My Birthday!!!

So after two weeks of training I finally moved to my placement: Nankan. Nankan is about a 40 minute bus ride away from Taipei and a 20 minute ride to Taoyuan. It is a pretty good area for it's location and there is the TaiMall which may be the largest mall in Taiwan.

Anyway, of all the days that I could move I moved on my birthday. I was glad that I moved then because it kept my mind off of my birthday. This was the first time that I was separated on my birthday from my twin sister and I have to say that it was really hard. They day before they had a birthday surprise for everyone in training who had a birthday in July or early August and I lost it. I basically just went into the bathroom and cried. A couple of the girls in my group got really worried at first but understood how I was feeling when I told them about my twin. 

There were four of us heading to Nankan. Since it is relatively close to Taipei they came to pick us up once of the school buses.... which is really just a large van. When they arrived I found out that the school was going on a field trip to go to the local baseball game. Since I had never gone to a baseball game I decided to go. Yeah, it's a little sad that baseball was invented in America and I had to travel around the world to go to my first game. I also went because my other option was to sit at home and miss my sister. 

The team that we were supporting was the Taoyaun Lamigo Monkeys. Before the game started we were able to see them practice and they also gave us a tour of the stadium. It would probably had been more interesting to me if I could have understood what the tour guide was saying but that is basically my life in Taiwan. 

We even got our picture taken with two of the players. 

After the tour we ate dinner which was a packed sandwich from SevenEleven. As we were eating the game started. I had thought that like in America they would sing the national anthem or something but they just walked onto the field and started playing. Another thing that was different from American baseball is that they had cheerleaders and group chants. It was a lot of fun. 

There was also a rainbow over the field.

They gave us these noise makers to bang together during the group chants.

oh look the cheerleaders

We had to leave the game before it was finished since we had around 200 elementary school children that needed to get home and it was probably past their bed time. Lamigo only had one point when we left and that was a homerun. Although our team didn't win it was a really great way to spend my birthday and my first day with my branch.