I may have already mentioned this, but tomorrow (10/10 - happy birthday Jill!) is Taiwan's 104th birthday, which to me means no school. I'm sure there will be fireworks, the burning of ghost money and possibly offerings of food placed on card tables on the sidewalks. Or maybe not the last two since those are more religious rites rather than governmental.

Anyway, back to no school tomorrow. I had thought about taking Lee to Tainan, the closest big city to Kaohsiung, about an hour up the western coast from here. Tainan was the original capital city of Taiwan and has an ancient history. Some of the students at KAS take a bus or train down from Tainan. They are usually the ones looking a bit bleary-eyed in the morning.

But instead of traveling we have a guest traveling to see us. Simona is one of Lee's former students from Ethel Walker. She lives in Taipei and is coming down for a couple days to act as our interpreter. I don't know that she knows that, but we plan to make use of her Chinese to help us figure out the controls on the AC, washing machine, dish dryer and rice cooker.

washing machine

dish dryer

rice cooker

We may also visit the Escher exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, make a foray onto the subway and visit Central Park, and visit the night market. Simona is our trial run for having a guest spend the night. We'll let you know how it goes!