Sunburn Barbecue /or/ The Farmer of Love

At 8:45 we left campus on some charter buses for a school barbecue. The day began with soccer as we arrived at some fields after a beautiful drive through the country side. There was a team already warmed up ready to play agains our school. They needed a healthy group of young men to challenge them, and someone shouted "Mike, are you in?" I joined the game wearing a navy shirt advertising a Japanese sake company. The weather was hot and humid (mushi atsui) and the sun was searing. I hadn't played soccer in years and didn't remember much, other than that kicking the ball was a good thing. I started off playing the forward position, and the team actually did pretty well. I had two shots on goal and an assist. The school student-body president also played. He's a lanky black fellow name Ramon, and he was shirtless, wearing a rolled up pair of jeans. He ran towards the ball right when an opponent was kicking, and the ball shot right into his solar plexas doubling him over. Afterwards he had octagon shaped imprints on his torso. The rest of the students cheered us on yelling "Go AIU!" and when I kicked the ball or made a good play I heard "Go Mi-ke-ru!" We lost however, 3-2.
The buses picked us up and we headed towards the barbecue grounds, which was really quite odd. We went up a steep hill in the middle of nowhere to these crummy looking short long houses. In the back they had blue tarps stretched out, surrounded by stone troughs with hot coals in them. On top was a flat piece of sheet metal, and they gave us packaged noodles, cabbage, bean sprouts, mushrooms, peppers and thin beef strips. You simply threw whatever you wanted on the metal, splattering sauces and seasoning on. I had lots of sprouts, cabbage and soba. They also had another treat for us, diet coke. Diet pop is a harder to find here, and none of the ubiquetous vending machines carry it. The sun made the entire day a sweaty affair, and as I sit writing this posting, my face is slightly burnt, red stripes scarring my cheeks, my neck the color of cherry coke.
Last night I went to a dorm party in Emily's room. My Taiwanese friends came and brought some crappy beer. But old reliable me, I brought Japanese brand pringles, and generic pop. We got kicked out though, because boys aren't allowed in girls' room past 10, so we went to the school parking lot and got kicked out again by the mean librarian. So we went across the street to a vacant basketball court eating snacks in the dark. I hung out with Cun-Enn who is my Taiwanese sweetheart who snuggled with me looking at the stars. I will go back to Taiwan and marry her and work on a farm giving her all of my money sweat and tears.

-Michael