3 Christmas crashes and a trip to the temple.

On Thursday 16th December, after a pretty nice day at school, I took the scooter to the water filling station two blocks away. I was pretty cold and I remember thinking, I will have to buy some gloves some time soon. I put the filled water container on my scooter and drove slowly back towards school trying not to get a chill. I came to a crossroads and suddenly bang. I went flying to the ground, my hands were hurt. I'm dazed. I assume I must have been shunted from behind because I didn't see anything. I got up see my scooter on the floor and a car pulled up with a family in it. The man was speaking to me, but I just feel dizzy and cold, so I stumbled back to school where the TAs were just looking up. A police car drove past as I did. Tasha saw me and opens the doors. I don't make a lot of sense at this point, but she sees blood on my hands and realised what's going on. I sit down on the school bench wincing. The TAs persuaded me to get into an ambulance and went down to the hospital. They tried to pull the key free but it was jammed in the scooter. I arrived at the hospital pretty quickly and I had my medical card with me. The doctor speaks good English. They rolled up my trousers and sleeves and found more injuries than I had realised. There were 4 cuts from my right knee to my shin and cuts on my left elbow, hand and middle finger. Then there was a small cut on my right knee.
The nurse covered all the injuries with a white cream, a red cream and a gel. Then wrapped a bandage over them all. I couldn't but be reminded of the French Trip moldy arm after a similar treatment. I was very cold by this point. I was physically shivering. It was a cold night and they had rolled up my clothes. Rita brought me a hot drink, which helped. I was given an xray and told "don't move" easy for you to say! I had no broken bones thankfully.
Tin Tin offered to come back home with to help me round the house. I declined as Paul and Pascal should be home.
A police man came into the hospital to breathalyse me and take my statement. He said that it looked like I hit the back of the other car as he was driving across the junction... He must have been going pretty fast for me not to have seen the whole car pass in front of me until I was on the floor. The TAs persuaded the police to leave the statement for another day. It would give us time to negotiate out of court. I was feeling weak and stiff mainly from the amount of bandages.
I got home to find Pascal and Paul were out. I went in the kitchen to pout a glass of water... ah! problem! I can't pour the container. I tried to take my jacket off, but that proved too hard too. I rang Tin Tin ... a friend in need and all that!
For the next week Rita was on the phone to the other driver on my behalf to find out what his insurance covered. I found that it would cost nearly NT$8000 to repair my scooter. So I was really hoping that he would be covered for his car. Meanwhile I was supposed to go to hospital everyday to have my bandages changed. i went once, but I thought that my leg might recover better without 3 layers of gunk applied to it daily. I was right!
The final upshot was that his insurance company are going to repay the 8000 for the scooter. So I will live to ride another day
Or will I?
The Wednesday after Christmas, I was cycling down the hill because my scooter is still being repaired - when the car I'm alongside decides he is going to go right... without any indication.
I slam on my breaks go flying over the handlebars taking off his wing mirror. I pull the bike off me and start screaming into the front window of his car about what an idiot he is and do his indicators not work! I'm going to be late for work so I try to leave. He says I need to pay him for the mirror! I don't think so! So he calls the police... at that moment Paul and Tin Tin's brother appear. The police arrived too. They were looking for my scooter, they laughed when I told them I was on a bike. They wanted us to go to the station and fill in a statement. I agree under the impression it would take 30 minutes. Well it took slightly longer as we had to wait for a translator. The police were a bit pushy at first... all the questions about me ramming the car! But by the end they had come round to my way of thinking.
A couple of questions were about injuries and my thumb hurt a bit as I'd landed on it, but I hadn't really noticed any injuries; I'd been too angry.
But back outside when I tried to hold on to someone's scooter I thought, that thumb really aches.
As my lesson had now been given to someone else to teach, I had time to pop in and see the doctor again. He gave it an xray: nothing broken, but you've sprained it. They gave me an icepack thing and wrapped it in a bandage. The nurse started to put one on my elbow, which barely had a graze, but despite my protests I had to wait til was back at school before I could dispose of it. The kids were all very confused by the new bandage... Teacher you are OK now!
2 accidents? Crazy! The TA told me I needed to go to the temple to pray for protection... I half agreed.

The Friday after New Year when my scooter was finally ready to ride again... I set off home - very slowly - with my washing from school... when 3 dogs bolted across the road right in front of me and sent me flying... again!. I was so angry I was happy to throttle the dogs, but they had ran off... I had a slight pain in my elbow and ankle, it was cold, and the starter button was missing. I stood there for ten minutes thinking about what to do... I was happy to leave the scooter there and walk home, but it was a red line... so I wheeled it back to a supermarket near school... and then hobbled back to school, where luckily the TAs were still working. "I hate that scooter" I said "No more riding scooters for me." I sat down and looked at the TAs noticed the state of my coat "Again!?"I explained everything. I looked at my elbow, there was a nasty hole, but it wasn't bleeding much. Angel got out some iodine and Tasha slapped it on... there was a slight cut to my foot too. "Do you need to go to the hospital?" they asked. "No! This is fine. I thought of how many bandages they would try to put on me... but a plaster would be good.

Vicky grabbed my hand and asked if I was free tomorrow evening. I was. She was going to take me to her father's temple which is just down the road from my house.

So yet again, I was given a lift home ... didn't sleep much that night, its difficult not to lean on your elbows.
The next morning I made myself some banana pancakes, went for walk and had a read through my Chinese books. At 2pm I went to the big primary school (6000 students) I walked the bike down the hill as I didn't fancy another accident. I had offered to help out with our school's drama for the New Year Show next week. I had been given the job of cage mover (a vital role).

The primary school had a bit more space to rehearse.
The kids were amazing. The show was called the Witch, the Wolf and the ShAne Team - get it?

Andrew had made incredible masks based on the characters in our text books.

Emma was there from Changhua, Rita brought milk tea for evreyone, even Linda (big chief) came over to see how it was coming along. Both were very impressed. Andrew had been told at the last minute that they needed a dance or song in it somewhere... so they spent a bit of time sorting that out.

After the rehearsal we jumped over the back gate which faces Shane and walked the props back to school. While I was there Rita sorted out a mechanic to come and fix the scooter.

Vicky wanted to meet at the temple at 5pm.
So I went to find the mechanic, he was waiting with his tiny van, which he rolled the scooter into. I told him to ring me when he had finished... but afterwards realised he doesnt have my number. Ah well!
I ran in to Charles on the way back to the bicycle. So I suggested we went for a bike ride on sunday afternoon. I was pretty hungry so me and Angel popped into MacDonald's for lunch (first time since I'd been here). Angel couldnt understand why I didn't love eating there. I set off to the temple on my bike, I remembered they had said something about leaving a sacrifice. So I bought 2 big boxes of quality cookies to sacrifice. When I got to the temple, quite hot from the cycle up the hill. I took out the food, and Angel and Vicky had also brought food for me to sacrifice because they thought I would forget to bring anything.
Vicky's dad greated us at the temple door. We went into the temple and left the huge pile of treats on the table, we then took 20 incense sticks and lit them. There were 17 statues around the temple. At each one we bowed, prayed for protection, placed an incence stick in a tray of sand and prayed again, bowed and moved on. There was an awesome calm in the temple, and the sun was setting over Yuanlin in front of us. When we had finished praying within the temple, we went to the faces looking out from the doors and placed a stick under each of these. We then took some paper money and burned it in the big furness. We prayed one last time, and I received from Vicky's dad a piece of yellow paper which i folded up and placed into a litle cloth holder w ith a picture of a god upon it.

I thanked Vicky's dad and was on my way out when Angel gave me all the treats that were sacrificed. "What are you doing?" I asked. "You can't take back a sacrifice!"

She explained that the gods had taken the soul of the food and they didn't need it anymore. I was gobsmacked. She said that was the way it was here, and everybody takes back the offering once the Gods have taken its soul. I still wasn't convinced so I decided to give all the sweets to the my students on Monday.