some good shots!

German Party

Thursday 23 July 2009

I was complaining a while back about the American Party, but let me tell you, there were no such complaints about the German party. They had a full buffet with four different kinds of sausage, baked potatoes, salad, fruit, and all-you-can-drink beer. They held a drinking contest between German and Taiwanese, and everybody was feeling pretty merry. There were not only German athletes there, but tons of World Gamers from different countries, too. (Not to mention the foreign volunteer staff . . .)

Volunteers

Tuesday 21 July 2009

Here are a few of my fellow foreign volunteers. From left to right: Matteo, from Italy; Rizky, from Indonesia; me; Alfredo, from Guatemala; and Conrado, from Brazil.

Ribbon Gymnastics

Monday 20 July 2009

Here is the promised gymnastics photo. I had a long red ribbon like that when I was little, and man, those things are fun.

American Party

Sunday 19 July 2009

Another last-minute snag today - tickets to the "American Party," for United Statesian athletes and delegates, which turned out to be pretty lame. There were only about a dozen foreigners there, for one thing, and about a hundred Taiwanese people. (I had been hoping to meet some different athletes. Well, I did meet some of the sumo wrestlers.) And for another thing, there was nothing to eat or drink. Some party.

I wanted to show this particularly Taiwanese phenomenon, though. Incredibly organized groups of kindergarten children doing complex choreography is a staple entertainment at these kinds of things. And at kindergarten graduations, as it turns out. I am personally planning and choreographing a dance like this one for my class of three-year-olds right now. You know what three-year-olds are bad at? Complex dances.