Another photo shoot and a weekend in Tainan

On Friday while I was running, I saw another photo shoot.  But this time the woman was wearing a dress and was standing by a wicked sweet Ferrari.  And there were people taking pictures of her.  Friday night, Jennifer and I went to Tainan by way of the High Speed Train.  It is so expensive $1,415NT per person for a 2 hour train ride, and at that price you didn't receive a reserved seat.  It was a fun ride, we couldn't get the train we wanted b/c it was too full.  So the train people had us line up and we were able to get seats on the next train which came 20 min later.  Jennifer's dad picked us up at the train station and took us to his apartment.  His apartment is so much nicer than ours!!  On Saturday, he drove us around Tainan, I saw some temples, one was really big.  I'll post pictures sometime.  He showed us the beach and then told us how when he was kid, he and his friends were arrested because the coast guard thought that they were from mainland China!  Jennifer was fighting a cold all week and it wasn't getting any better, so her dad took her to the hospital while I napped at the apartment.  Later in the day, he took us to meet a friend of his and his family.  The father is a swim coach and one of his daughters has the fastest time in Taiwan for her age for some event that wasn't important to me, like maybe the 200m Butterfly.  Anyways I told him my best times and then he started calling me Phelps for some reason, by the way I am in no way even remotely close to any of Phelps' times.  I think it was because I am white, an American, and a swimmer.  They took us out to eat dinner as well.  I had sooo much to eat.  I was so full.  I can't describe the food, but it was good.  Then the swim coach said I could come swim with them in the morning and he was going to prepare breakfast for me.  On Sunday, I arrived at his house, and they gave me fried dumplings, other fried asian food, salad, mango and soup.  Probably the worst stuff you can eat before you swim, unless your Phelps.  And he kept calling me Phelps, he said that he needed to make sure Phelps was fed before we swim.  Swim practice was good.  I was slow, remember I haven't had a real swim practice since the end of January.  So I was slow, it was in a 50m pool, too.  But at the end, I wasn't tired.  I wasn't even hungry, because I ate so much for breakfast.  But the coach said he'll call the Taiwan national swim coach, who is in Beijing right now, to see if I can swim with their team!!!  Awesome, that would be sweet!  After that we went with his daughters to get some shiao long bao, which is a steamed dumpling with soup and meat inside.  They were so yummy!!  That is my favorite food so far in Taiwan.  After hanging out with them, Jennifer's dad drove us back up to Taipei, which took around 5 1/2 hours.  It is good to be home, but I am a litte sad that I didn't get to see all that much of Tainan.  But, I know I'll be back again.  I like Tainan a lot, it reminds me a little bit of some European cities that I have seen.  I also want to say that we found out that our company is taking advantage of us by only paying us the hours that we teach, and they don't include the hours that we go in to prep or help out after class.  Jennifer's dad told us that this was normal in Taiwan, but then we talked to some people who came over to her dad's apartment and they said that we were being taken advantage of.  Good thing I have been keeping track of how many hours I've spent at the school.  That's all for now.