Sunday, Jul. 11, 2004 - 9:19 p.m.

What a day! I went to the beach cleanup here in Tainan. There was the woman organizing it, three of her students and their dad, and me. A little later two more of her friends showed up. She said last time 20 foreigners showed up and loads of locals pitched in. What happened guys?!?!

Well, no matter, I think we still kicked some ass. I handed out a few bags to some locals that got pulled into it, spent about an hour and a half collecting TONS of glass bottles, plastic bags of all sizes, and loads of styraphome (sp?) to name a few kinds of garbage. I would have lasted much longer if it wasnt so damn hot out. But I was drenched and feeling a bit dizzy after that timeframe.

The funniest thing happened though. There were a ton of folks in 7-11 uniforms that started doing thier own beach cleanup just after we started. Turns out that this is 7-11 day (July=7, 11th day=11...thus 7-11. Oh my!), so in honor of this they did a cleanup across the street from a local 7-11. They were in long pants, some had long shirts on, and they all had their 7-11 short sleeve, button down shirt on. I was dying in my tank top and light joggin pants, so they must have been hot.

I must admit they were thorough. I was content to go around picking up big items of trash. But this group was even moving the logs on the beach, picking up trash under them, and then arranging the logs again. Wow!

The irony of it all did not pass me by. If people did not simply throw their trash on the ground like they do there would be no need for this cleanup. Annual for the 7-11 folks, monthly for this newly formed cleanup crew. Oh, and I bettcha any money a lot of the trash comes from things bought at the 7-11 across the street. lol.