Water Falls

The boy looked around at his surroundings. He appeared to be on a boat, in the middle of a large body of water.

Ludicrous, he thought to himself. How he came into this situation, he had no idea.

The boat drifted lazily along. The skies were grey and cloudy, hinting at a coming storm. The heat and humidity was unbearable, the feeling one gets when the rain is about to fall, yet refuses to.

And still the boy sat in the boat, drifting wherever the wind took him.

Stupid, he thought to himself. Where was his oar? How did he manage to strand himself out here in the middle of nowhere? Why was he all alone in an empty boat, with not even an oar to help him navigate?

A bottle floated by him.

Interesting, he thought to himself. Where did the bottle come from?

He leaned over the edge of his boat, his hands gripping the sides tightly. He was afraid to fall in after all. He couldn't remember the last time he had been in the water.

His hand grasped the handle of the bottle, a little water kissing his hand. He gasped, the water was so cold, yet it was so refreshing.

Ahh! he thought to himself. Was this bottle worth it? He weighed it in his hand, the smoothness of the glass a comfort to his sweaty palms. There was a cork in it and upon closer examination, a message in the bottle.

He pulled the cork out. With a loud pop, a piece of paper drifted out of the bottle.

01001001 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101110

He blinked once. He blinked twice. The message was unreadable, a slew of numbers that made no sense.

He flipped the paper over. On the back there was a small message written in the corner. Simply put, it said

Enjoy what time you have in the water.

The boy thought about it. He had been afraid to touch the water for a while now, instead choosing to sit in his boat. Where it was safe. Where he couldn't get wet.

But he realized, the water had changed from when he had last been in it. It wasn't the hostile waters he had known earlier. It wasn't the whirlpools which had tossed and turned and spun him in circles till he was dizzy. It wasn't geysers that had shot him into the air and had him come crashing down violently.

Instead, these waters seemed gentle. Seemed calm. Looking at the storm clouds in the horizon, he knew that these waters wouldn't last. That soon, the storm clouds would come and force him back into the boat. He knew what kind of water was good now though...so, for the time being...

He jumped in.

Adventures with People!

I hope everyone's doing alright back in the United States!

Almost two complete weeks have passed since the internship at the Taipei Zoo started and I have to say, I've been hanging out with people a whole lot! (every night so far!)

Most of you guys reading this have Facebook, and since uploading photographs here in Taiwan take so freakin long, I'm going to just talk about the people but not provide photos. If you guys really care, you could zip on over to my profile, click on more photos of me and find out who these people are!

I'll start with people I hang out the most (outside of work! My coworkers will get their own special post!)

First off, there's Sue. Sue hails from Chile and France. This is how awesome she is. She's a photojournalist and very fun to hang out with. =) She speaks Spanish like whoooaa crazy fast hard to understand her lots of times but it's so cool to hear her speak. Haha, I also find it awesome that she's working at the radio internship here!

Stephanie is the first one I really talked to starting the Taiwan Tech Trek program. That is to say, when we all got onto the bus the first day, we sat next to each other. She's got the kind of attitude and happiness that is contagious, which I find to be very refreshing. She's got the whole nerdy but still fun to be around thing going for her. That and she laughs when she thinks of something funny inside her head. :D

Kelly is someone from Holmdel! I couldn't believe it when we had mutual friends, I was like...no way. Haha, it's cool having someone from Jersey in the group also (not counting Ange, since she wasn't in my orientation group). She's the one I usually start planning hangouts with and from there it spreads like wildfire!

Jed is the youngest of the group. He's a newbie in all things Taiwan, this being his first time here. He works with me at the Taipei Zoo, but he's in the nutrition group. It's funny because his title is research assistant and he has yet to touch/handle any of the zoo animals. Yeah, I'm always poking fun at him because of this.

Wendy is coming from the London School of Economics, which...once my sister heard about, fell in love with her. Wendy is awesome and for reasons I still can't quite understand, she cracks Stephanie up all the time. Wendy has this magical power thing I guess. Haha, she works at the same MRT stop that I take to get to work, so I occasionally will see her when I get off work as she's taking the stop to go home.

So far, our hanging out has been mostly food-related and shopping-related. Note to self, shopping with three girls when you're the only guy...it's interesting. Hitting up all the night markets for food and stuff is always awesome, especially with this group of people.

I have to say, I'm glad I met these people, I know Taiwan definitely wouldn't have been as much fun if I didn't know them.