I needed to get to the bank's ATM today (reference yesterday's post and the forgotten ATM card) so I left work a little early. Or was is that I left only a little bit late? The students' school day ends at 3:00 and the teachers are officially done at 3:30. Although there are occasional days when Lee and/or I leave then, more often we leave closer to 4:30. But today I left at 4:00. No big deal, right? Wrong!

It turns out the public schools get out at 4:00 and it was mayhem on the streets. I had no idea how many schools there are between KAS and the bank. If you've ever been at an elementary school in Simsbury at dismissal time you can understand. Here there aren't any school buses but there are tons of vans and a gazillion scooters coming to scoop up the children. You'll see a mom or dad pile two or three kids onto their scooter and zip off. There's a helmet law for adults but not one for children so most of the kids don't have one. Crazy.

As it turned out the bank didn't want to let me get at my money. For some reason my PIN didn't work and now my card is frozen and I can't even get cash at the 7-11. You know you're in trouble when even the 7-11 ATM's don't give you money. The bank itself closes at 3:00 (reference earlier note about when my school is over) so it's pretty much impossible to physically get to the bank. I'm hoping Daisy, the wonder-woman, can help me work it out tomorrow.

We were all set last evening to watch the Patriots game. We had snacks, a couple beers, the computer was all hooked up to the TV. Alas, it turns out they didn't play on Sunday afternoon. They had the Monday Night Football slot. You'd think that on Monday night we could watch Monday Night Football but, of course, it was still Monday morning over there.

The Patriots games are our little splurge. We haven't bothered getting cable  - I haven't got the time to get sucked into Korean drama, I get the news on the computer and the bulk of the English shows are kids' programming. Instead we plunked down $130 to watch sixteen NFL games. It's nice to have a little reminder of home and our lovely Sunday afternoons with the extended Sheldon family. We don't have nachos but we do have mixed nuts with dried fish. It's an acquired taste, one that Lee has not yet acquired.

So without football and it being only 6:30 we decided to go for a walk. Our destination was the ATM to get account balances and some cash. It would have been better if I had actually remembered to bring my ATM card but it was a nice walk anyway.

There's a pretty major thoroughfare a block away from us that goes down to the Kaohsiung Arena and Hanshin Mall. The mall is nine stories tall (the top floor is where the PTA banquet was last Friday night) and full of shops like Gucci and Dior. The basement floors have some shops that I might shop in but in general it's pretty high-end.

Walking on Bo-Ai, the main road, is louder than most streets we travel on what with all the traffic but the sidewalks are wider and there are less scooters actually driving on the sidewalks. I am continually amazed at the driving habits of the Taiwanese. Lee said that Bangkok was a lot worse but it's hard to imagine. Every day commuting on the bikes I have at least one near miss with a car, taxi or scooter. Walking is generally safer since you're traveling at a slower speed but you still better pay attention and always expect a scooter to come zipping by. An evening stroll is not like our old walk around the block in quiet little Weatogue!

On Sunday I finally met a woman I've been chatting with online for the last couple years through a weaving website. She's from the US but has been teaching in Taiwan the last three years. She and her husband are taking me and Lee to visit the huge Buddhist monastery just north of the city this weekend. There is a 120 foot tall Buddha standing over a garden with 480 smaller Buddhas. It's supposed to be quite spectacular.

This morning our friends Linda and Les picked us up with our bikes and we drove about an hour southeast out of the city to a ferry where we met up with four other friends who came down on their scooters. We hopped onto the ferry (passengers, scooters and bikes, no cars) in Donggang and spent about 20 minutes zipping out to Liuqiu Island.

It was a sea of humanity in both Donggang and the ferry terminal on the island. But like most touristy places, once you get out of the town the crowds just disappear. It was incredibly beautiful and peaceful. We biked around the perimeter of the island, about 12 km, had lunch on the beach, ate mango ice when we got back to town and made plans to come back and spend a weekend here.

(Here's a little lesson in pinyin, the way Chinese characters are written in Arabic letters: there is no consistency. On this map Liuqiu is called Xiao (meaning "little") Liu Qiu . On other maps it's Liuchiu. It's best to learn to recognize the way something sounds and look for the best approximation in pinyin. This is especially true when it comes to street signs. The pinyin spelling of a street name can change from one intersection to the next and then change back again.)

 This is the little town on the island where the ferry lands. I'm sure the town has a name but I have no idea what it is.

 We never saw any crabs. 

 After we climbed the hills on the bikes we were rewarded with a fabulous view of the ocean. That's Lee and Les.

To me this sculpture looked like a cross between a moose antler and a fire breathing dragon. West meets East.

This was our spot for lunch. The beach was mostly made up of little pieces of coral.

The rock formations on the island are really interesting and the water had that wonderfully tropical aqua blue color in the shallows. It was gorgeous.

Often times when I'm traveling somewhere I'll be reminded of someplace I've been before. Like today, the rolling hills of the island reminded me of Nantucket and further on the coastline reminded me of a part of Tobago. Then I'd come around the corner and there was a distinctly Taiwanese temple or I'd get a whiff of some cooking spice or incense and suddenly I'm right back in Taiwan. And right now there's no place I'd rather be.

So, yesterday evening's bash was quite a surreal event. To give you a sense of how the Taiwanese like to party take a look at this advertisement we walked by on the way to the banquet hall:

Apparently some people think the way to class up a wedding is to invite Hello Kitty to the reception.

The PTA party was not quite that extravagant. The new teachers did, however, get escorted down the red carpet and onto the stage where we were cheered and the paparazzi snapped photos. We were even given fancy fake leis to wear for the evening.

It was an evening of speeches and student performances, none of which anybody paid attention to. Everybody was chatting with each other and someone was making balloon weapons for the children so they were running round like crazy people having sword fights.

Some of the student performances were pretty impressive, especially anything involving a violin. The most jaw-dropping, however was the group of moms from Tainan (the next city north of Kaohsiung where some of our students come from). Imagine high heeled boots, black stockings, short shorts, glittery tank tops and flannel shirts. Then think Asian hip-hop music and you start getting the idea. Not your regular PTA fare you see around Simsbury. Surreal.

This banquet also included 10 course meal. The highlight was the fish:

There was a small fight at our table over who got the cheeks. Fish cheeks are, after all quite the delicacy!

The Tainan PTA puts on its own Christmas party and by all accounts it is not to be missed. I'll let you know.

Tonight is the big PTA bash. They put on a huge spread of food and entertain us with performances in celebration of Confucius Day, otherwise known as Teacher Day, which falls on September 28. I hope to have lots of photos to share.

Today marks the two month anniversary of our arrival in Taiwan. I wouldn't say we're still in the honeymoon phase but we're still experiencing new things every day and enjoying almost all of it. If only work didn't take up so much of our time!

We popped out to the local market to buy some fruit for this weekend (we've got some weekend plans but that will have to wait for another post) and ran into this on our way back:

In front of the Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce of Latin America there were festival drummers entertaining a group of dignitaries. I had no idea there was a Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce of Latin America even though we've walked down that street numerous times. It turns out the store front is like a clown car - three huge buses stopped and disgorged their passengers who all seemed to disappear into this tiny little space. I guess it wan't so tiny after all.

Anyway, we hung out for awhile and listened to the drummers. I've always loved watching the way those drummers throw themselves into the music. The ground was shaking with the sound.

We didn't stay too long, however, because we had ordered pizza delivery. Yes, pizza.

 
Now we're watching the Patriots play their game against Oakland, eating really good pizza, Taiwanese bananas and drinking Strongbow (English hard cider). It's like the clash of the nations.

I was a good girl and got back to work but now that I'm home I'll share with your the view of this morning's sky:

Kaohsiung has the most amazing clouds. Maybe there are amazing clouds everywhere and here I can actually see them. The sky was really clear this morning and the humidity was relatively low so I could see the mountains on the horizon once again.

It was still beautiful this afternoon at 3:00 when I had playground duty:

The reason you don't see any children isn't because I scared them all off. The school has had a problem of too many unsupervised children running around after school is over so a new dismissal plan has been implemented and the children can't be on the playground without their parent. You might logically ask, why then do I still need to be on duty? And you might not get a logical answer. But it did mean I had an excuse to stand around outside on a lovely afternoon for 20 minutes before running off to yet another meeting.

I also took the opportunity to add a loop to my bike ride home and enjoy a little bit of exercise. It wasn't exactly relaxing since it was rush hour but you do what you can when you share the city with 2 million souls.

What a waste to be spending such a beautiful day inside. Oh well, back to work....

Lee got back last night from Bangkok and brought with him the cold I seem to have passed along. My version never got bad, just a croaky voice and low energy. Lee's is a bit worse so we asked for advice on finding cold medicine from Daisy, the school's secretary. You know the type - when she went to Taipei for a couple days to drop her daughter off at college I figured the school would have to shut down until her return. It turns out the school can run without her, but it was a surprise to pretty much everyone.

So Daisy is the go-to person for virtually every question, including the location of the closest pharmacy. When we arrived we asked the first clerk if he spoke English and he immediately went off the find the designated English speaker who fitted Lee out with three boxes of drugs - cough suppressant, nasal decongestant, and a sleep aid. He's now toddled off to bed at 7:30 pm and will hopefully wake up refreshed and recovered.

But before he drugged himself up we headed out to dinner at our now-favorite restaurant:

It's a hotpot buffet. For NT$400 (about US$13) you get all-you-can-eat choices of beef, pork, seafood and veggies. (Forgive me if this sounds familiar. I went there last week with some friends while Lee was gone. I enjoyed it so much I wanted him to try it too.)

Here' the spread after our first trip through the buffet line:

The tiny little quail's egg was especially good, along with the pork dumplings and squid.

The restaurant is about 4 blocks from us and I took a picture of a familiar sight along the way: Cranes!

They are everywhere. This section of Kaohsiung is apparently one of the more recently popular places to live and they are putting up apartment high-rises as fast as they can. I'm a little worried that the empty lot right outside our balcony has been earmarked for construction. A fence was installed during the summer and every now and then a truck will park on the grass and someone will poke around for awhile. 

I am not interested in living next to the kind of construction I've seen in the neighborhood. I may have to convince Lee of the need to move, however. He likes the fact that we've gotten to know where everything is nearby. I loves this location and really like the apartment complex but we'll see.

I needed to add a little exercise to my day so on my way home from school I biked around the park I had intended to walk around on typhoon Sunday. As I biked passed the steps to the art museum I saw:
a half dozen mini dogs walking their owners
schoolgirls giggling over their cellphones
a man and a little boy playing badminton
and an elderly couple ballroom dancing.

I love all the humanity you can see in one glimpse of a city park.

No pictures today. I spent the entire day inside while typhoon Fung Wong blew around outside. The government closed work and schools today. (Yes, there is school on Sundays for some kids. They go to "cram schools" to practice their English pretty much every waking hour that they aren't in public school, as far as I can tell.) Everything should be back to normal tomorrow.

I got some exercise by taking the stairs from the lobby to the 19th floor and back down. It beat sitting on the couch for the entire day.

You know the weather's been pretty bad when a typhoon is an improvement. I had all the windows wide open to get some fresh air in the apartment, something we haven't been able to do since we arrived. There are enough overhangs that the rain didn't get blown in and the temperature was down into the high 70's! By Tuesday we'll be back to 90 degrees. I've been told that fall really does start showing up by the middle or end of October. It can't happen soon enough!

I decided this morning that I needed to get some exercise into my day before typhoon Fung Wong hit. It turns out I had plenty of time - it's almost 8 pm and there's hardly even been any rain. Anyway, I headed off to bike around Lotus Lake but found it less than ideal in actually getting any exercise. I kept getting distracted. There were fruit stands lining the north end of the lake and it's really hard not to buy bananas and papayas even though there's already plenty of fruit at home. I really liked the look of the watermelons but I couldn't fit one in my bike basket.

There was also all the art along the bike path that cried out to be noticed:

I also need to stop and smile at the Dr. Seuss-like jellyfish trees:

(It's as though the trees figured that the humidity was always so high they might as well have the root system above ground since there's probably as much water there as there is underground.)

I also found an overpass to explore. It was actually a hill that required me to shift my gears on the front hub. That doesn't happen very often since this city is so completely flat. But the overpass did give me a good view of Kaohsiung's Big Dig:

The city is working to put all of the train tracks underground. These are the trains that take you from Kaohsiung to the rest of the island, including the high-speed train that gets you to Taipei in less than two hours. 

Right now crossing the tracks is pretty inconvenient since only a few of the roads that run perpendicular to the tracks have crossings. It's also ugly and Kaohsiung's new image is all about being and looking green. The plan is to make the old tracks into a long park with tree-line bike and walking trails.  It should be really nice when it's done but right now the construction is worse than the trains. Hopefully it'll be done before we leave.

I just got back from an all you can eat buffet hot pot restaurant. For my NT$400 (about US$15) I had fish, beef and pork, sashimi, tons of vegetables, tiny clams, mochi, Taiwan custard. After a meal like that I figured I better do better than just waddle home so I meandered down the streets of Kaohsiung for awhile.

Sometimes I have these moments of clarity, like an out-of-body experience, where I suddenly realize I am not in Kansas any more. I was walking down these busy streets with all these different smells, with the heat and humidity, a cacophony of noise, all of it unrecognizable and I'm suddenly aware of how foreign everything is. An in-your-face reminder that I really did follow through with the decision to throw caution to the wind and move half-way around the world.

In my every day life I get caught up in the teaching, getting to meetings, going shopping, packing lunches, doing laundry - the regular stuff of living. It's not like I really forget that I'm in Taiwan it's just that the daily routine becomes routine pretty quickly.

Then I have one of those moments where every one of my senses is experiencing a new sensation and I get what people mean when they say living in the moment. It's pretty powerful.

Lee has headed off to Bangkok for a three day conference. He's also got a travel day at each end so he'll be back Monday evening. That's the way we roll now. You just hop on a plane and go spend the weekend in Thailand, no big deal.

I am not traveling and instead just hanging on the couch for the evening entertaining random thoughts. Like this: who ever thought to eat the first passion fruit?

They've got this hard shell on the outside and once you figure out how to cut it open you're treated to this puddle of slime. The first taste is pretty nice, like the passion fruit flavor I was expecting, then you realize you've got a mouth full of hard little seeds, each one surrounded by a really sour bubble of ooze. It's weird.

On another note, the elevators always have notices like these to let us know what's going on.

As you can imagine, we never know what's going on.

You know you teach in a building that will be torn down soon when the maintenance department stops weeding the plants that are growing out of the side of the building.

Now I'm off to wash the dishes. I'd let them pile up until Lee gets home except we only own two dinner plates and two salad bowls and I'll run out of things to eat off of long before he gets home.

Yesterday I wanted to send Lee a text to let him know I was ready to leave school but all of a sudden my phone only knew how to speak Chinese. It was pretty frustrating because I was really ready to leave. Lee very nicely figured it for me once we got home.

 It's actually kind of cool watching the kids "type" something on a touch screen using Chinese characters . They'll draw a rough approximation of the character and google (or whoever the equivalent is in China) gives 3 or 4 printed characters to choose from.  I don't think I'm explaining it very well because it looks more interesting than how I just explained it. Sorry.

My computer keyboard has characters on it as well as letters. I don't have it with me at the moment so I'll take a picture of it tomorrow and add it to my post. My goal is to figure out how to type characters and know what they say.

I'm off to dinner - sushi - and then we're watching the Patriots' football game. Lee accidentally found out the score but he has very nicely not told me.

In the past 10 days there have been 14 recorded earthquakes on the island. There's a website run by the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau that includes an earthquake page. Earthquakes aren't exactly weather but where else would you post such interesting data. I've never lived in an earthquake zone before. I keep waiting for my first one just so I know what it feels like.

The weather page also keeps track of the typhoons. There's one named Kalmaegi churning around the Philippines right now. It looks like it'll stay well south of us. The typhoon season should be wrapping up pretty soon. The school traditionally misses school at least once a year for a typhoon but we haven't yet. The teachers are expected to provide enough schoolwork online so that we don't have to make up any missed days.

Welcome to the Happy Panda Campground at Baisha Bay in beautful Kenting, Taiwan. Yesterday five of us took a taxi for a day trip to the southern tip of Taiwan. Last weekend some friends drove down and it took about two and a half hours. With this taxi driver it took less than two. Lee was very brave and sat in the front seat while I cringed in the back.

It was an absolutely beautiful day. Really hot, of course, but at the beach who cares!

It's not a big beach but it had everything we wanted. The waves were the biggest I've ever been in, which isn't really saying much since most of my beach time has been in New England, but they were big enough to be a little scary and a ton of fun. It's so odd to get into ocean water that's about 84 degrees. It feels a little cool since the air temperature was in the 90's but it certainly isn't bracing like I'm used to!

We rented beach umbrellas and staked out our little piece of beach close to the little drink cart. They had water, coke and Taiwan beer. You can guess what Lee had.

At the entrance to the beach was where all the beach amenities were: a bar, food carts, shops, showers. (I could have done without the Michael Bolton music.)

This is where we had lunch...

Really good pizza! Made by an American expat livin' the dream.

The film director, Ang Lee, is from this area and was inspired by the Kenting area for his film Life of Pi. I don't think the movie was filmed here but you can still take a picture of Richard Parker and the lifeboat.

Here I am before my skin turned completely pink. We may come back here for Thanksgiving break. Yes, we have Thanksgiving break. The school every now and then reminds us that their name includes the word American and even though 95% of the students don't celebrate Thanksgiving we still get the four-day weekend. So this seems like a really nice place to be while we miss you all!

Yesterday afternoon when I biked home from work I took a detour to a produce market that a friend had recommended. It had a large vegetable section, a lot of which I didn't recognize, although I did come home with bags of basil, cilantro and shaved ginger. There was also a huge section for fruits. I bought some Taiwanese bananas which were incredibly delicious.

On the way out of the market the street was lined with little produce carts. There was the bitter melon guy, the papaya guy, the mango guy, the banana guy, the potato guy, etc, etc. It's like a slalom course with the shoppers, the bikes and the taxis. Fortunately no blood was shed.

Tomorrow we go to the beach. There are two official beaches in the city of Kaohsiung but tomorrow five of us are going to the really nice beach at the southern tip of Taiwan. It'll be a couple of hours in a taxi to get there but for NT$4000 round trip (US$130) that's not bad split five ways.

Here's a shout-out to my friend Timothy, Green Room alum from the class of 2014: He said that at his house Friday was donut day. Well, around here Friday is dumpling day. We've made it a habit now, three weeks in a row, to stop at the dumpling cart on the way to work. The rest of the week we exchange a friendly "zaoshang" (good morning). It's probably not a good idea to have dumplings for breakfast every day.

This is a picture of the wonderful weaving creations that my middle school students are making. So far they have been really enthusiastic about the process. The yarn comes all the way from Connecticut where my lovely friend Nicki bought it and sent it to me. Thank you again, Nicki!

When I discovered that I was expected to offer a club once a week I figured weaving would be a nice diversion from English and social studies, right? Unfortunately my boxes, including my (limited) yarn supply, are still waiting to be shipped.

(Have I mentioned that before? The sameness of my shipment is like the sameness of the weather. They claim they now have all my paperwork and they're just waiting for the next boat that's heading to Taiwan. Kaohsiung has a huge shipping facility - the 6th largest in the world. You'd think there would be a lot of ships heading this way. Any day now, any day...)

Working with tweens and young teens has been a lot more fun than I thought it would be. That's not exactly what I mean, actually. I didn't think it wouldn't be fun. I didn't really think about it at all, I guess. I think I was so focused on the whole moving to Taiwan part that I didn't think so much about the teaching. I didn't get a whole lot of information beforehand about the job so there wasn't much to plan or focus on anyway.

For anyone thinking about following in our footsteps, let me just tell you that the learning curve can be really steep when you take on your first overseas teaching position. It has been for both me and Lee and every single faculty member I've talked to has stories to tell about their first job. We didn't uproot our whole lives because we thought this would be easy. Staying where you are is always easier than making a change, especially a change this big. But all this work and frustration and exhaustion makes you feel very much alive. And the amazing things we've done and seen and the wonderful people we've met more than make up for the turmoil.

It will be interesting when I reread this post in a few months if I'll still feel the same way. We'll see.

Okay, I'm just going to say it. I am getting really tired of this weather. With the exception of the three days of torrential rain, it has been the same forecast for the past 5 weeks. High of 92, low of 80, humid, mostly sunny, thunderstorms in the afternoon.

On New England Public Radio last night (your Monday morning) the weather forecast was for highs in the 70's. It should get that cold by the middle of October. It's not like I wasn't expecting this kind of weather. I'm just tired of the sameness of it. In New England if you don't like the weather wait 5 minutes and it'll change. Here you have to wait about 5 months.

Okay, I'm done now.

Today some friends loaded their and our bikes plus the four of us into their cute little van and took us on a trip out of town. We drove about an hour north to a bike path that was built under the main highway in the area. Most of the major highways in southern Taiwan are elevated which lends itself to providing some really nice areas for biking.

That's Lee in the red shirt.

This path is about 20 km long and beautiful. Because it's under the highway it's wonderfully shady and the landscaping was very nicely done. There are playgrounds, basketball courts, picnic areas, sumo wrestling areas. (I don't know if that's what they really are but all the signs are in Chinese and there was no one to ask so that's what I will call them.) There's also a lot of artwork, mostly sculptures and tile work.

A lot of the plantings reminded me of houseplants I used to have back in Connecticut.

Most of the land around the bike path is farmland. One of the odd things I learned is that in the orchards the farmers put plastic bags around the fruit. They do that to protect it from insects. Here are some banana trees with blue plastic bags wrapped around the bananas.

We had a great trip and followed it with a delicious lunch at a restaurant near the mountains. The setting was beautiful and the coffee cup delightful.

Monkey Mountain, Trip 2.

For this trip we brought along three friends and started out much earlier in the day. We were hoping to beat the heat but it was already close to 90 degrees at 8:00 in the morning. But this is a three-day weekend so there were a lot of people out for a hike. We had promised our companions that we would find monkeys so the pressure was on.

But, not to worry, we saw plenty of monkeys. The highlight of the trip, however, was the invitation to tea. People will hike up with all the trappings for a tea party - kettles and cups, propane heaters, snacks and fruit. We stopped at a spot with some picnic tables and a group of friends from the city started to gather and insisted we join them.

Their friends kept arriving, each with something to add to the party. One man had hauled a watermelon up the mountain! They said they try to get up there every day. They all tried out their English, some better than others and seemed genuinely pleased to be able to share their food and camaraderie with us.

They were not so pleased to share with the monkeys however. The monkeys get really aggressive when there's food around to steal so one of the men brought along his pellet gun to scare them off.

Later on at the top of the mountain there was a larger group of people, tables and tea and one monkey jumped into the crowd and made off with a bag of chips. Another monkey had apparently stolen someone's wallet and was slowly checking everything out before dropping the credit cards and cash out of the tree. The man who owned the wallet didn't look as amused as we felt.

Here we are with our new friends.

 Part of the path was pretty steep. It was nice to have some stairs and a railing but everything was pretty damp and the stairs were a bit slippery. 

The monkeys were just as cool this time as they were the first time.

We just got back from shopping at the Carrefour, one of the big Super Stop&Shop type grocery stores. Having never lived in a city before I've never had to figure out the whole stock-up shopping without a car. It's way more complicated than hopping into the car and driving a couple miles. Plus, we had to fight the multitudes who also do their shopping on Saturday afternoon, not to mention the whole language barrier issue.

On the plus side we now have a blender and can use up the just-a-little-too-ripe fruit that's building up in the freezer and make smoothies for breakfast. We also got "Happy is yummy Texas Fries!" which are like potato chips seasoned with seaweed, a decidedly un-Texas flavoring. Other great finds include Skippy peanut butter, Smucker's raspberry jelly and something called cereal crunchoco for a little pick-me-up snack in our lunch boxes.  

All-in-all a pretty successful trip.

The water bill came today. I know it's the water bill because it says so in English on the envelope. I don't remember the Aquarion Water Company bills looking so cheerful. This is also a lot cheaper - NT $118 or about $4 US for a month.

Something I learned the other day, the Taiwanese have a different year than "the year of our Lord, 2014." If you look closely at the bill there's the date 103/9/21. That's the year 103 on September 21. The first year of the Taiwanese calendar is 1912, the year that the Republic of China was founded. It ties into the traditional numbering of years based on how long an emperor ruled. Beginning in 1912 there was no longer an emperor ruling the republic so that was the beginning of the new era, hence, year number one. And that concludes our history lesson for the day.

On my way home from work today I passed a garbage truck, one of many that I have seen in the last month or so. Although they don't smell like ice cream trucks they sound like them. The garbage trucks play a little song as they drive through the streets, letting people know that they can run out to the curb and throw their trash and recycling away. People say it's a few bars of a Beethoven symphony but to me it just sounds like the Good Humor Man at the beach.

Fortunately we don't have to wait for the music as the high rise apartment buildings have a central dumpster for collection. It must be a bit of an inconvenience to have to listen for Beethoven in order to throw out the garbage.

We just got back from a wonderful anniversary dinner. Lee made reservations for us a couple days ago by walking to the restaurant and handing over his business card. It's the kind of restaurant that has set seating times and seats everyone around the chefs. It's by far the fanciest place I've ever eaten. Here are the chefs getting started on the main course.

First we were served little tiny bites of appetizers...

Followed by salad...

(that's shrimp sitting on a bed of mashed potatoes), soup, chicken, seafood, filet mignon, and grapefruit sorbet to cleanse the palette. Then we were reseated for dessert and drinks but while we were waiting they surprised us with this:

When Lee had made the reservation the maitre d' had asked if it was a special occasion and he told him we'd be celebrating our 31st wedding anniversary. The waitress even took our picture and gave us a card.

We finished off our little chocolate cake as well as a beautiful little lemon cake too.

We had planned on taking a taxi back home but decided it was such a beautiful evening that we walked home instead. We even passed through a sweet little plaza with a fountain.

All in all a delightful way to spend the beginning of the next 31 years together!