Its time

This morning I woke up and really missed my friends Amy and family from Taiwan, so I decided that 4 months after our trip I can finally finish blogging about it! Hold the applause. Okay, so on our 5th day there we ventured out on our own again. We took the MRT over to the Chang Kai Shek memorial and the I was so proud that I was able to find my way over to see the LDS temple with the awesome new chapel they built next door. (Course I managed not to take any pictures while we were there). We wandered around at lunchtime until we found a place that made dao shao mian (shaved noodles--so so good) and just had that with yummy fried rice. So now for pictures from the day...

Ben made me take this picture like a 100 times. You can't see it unless you enlarge the picture, but he is standing down in the middle of gate arch thing to show how huge it is.

You have to be impressed with my skills here. I set the camera up on a curved stair railing and actually got a decent shot with a nice background. Whootwhoot.

I like this picture cause I have one that is almost identical to it that I took 6 yrs ago at the end of my mission.

The buildings are so pretty

Ah, and here's me. I'm cute.

That night Abner took us to the night market. I love night markets. They are so crowded and full of culture and cheap stuff. I think I bought some clothes for the kids and a couple things for myself and only spent like $15.

It's great cause you can barely squeeze down most of the rows

Here we are waiting for the MRT so we can head home. Another thing I love about Taiwan is how safe it feels. Now driving doesn't feel safe cause it appears that if they do have traffic laws no one follows them...but what I mean is that I could walk around at 11/30 at night and not feel too worried. I would be so terrified of a night market in Houston...

The next day (day six perhaps)-Friday-we took the train and ventured up to Jiu Fen again-then on the way home we took the wrong bus or something and took hours to get home.

Some views off the cliff at the restaurant where we ate lunch.

I love all the lanterns lining the stairs.

We spent some time in this little shop picking out the perfect pair of shoes for Hailey. It was impressive watching the lady make them. Hailey loves them so much I think she wears them every week to church.

I bought something from this guy last time I was in Taiwan so it was fun to get Ben a dagon picture for his office from the same guy. He paints characters with the side of his hand and then uses a brush for some finishing touches.

A view of the shops

Well, I didn't finish our trip yet, but there's only 2 more days and not too many pictures, so I shall post the rest very soon.

I have not died...

...though some days I may wish I had.  I don't know why I just haven't been motivated to blog the last several months.  I do think its funny that I still have a squatter toilet as the first thing you see on my blog.  One day I will finish posting pics from the trip and things since then.  But not today.  Hahaha.  So here's a picture that the kids will hate me for when they are older.  Yes, the toys are strategically placed.

Where did the last month go?

Ok, somehow the last like six weeks disappeared and I managed to blog about nothing.  So, if I can even remember all that we did I will finish blogging about Taiwan (but perhaps not all today). 

So lets see, on day 3 of our trip Mr. Xue (Amy's husband) took Ben and I down to see the ceramics museum in Yingge. It was pretty interesting to learn about the history of pottery in Taiwan and we saw some really beautiful pieces there (unfortunately, since it was a museum we have no photos).  All I really remember is that they apparently made the first modern toilet and in that section of the museum there was a tv screen inside a toilet bowl.  Ooh, speaking of toilets I did take a picture of  a squatter toilet that one would get to use in public (this trip I learned that they were much easier to use in a dress)

After the museum we went down to the old street to buy some bowls and stuff to take home. It took me forever there cause there are so many different things to choose from. When we left there we had 25 rice bowls (8 for us, 7 for the Gwilliams and 10 for the Hongs-we must like them the best!) 

I just liked the signs at the gas station...

That night we got together with my friend Pan Chuan Mei (my new member...but I don't think she's going to church much these days...) and went to see Taipei 101--the tallest building in the world.  It was really cool-we rode the elevator to the top and it was so stinking fast (the world's fastest in fact) that everyone's ears popped cause we were going up to the 89th floor.  We saw all the views of the city and then we walked up 2 more flights of stairs to the outside observation deck-it was really neat, and kinda creepy.

So I obviously didn't take the above picture since we went there at night...but I just wanted to show how seriously tall the building is.  The buildings around it look so tiny, but they're not!  So here is a blurry view out one of the windows.  Pictures through glass at night just don't do it any justice.

Here's Chuan Mei and I standing in front of the giant damper ball.  This thing weighs 600+ tons and serves to reduce the effects of wind so the building doesn't sway when it gets a-blowing.

Ok, now on to day 4, Wednesday.  Ben and I decided to just take it low-key and do a little bit of exploring on our own (I wanted to see if I could remember how to find things).  Well, I couldn't find my old apartment, but we had fun wandering around markets and shops.   

Here's Ben posing with our favorite side-of-the-road treat.  Butter Tire Cakes-they taste kind of like waffles with hot custard in the middle.

I borrowed this vest from Amy cause it was so cold there.  She made me hide my purse under it for safety.

After like a half day of wandering we came home and took a nap I think...never could recover from that darn jet lag.  When we woke up we found that once again they had outdone themselves with some wonderful food.

Ben affectionately called this thing "the jellyfish"-Amy thought that was so funny.  It's like a doughy dumpling with meat in the middle.  He said they were really good.  I got out of eating a lot of food since I was a vegetarian last time everyone saw me.

After my first dinner at Amy's around 4:30 I went with my friend/last companion Ke-ren to have dinner at her place.  Before this trip I had no idea that she had gotten married.  She really made me nervous to meet her husband, but he was a really nice and  friendly guy (he's from Syria and he gave me a really beautiful handmade tablecloth).  

Here's Ke-ren and Aliwawa

Oh, and Ben asked me to get a picture of my first ride on a scooter.  So cute.  It was pouring rain on the way to her apartment, so I was wearing a nice poncho too.

Ok, I finished like half of our trip.  I promise that before 6 more weeks go by I will finish my Taiwan posts.

I guess its time for another installment of Taiwan trippin'

Or something..well, I guess it has been about a week, so I should continue with the Taiwan pics. On our second day there Amy informed us that her son Abner would be happy to drive us around all day to see whatever we want since he didn't have class that day. We tried to say that he didn't need to do that...but resistance was futile. So we decided to go up and check out Danshui a well know port up on the coast. There was quite a bit of rain that day, so we might look kind of soggy. Ok, so my eyes are kinda closed in this picture, but it was the best shot I had of this bridge. This is the Qin ren qiao(if I knew how to type characters I would put them on here) or "valentines bridge". Not really sure why they call it that, but it was pretty.

The following two signs are for the restroom, but we thought they were funny/cute.Ben kept commenting on how good the ice cream looked, so we went and got him one. Abner thought it would be funny to buy the large one for Ben. They weren't kidding about it being large. It was mango flavored-pretty tasty too.We were going to go check out this historic site from when the Dutch colonized the island (which I didn't know had happened), but they were closed, so we checked out the big christian university nearby. Here we are by the giant sign.

We drove the long way home --in fact we taught Abner a new phrase, "scenic route", and got to see some more of the ocean. Yes, I'm looking really cool in this picture.I liked this picture cause this guy has this really long fishing pole (kinda hard to tell from the photo), but I really wish I had taken a picture of the sign right next to me that said no fishing. Ben and Abner being cool I guess. Uh I just like the color of the water in this one.

There was this neat land bridge along the side of the highway. Ben and I raced up the stairs on either side. I'm sure I won...

And right across the street was this temple.

An outing with the kids

Well, before I get back to Taiwan posts I think I'll throw in some pics of the kids. Today the last of our visitors from New York went back home-we'll miss you Aunt Katherin and Grandma. Somehow we managed to not take any pictures with them...but yesterday we got some fun ones of the kids at the arboretum.

Oh look, I did find one with Aunt Katy-Hunter is giving her a back massage.

So you want to know how our Taiwan trip was?

I'm pretty sure I heard this question from every person I talked to this week (well, maybe with the exception of the friendly workers at walmart). The trip was awesome...I guess I've just been too tired to blog about it. So thankful that Ben's mom and sister were here so that I could take like 3 hr naps every day to recover from jetlag (poor Ben didn't get to do that, we made him go straight back to work, hehehe). It was so fun to be able to go back and to share that part of my life with Ben. After 20++ hours of travel (flying over both Alaska and Siberia for some strange reason) we finally landed in Taiwan.

See, this is Alaska from the plane window...

We spent the first 6 dayswith my friend Amy, her husband and their boys Abner (yes, I told him I've never met someone named this) and Nick. We had so much fun with them it was hard to leave. We had fun teaching them to play Uno and Phase Ten and forcing them to use English during the game. They spoiled us too much and made us some incredible food and I was grateful that Amy even showed me how to make some of it.

Playing Uno with the boys

On our first day we went up to a place called Jiufen. It's a ways out of the city up some seroiusly winding roads in the mountains. It is beautiful up there and there's lots of shops and places to eat and you can see the ocean.Here's Ben braving his first 'hong dou tang with yuyuan'-red bean soup with chewy taro ball things. I love it.

So I'm not even through the first day and this blog is already longer than most. Well, next we went to visit the town where Amy grew up. It is called Pingxi and is famous for the sky lantern festival. The town is really small and much less modern than other places, but they have tons of shops where you can create your own paper lantern with your wishes written on it to send off into the sky (I'm thinking sending a 4 ft hot air balloon up into the sky to fall who knows where wouldn't be legal here). They looked really neat but we forgot to make one cause it was so rainy. We did ride the old train down the our next destination though.

Amy and me waiting for the train

Amy and Mr. Xue-they were so cute always laughing and linking arms and teasing eachother-unlike most other couples we saw there.

I feel like for some reason Taiwan has an inordinate number of suspension bridges. They look beautiful but can be a bit creepy.

We were going to go to this place with lots of history and supposedly the largest waterfall in Taiwan (or maybe it was all of Asia...I can't recall)-but it turns out it is closed because of some dispute with the government about who owns the natural resources foudn there. It was really pretty though.

We crouched down and took a picture of the waterfall-which was really quite impressive-through the trees and fence

Ok, I think I mostly made it through day one...more to come (I hope this doesn't turn into a 9 part series...)