Katie: What do we eat?!

Team Awesome (us): HAMBURGERS!!

Katie: When do we eat them?!

Team Awesome: FOR BREAKFAST!!

Yes, this was our team chant used to pump it up before our Dragon Boat race.  9 of the Kaohsiung ETAs, our advisor, and several Taiwanese friends joined together to compete in the foreigner division of the annual Dragon Boat Races.

 We needed at least 10 foreigners to row the boat (out of 20) in order to qualify for this division, and then we got to compete in the preliminary races.  Our own wonderful Katie was our drummer, keeping the beat as we rowed, we had a flag grabber, who sat on the dragon’s head and then reached for the flag at the finish line, and then a steerer who stood in the back.  

We were given a few practice times (this picture was taken during one of them) and we could never seem to round up a full boat.  It wasn’t until the last race in the preliminaries that we could seem to fill all the seats.  

We raced against 3 other teams (I swear they were all gigantic German men.  ALL of them) and then 3 of the teams would move on to the semi-finals, and then the finals.  I didn’t really pay too much attention to the progression because obvi 2009 we would win EVERYTHING. (ha. no.)

Ok, so we didn’t win.  But we did come in 4th place!! woot woot! and Gered made us fantastic T-shirts that say ‘Your ass is dragon’ on the back…get it?? dragon = draggin’.  dragon boat. ha.  We’re so clever.  This must be why we are Fulbright scholars.  (Even though I’m pretty sure this quote came from a book or something else…)  And our team name was ‘Hamburger Breakfast’…not because we actually eat hamburgers for breakfast, but because many Taiwanese people tend to think Americans eat hamburgers for every meal of the day.  The back of the shirt features a rising hamburger.  Again–pure cleverness.