So we are back in Kaohsiung. Back to the crowds. Back to the noise. Back to the smog. And yet.... There are wonders to discover, even here.

We went for a walk to pay our electric and phone bills at the 7-11 and take a stroll around the turtle pond at Aozhidi Park. By the way, how cool is that, being able to pay your bills at the convenience store. No postage, no figuring out the Chinese websites, and there's a 7-11 on nearly every corner. Talk about a convenience store!

After the bills were paid we headed across the street but a flash of brilliant blue caught our attention and we went to investigate. There's a meadow next to the park and there were a couple dozen people with the most beautiful birds I've ever seen, all out getting their macaws and parrots a little exercise and social time. Unfortunately, we didn't bring our cameras but it turns out this group of bird owners comes out every Sunday afternoon to fly their birds. We'll be out of town next Sunday, on a hike along the eastern coast, but we'll be back at the bird meadow in two weeks, cameras in hand.

Day two at Taroko Gorge has been spectacular. We had an amazing breakfast at the hotel - both western and Chinese cuisine so with my croissant I also had steamed chestnuts and fish soup - and set off for a day of hiking. There's only one road and a rushing river you can either see or hear from just about everywhere, so there's no worry about getting lost.

We found a trail that paralleled the road but at a higher elevation.

The trail signs said to watch out for poisonous snakes and giant wasps but all we saw were lots of butterflies and incredible views. It's hard to tell from this photo but the trail is about halfway up the cliff between the road and the top of picture. It hugs the edge of the cliff and looks straight down about a thousand feet to the river below. A nerve-wracking experience but well worth it.

The trail also had a little tunnel, just like the roadway has all along the gorge. But most of the time it looked just like this:

Along the way we also saw a suspension bridge. Lee ventured partway across but you're supposed to get a park permit to hike that particular trail so I was spared having to follow him. I did, however, take his picture.

We also took each other's pictures at the lions guarding one of the roadway bridges.

We only visited a short section of the park and plan to come back as often as possible. It's simply beautiful.

As you all dig out from the snow storm we flew out of Kaohsiung to beautiful Hualien, Taiwan and took a taxi up into the mountains to Taroko Gorge. We're staying at the lovely Silk Place, a little resort-style hotel nestled in the valley between two rivers halfway up the gorge. It's beautiful.

We went on a hike up to a nearby temple across the river from the hotel.

Since this is a regular weekday in the off-season there were no crowds, although we did see quite a few tour buses on the road up into the gorge. I guess those folks just do a drive-by visit and don't do much walking.

Up at the temple we came across a woman offering up tofu, for a small donation.

It was delicious! We also saw a lot of gorgeous flowers, including poinsettias.

Back at the hotel, we found the rooftop pool and hot tubs. We'll be spending more time up there.

Enjoy your turkey and stuffing today!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It couldn't feel less like my favorite holiday around here. The weather is wrong, there are no familiar late fall smells, no turkey and stuffing, but mostly no family (except for Lee, of course. I'd be lost without him!).

I'll be skyping later this morning to "help" with the pie making and tomorrow morning I'll be joining the Amherst folks for their post-turkey are-we-really-going-to-eat-dessert part of the meal. Since there are none of the trappings that go with the holiday around here it's easy to forget it's happening, so I miss it less than I expected. Seeing family without me later today may change that. Expect some tears.

This is only the second time in my entire life that I haven't been home with family for Thanksgiving. The other time was in 1980 when I spent the fall backpacking with NOLS and Thanksgiving day I was in the middle of a two-week skiing expedition at Yellowstone. Now that was a lifetime ago!

I can't really say that there are no signs of Thanksgiving here. Yesterday the PTA put on a feast for the KAS community at lunchtime. There were turkey, cooked just like at home, and all the sides, every one of which had a Taiwanese twist - shrimp in the rice, five spice with the corn, unidentifiable (yet delicious) mushrooms in the mashed potatoes. Tasty and heartfelt, yet a little bit off.

And now we have two extra days off. It's a far cry from the ten days Lee is used to but fabulous nonetheless. We can really use some time off. The woman who cleans my room speaks only two words of English - hello and sorry - and yet we both understood her suggestion that we all spend the long weekend catching up on sleep.

At noon today we fly to Taroko Gorge for a few days so I'll be posting lots of photos soon. In the meantime, happy Thanksgiving-prep!

Last Sunday we explored yet another city park, this one at the northern edge of the city. The route took us 45 minutes of biking on the streets, most of it in a dedicated scooter lane, which is much nicer than having to share the road with both the scooters and the cars. Even after nearly four months I'm still amazed at how we can find quiet, secluded, beautiful spaces in a city of 2 million people.

This park is called Municipal Park and it is, like all the parks we've visited, filled with sculptures.

First we walked around the older, established section of the park - baseball field, playgrounds, benches and tree-lined paths:

Then we crossed the bridge into the "second phase" area and had the paths all to ourselves. Like so many places, if you're willing to walk a little further, you find less and less people. This part had wide open meadows and hilltops overlooking the northern edge of the city and we imagined we could see the ocean at the edge of the horizon. It was hot (this is November? Really??) but there was a nice little breeze and the paths were quite nice:

It was an easy way to spend a Sunday morning, less than two hours on the bikes plus an hour walking, and you're still home in time to beat the crowds at the market.

Shopping right now is a bit of a challenge because our fridge isn't working properly. It's gradually turned itself into a freezer. At first it was just freezing the lettuce in the crisper but this morning the entire container of orange juice was a frozen block. We've got Daisy, the miracle worker, on the job but the real estate agent is dragging her feet. She seems to think waiting for a month for a part is perfectly acceptable. No fridge for a month? I don't think so. Stay tuned...

Lee and I are now sporting new accessories for our bike commutes:

In addition to the hope that it'll block at least a little of the pollution I also hope to intimidate some of the scooters. I'm thinking of embroidering a skull and crossbones. (I guess when you start talking about embroidery you lose some of the bad-ass cache. Oh well...)

When I was walking on the sidewalk this evening a woman on a scooter nearly ran me over. I looked around with my arms in the universal what-are-you-thinking pose and a man walking by just shrugged and said, "This is Taiwan." She made me cringe, he made me laugh.

Last night was the KAS potluck Thanksgiving and it really was lovely. As the host of the party said, this is our family in Taiwan and it's important to celebrate this eclectic group of people and share a glass of wine and some turkey every now and then.

The apartment we went to is at the base of Monkey Mountain and has the most incredible deck of any apartment I've seen here.

It's not like any view I've had for Thanksgiving but I could say that about pretty much everything in my life now, but it's all good. We've made some good friends here and I felt like I got to know everyone a little better by seeing what recipes people shared. I'm not sure what raw vegetables and mashed potatoes says about me, other than I am an unimaginative cook.

Here's Lee with Kevin and Maurice. Kevin is one of the middle school science teachers and lives in the same building as us. Maurice is married to one of the 4th grade teachers and occasionally substitutes at KAS but mostly just enjoys retirement.

Dinner was everything you'd want for Thanksgiving - turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. (And carrots and green beans, just to add a little color.)

This morning I woke up at my usual ungodly hour and had been awake for awhile when Lee got up so I ditched him while he had his coffee and went for a bike ride. I spent an hour heading south on the bike path to the harbor then came back north on another path that I discovered. Instead of hugging the banks of the Love River this one follows the old train tracks at the base of Monkey Mountain. It doesn't come as far north as our apartment or the school but it was a lovely path along the edge of some of the old neighborhoods that used to sit right along the tracks. Now they over look this lovely sinuous park.

Many of the apartments had potted gardens with herbs and lettuce and it seemed like a sweet little neighborhood. The bigger sections of park had groups of people exercising together, a common occurrence around here.

There's yoga, tai chi, ballroom dancing, jazzercise, and every combination of them, especially in the early morning and in the evening. I prefer my biking outside and my yoga inside.

Later this morning we discovered a massive produce market, mostly wholesale but they also sell to little people like us.

We went in search of potatoes and carrots because this afternoon is KAS Thanksgiving and we're in charge of mashed potatoes and veggie sticks. It'll be fun but it just doesn't feel like Thanksgiving. Maybe once I'm eating turkey and stuffing I'll get more in the November mood, but right now it just feels like a potluck dinner with friends, which is a fine substitute for Thanksgiving when you're halfway around the world.

There was an earthquake near Kaohsiung this morning. Well, not really near. It was 200 miles off the coast and pretty deep. How did I know there was an earthquake, you ask? Because I was in the IT office at the time and one of the people in there noticed that the image on her computer screen wobbled and she said, "Hey, we're having an earthquake." The non-Taiwanese in the room were quite skeptical, yet the government issued their earthquake report moments later, proving that you should never question a local when it comes to earthquakes, or at least you should never question Lena.

So that's my first earthquake.

Last night's dinner was much more interesting. Our friend Pearl is giving us the grand tour of local cuisines and this restaurant did not disappoint. It served traditional Hakka food, not unlike the aboriginal food we ate outside the city a month or two ago.

This particular restaurant is popular among the Chinese tour bus crowd and often has a line out the door. The server likes to tell you about a particular green they cook with that is unique to their cuisine.

It was quite tasty and pretty much the only thing that was served that wasn't brown. We also had bitter melon, cabbage, squash...

and really delicious fish...

One of the tastiest bits with the fish were these little peppercorn/olive-like things that were divine. We ate pork, noodles and tofu too but we ate them too quickly for me to take their pictures. For dessert we had glutinous rice with peanuts, delicately flavored jello you suck through a straw and tomatoes steeped in flower nectar.

The food here is always intriguing and nearly always delicious, although I'll skip the tomatoes next time. Eating with Pearl is especially delightful.

We saw a one-scooter accident this morning that restored some of my faith in humanity. The young woman driving the scooter seems to have taken a corner too quickly, went into a skid and slid into the concrete barrier that separates the lanes of traffic. The good humanity piece is that at least four people stopped to help her. Mostly that involved talking to her and getting out their cell phones but that qualifies as help, in my book. We had heard story after story about people in Taiwan not going to people's aid when there's an accident so it was good to see that disproved, at least in this instance.

She was pretty shaken up but at least she had on her helmet, which is the law, and she also had it buckled, something plenty of people don't do.

While I'm on a downer subject, let me tell you about dengue fever. We're supposed to be at the end of the season but it's been a tough one around here. There have been something like 10,000 cases in Taiwan, 9500 of them in the Kaohsiung area. The PTA has switched away from the fear of chicken pox to the fear of dengue. The water pipes at school have been flushed with salt water, the city has been spraying for mosquitoes (I would have thought all the chemicals in the air from the smog would be enough to kill them all, but apparently not), and anyone with a slight fever is getting rushed off to the doctor's. At this point there are no cases at KAS but the parents would like to see it stay that way. Can't say that I blame them!

Last night we ate at a restaurant at the Hanshin Mall. It's the mall closest to us, about 30 minutes walk away. It's just close enough to get some nice exercise when you just don't want to hop on the bikes one more time, but far enough away to feel like you deserve an ice cream. The restaurant where we ate, Din Tai Fung, is a small chain that specializes in dumplings. If you're a fan of Anthony Bourdain, he has an episode of  "The Layover" where he visits Taipei and he eats at the original Din Tai Fung. He calls the dumplings little pillows of heaven and I would not disagree.

Dinner was followed by trip up five escalators to Cold Stone Creamery. We were dining with a six year old and you really can't say no to those big brown puppy dog eyes. It's possible the adults also wanted ice cream and oreos.

We had take-out noodle soup for dinner tonight after yoga, which means four meals out in the last six days. It's not our usual trend but the refrigerator is freezing everything so it's frustrating trying to throw together dinner when the lettuce is mushy and the raw eggs are solid. That's really just my excuse for being lazy but we're both feeling exhausted from work and just lack the energy to cook at the end of day. We are really, really looking forward to next Thursday when we fly across the island for a well-deserved break.

The other day we were taking a walk around a local park and came across this:

It's an apiary! The whole area smelled wonderfully of honey and the bees seemed quite happy. Okay, I have no idea if they were happy or not but it certainly looks like a happy place. The colors on the beehives look just like the colors of the 7-11's that one finds on every street corner in Kaohsiung, and possibly every street corner in Taiwan.

Those colors also remind me of the parrots we've been passing on our way home from work the last week or two. There are three or four people who gather in a little park, each with the biggest, most brightly colored parrots I've ever seen. The birds perch on the people's hands or shoulders and every so often someone will toss their bird into the air and it'll fly in a big arc and come land back on the person's arm. The flash of colors as the birds fly is breathtaking. It's worth stopping and watching for a few minutes as the traffic swirls by.

OMG it rained this morning! We got a little damp on our ride to school. After six weeks of no rain I'd almost forgotten what it felt like! The odd thing about the lack of rain is that you'd never know it by looking at the vegetation. Everything is as lush and green as it was during the rainy season.

The rain reminded me of a sign outside our apartment building:

Auxiliary sprinkles, just in case you run out when you serve up some ice cream. In New England we like to call them jimmies but either way, an ice cream sundae just isn't the same without some. (It's actually the box for the emergency fire hose but I like to think it's full of rainbow sprinkles.)

Another sight this morning in our apartment building garage:

A bicycle built for three! The littlest kid sits in the basket on the front and the bigger kid sits on back. Usually you see whole families on scooters, but not so often on a bike.

On Sunday it turned out we had an opportunity to get out of the city. Our friends took us along for a picnic on the beach about an hour north of Kaohsiung. Les is retired and spends his days biking or scootering around southern Taiwan in search of interesting places to visit. Today we neither biked nor scootered but instead drove in their cute little van while another couple drove their scooter.

The six of us pretty much had this little black sand beach all to ourselves and it was delightful.

Now that I've looked at the photos I took I see that I just took two of basically the same shot. Sorry. The hill on the left is the north end of Monkey Mountain, where we hiked yesterday. This beach is on the west coast of the island so we're gazing out towards China across the Taiwan Straight. Not much to see but beautiful waves, fisherman on the pier and ships off on the horizon heading in and out of Kaohsiung harbor.

It was a lovely break from the city. Now we're back to spend the afternoon grading papers and making lesson plans to get us through the next 8 days of school until Thanksgiving break. It can't come soon enough!

The past couple of mornings it's been downright chilly on the bike ride to work. The thermometer was reading 72 this morning and the highs are supposed to reach 82. That's about a 10 degree drop since our arrival in August and we should expect another 10 degree drop by January.

Seeing pictures of snow in the midwest and hearing people talk about curling up in front of the fireplace make me long to be cold. Four years ago come February I went to Ecuador with my lovely sister and one of the really nice things was to be hot during the winter. Winter that year seemed especially cold and dreary and I really appreciated being able to bake in the sunshine for a few days. Now I really want the opposite for awhile. I want to have an excuse to wrap myself up in wool and fleece. Christmas vacation will be a really nice break from the heat.

We went for a hike this morning and I was dressed in shorts and a tank top and still was hot and sweaty. You can guess where we went:

Monkey Mountain!

The mountain is very popular because it's so accessible and there's an extensive network of trails. We took a new route for our hike and saw what my have been a new view of the city. Unfortunately the smog is so bad you can't see anything.

The air isn't as bad as they say it is in Beijing but it's pretty bad. From what we've been told the air stays pretty much like this until spring. We really need to get out of the city on the weekends.

But this weekend Monkey Mountain will have to do. We saw some beautiful flowers,

and leaves that are bigger than leaves should be.

We also saw a path to Lovesickness Pavilion,

but that hike will have to wait for another day. Lee took a spill on our hike and we need to head to Costco to get his glasses repaired.

My boxes have arrived!!

I had them pretty much packed in June when we sold the house. At that point everything was either given away, sent to storage or packed to come to Taiwan. In July I did a little bit of last-minute rearranging when I thought my suitcases were too heavy. 

Then, at the end of July, the boxes were picked up by the shipping company, ready for their slow boat to China. I had thought, back when we were comparing shipping costs, that waiting until the end of September was just fine. By then we would be settled in a little and I'd be ready for some diversions. Unfortunately, the shipping company was not in any hurry to load them onto the boat and kept asking for paperwork they already had. Once that was cleared up my precious cargo started on its 68 day tour of the seven seas and arrived in the lobby of my hotel this afternoon.

So what was inside? Clothes (boring but some of it will be useful and some of it I'll probably never wear because it will never get that cold) and craft supplies:

My table loom, yarn and equipment for weaving. A sewing kit, office supplies, knitting needles and yarn for knitting. And before you begin wondering, yes, I usually use different yarns for weaving than I do for knitting. There are also a couple of small blankets and the quilt that I've been making for our 10th wedding anniversary. I'm almost done with it and we've only been married for 31 years. Good thing it arrived so I can get it done just in time for our 32nd.

Now the hard part comes in - finding a place to put all the stuff.

I gave my students a writing assignment the other day where they had to find their favorite place at the school, take a picture of it and write a story about why it's their favorite spot. I like to start assignments like that by telling them my own story so I talked about my favorite place - the first grade garden. They have a space carved out of the edge of the playground and it's been going great guns in this tropical environment, despite the occasional basketball rolling among the rows.

Here's what it looked like last week:

This is the corn, eggplant and something that might be cabbage. Plus one of those errant basketballs.

There are also pots of lettuce, tomatoes and the two little trees on the right are papaya trees.

Here's another view of the papaya trees:

But the cutest thing of all are all the mud boots lined up, just like at the Children's Center.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, Taiwan-style. At least it is in front of the mall.

This morning we ventured off our regular morning commute route in search of alternatives for our missing dumpling cart. We had gotten used to stopping for a treat on Friday mornings - one less breakfast to have to plan, prepare and clean up after. The cart across the street was a poor substitute and there were no other carts along our regular route. We pass two or three 7-11's but that is not my idea of a breakfast treat.

We took Huarong, the road the passes over the railroad tracks and one of the first streets we got to know when we first arrived. Biking to school this morning we passed by a little park that I will always think of as a little oasis from our early days. During the first week we were here we were walking home from school (this was before we had bought our bikes) and I felt completely lost and just needed to sit down and reorient myself on the map. This tiny little spot of green park appeared just when I needed it and we plunked our tired little lost butts down on a park bench and pulled our Lee's phone. It turned out that if we kept walking in the same direction another couple blocks we'd be right back home. It was so comforting to be able to figure out where we were that it made me feel like we could figure out this whole living in Taiwan. It was a little epiphany moment.

Driving by that park this morning reminded me of how far we've come in less than four months.

But that wasn't actually what I wanted to tell you about when I started typing. I really wanted to tell you about our quest for breakfast. Huarong, it turns out, is lined with breakfast options. There were quite a few tiny storefront restaurants serving breakfast in the early hours but we were just out doing reconnaissance, not actually looking to stop. So I made some mental notes of where we might go next Friday.

But then, later in the morning one of our friends mentioned that we must be happy that the dumpling cart was back! The one day we decide to use a different route is the day the cart returns! Now I have another dumpling dilemma. Lee is perfectly happy going back to the cart, which I'd like to do too, but now I have Huarong-envy. That street smelled so good this morning. We may need to do a couple of breakfasts out this week...

Lee and I ventured into the city last night to look for some dinner and a little diversion from our neighborhood. We live a couple miles north of the center of the city, out in the higher end, up-and-coming area of Gushan, and while it's lively enough with night markets and street fairs it's not like being downtown with all the glitz and neon.

Four stops on the MRT (mass rail transit - Koahsiung's subway) and we were at Central Park. It's not anywhere near as big as NYC's but lovely, just the same. We found a nice little place to eat using the tried and true method of wandering down little streets and finding tables on the sidewalks full of happy looking diners. If the place is busy the food must be good.

Many of the restaurants we find to eat at are just counters where you place your order (this one had an English translation of their menu!) and tables and chairs on the sidewalk. The food is served one plateful at a time and you dig in when it arrives, while your dining companions look on hungrily. For US$7 we had grapefruit iced tea, kung pao and Thai spiced chicken, rice, scrambled eggs, steamed greens, some other vegetable I couldn't identify and seaweed tied in knots.

After fueling up we walked over to the park and were surprised to find our creepy little doll friends.

Either it's some traveling exhibit or they really do sprout from seeds and grow in random meadows around the country.

An even better discovery was this group of young men dancing with fire.

We decided we need to get into town more often!

We had another Saturday morning short little bike ride that turned into a lovely all-morning discover-someplace-new event. We need to start packing our bikes with the appropriate things for longer jaunts even when we plan short trips. Where's the sun hat? the gorp? the extra water bottle? Some days we do actually go for an hour ride but not always.

Anyway, this morning we retraced our steps from earlier this week and went to find Chengcin Lake. We made only one little mistake finding it. It still amazes me when we discover these peaceful, natural settings in the middle of a city of 2 million people.

We found a nice section of bike path that skirted around this young, little tree....

and past a much older tree with the most amazing root system trying to take over the sidewalk....

  This is my favorite picture for the morning.

After circling the lake we came to the Chengchin Lake visitors' center, paid our NT$100 entrance fee (about $3 each) and joined the throngs of other people who had come to the lake for Toyota Family Fun Day. We plan to come back when it's not Toyota Family Fun Day and enjoy a slightly more peaceful experience.

It was still very nice, despite the throngs.  We saw giant-leafed trees, lotus flowers and orchids....

The trail was often quite secluded.

We even found an observation tower nestled among the trees on an island in the lake.

Getting there was a half hour of crowded, busy streets but it was worth it. We'll be back again with a picnic, a good book and plans to spend the day.