Today Uncle Robert took A-ma and I to "Horse Race" City. It's near the seaside, so we took a nice detour to gaze out on the ocean then went a little inland to look at birds.

Uncle Robert and A-ma.	I then had to perform my ritual of touching the sea. My uncle caught me running up the shore. One of his hobbies is photography.
View of the coastline... The building by my head is a military post.	My grandmother picking up rocks. To make meat balls, she needs some heavy rocks to submerge the meat balls. Don't ask... I don't understand either.
Here is an early Taiwanese house. The fact that it's made of stone and mortar fascinates Taiwanese for some reason. I guess if one grew up and were surrounded by only cement houses, one would be fascinated... *shrug* but it looks nice.

Tonight, Aunt Annie took A-ma and I to Two Knot City to visit King Grandfather god's temple. It was a lit beautifully with red and gold laterns of various sizes as well as Christmas type lights. So beautiful... next to the temple, the foundation for the new temple, a co-operative effort between Japanese and French architects, was already laid.

Today was King Grandfather god's birthday. Every god has a birthday and their birthdays are celebrated with processions, firecrackers, and other performances. Today's performances were especially interesting. King Grandfather comes down and possesses a young man who then spears thin swords through his cheeks! Very Indian, no? I caught the procession as they were coming out to get King Grandfather's representative.

Here's the entrance to the temple. Whenever there is a special event, a line of red lanterns are hung leading to the respective temple:

Anyway, every time there's some sort of festival or holiday or activity, a group of hawkers inevitably show up. I arrived about 1.5 hours early, so I took some time to first eat some salty congee (free of charge) and then circled around to see what was being sold. I eventually ate a corn dog and had a refreshing passion fruit juice!

Right at 3pm, King Grandfather's rep and his retinue came in with firecrackers leading the way. I have tons of pictures and am trying to figure out how to organize them. I've found out my I get better pictures if I set it to medium or large, but these are then huge pictures... oh well.

Anyway, the rep and retinue circled around a huge mound of burning coals for about 40 minutes (man, I was tired and hot!) while volunteers prepared the coals.

Then volunteers started throwing scores of salt on the mound and finally the King Grandfather's retinue and rep ran (or walked) across the hot coals.

After it was all over, everyone quickly dispersed. I went to grab some congee for the family and took off. Two Knot city is about a 15-20 minute bike ride away. All in all, it was an exciting and tiring experience. :D

Ah... ok, so now I know how much my Taiwanese sucks. My grandmother didn't want the rocks to submerge meatballs, but to squeeze water out of flour balls. *sigh*