Dragon Boating

Today, we had our first on the water practice dragon boating! Unfortunately it was kind of unorganized and annoying. I love dragon boat, and I love Taiwan, but sometimes it’s frustrating when things go wrong and because of the language barrier and other obstacles you have NO clue what’s going on!

So we got to the river at 8am, which is really early for me, since I usually don’t work until 4:50 pm every day. We got our smelly life jackets on, we got our paddles, and we got in our boat on time. And then…nothing!

We went to go leave, and the official told us we couldn’t. We had to stay put! I had no clue why, and no one told us. So we sat, and waited for half an hour! Our practices are less than an hour since many people on the team work kindergarten and they have to be outta there pretty fast. So we waited and we waited…and still nothing! Finally someone told us after all this time that the reason we couldn’t row was because another boat had capsized and they were trying to turn it over.

So umm…One boat capsizes, and the whole rest of the fleet (8 boats, 20 people each) has to wait? Huh? Isn’t this a huge river? Does it really matter if there is a capsized boat in the middle of it? I really don’t get Taiwan sometimes. Granted, if you want something done, it will be DONE. But to the extreme. Those people needed saving, and the boat needed to be moved, so that was the ONLY thing that could happen! It’s like a lot of stuff here. Never looking at the big picture, just focusing on one little thing and nothing else!

Needless to say, we didn’t have our practice…

~ by globalciti on May 21, 2008.