2007 ended

Draft Readiness Rating - Abruptly interrupted.

This year is ended.
What happened? Let me tell you. I got mhyself into a strange place, as I bound to do, that redfines my preconceptions and expectations of this world. This Hualien place is where Taiwanese come to admire nature, where they come to spend some time away from the out of whack lifestyles they live by in bigger cities like Taipei or Kaoshiung or even Taichong. Here is different. Here is a peaceful town, close to the Taroko Gorge where the Taroko aboriginal people hail from. But things are eerily peaceful and quiet here. Here in Hualien is also some sort of military base. Combat aircraft scrape the skies with military drills, their thunder is heard all of Hualien City as they fly right above us, be it by the beach or be it around the Tzu Chi Buddhist University campuses.

People love Cheng Yen here, a buddhist leader and inspiration of sorts, responsible for the birth and life of the radically awesome Tzu Chi social organization. These guys aren't that many when compared to some other religious groups around the world, but they have spunk when it comes to social work. They'll go anywhere and everywhere to lend a sympathetic hand of assistance. When the hurricanes hit Tabasco this fall they were there, in modest numbers, helping people cope with the aftermath, building houses, feeding the hungry, etc. These guys are cool.

But so many of these guys are cool like that. They revere Master Cheng Yen and her messages of unity and eagerness to save our world from a lack of, what they call, the "Great Love" - Da Ai (or 大愛).

The geography of my campus is cuadrilateral, going through the gates you find the academic buildings on the left and a fully equiped gym just a few steps ahead. On the right you find a funky looking buddhist temple, the Hall of Stil Thoughts, or ADA, they call it here. If instead you walk between these and straight ahead you can follow the path to the dorms. Walking you can hear the wind on the treetops and the insects screaming their mating pleas. On a bicycle you can ride over the path and hear the squishing bricks underneath. The bricks are set spaced out so that the earth can breath, so that the tile and the earh are one, so that the institution has a sustainable relationship with the earth. If it's rained recently you can hear the squish, tile after tile, if it's dry you hear the wind rush past your ear.

On the train, on the way here you travel mostly on the coast, by the rocky shore, through tunnels in big rock mountains WHOOM! it all goes dark, your ears pop as the air pressure changes and you're riding in the darkness into the mountain.

There are so many rocks here, after some place in Italy this is the second biggest producer of Marble rock. Like my classmate Chris, there are many great sculptors in Hualien.