Lee and I went our separate ways today. While he stayed in Kaohsiung I headed north to Tainan. He spent three hours hiking on Monkey Mountain with a fellow science teacher from KAS.

I, on the other hand, went with some friends on the high speed train to visit the new art museum and take in some of the old city sights. The high speed train is pretty incredible. It took just 13 minutes to get to Tainan, compared with 45 minutes on the regular train. Just before winter break we went up there on a bus during rush hour and it took over an hour and a half.

Flora, another friend, picked us up at the train station and we headed to the Chimei Museum. It looks very much like the US capital building, which is a bit incongruous here in Taiwan.

One of the families at KAS runs the Chimei Industries, who paid for the building of this huge new museum, and they gave us a bunch of complimentary tickets. There were beautiful paintings and sculptures, including a Rodin exhibit. There was a hall full of stuffed animal dioramas depicting evolution. And my favorite, rooms full of an incredible collection of musical instruments. We didn't see everything there was to see and I'm looking forward to getting back there. I'll have to drag Lee along next time.

After the museum we to Flora's family's restaurant and were served course after course of wonderful food. We had seafood salad, eel, and steamed fish with tofu.

Flora's aunt seemed to think we would never be fed again because she kept bringing us more and more food, even when we said we couldn't possibly eat anything more. I brought some of the leftovers home for Lee.

The next stop was the Anping Fort, an old Dutch building built in the 17th century. We visited the street stalls in the market surrounding the area and visited an old and beautifully ornate temple. At the market there was a fabulous store not unlike a penny candy store but with the most amazing selection of off-beat sweets. It'll be the place to go before we head back to the states so we can stock up on unusual snacks to share. (Sorry to my family for subjecting them to weird fish snacks at Christmas. I'll do better next time.)

Flora and Dawn tried their hand at making sugar muffins. It's kind of like boiling maple syrup but the end result is little like cotton candy in a muffin shape.

Our last stop was at the famous tree house. Once we got there I decided it should be called a house tree since it's more a house with a tree in it rather than a tree with a house in it.

Banyan trees have slowly been growing into, around, through, over an old abandoned storage building and the whole structure has been preserved. It's a pretty cool place to wander around.

Then it was time to head back home to tell Lee all about it. Now that I know how easy it is to get to Tainan I think I'll plan on going there more often.

The school had this video put together. That's everyone from the school - students, faculty, administrators, staff. I'm one of the people in the white shirts. I'm getting excited to move into the new building. Less than two months away!

This was yesterday's lunch:

From the snack bar, tomatoes with scrambled eggs, steamed mushrooms and broccoli, and kung pao chicken with rice, washed down with a cup of bubble tea. All while getting schoolwork done on the computer.

I eat pretty much every lunch at my desk in my classroom but I hope to get out of that habit when we move to the new building in April. It's nice to get a lot of work done or just put my feet up and listen to Tchaikovsky. Sometimes is nice to not have to talk for awhile.

My goal with my ELL students is to get them to talk more but some days that works better than others. Today's lesson on Hinduism in ancient India was a pretty one-sided conversation. An earlier lesson with my first graders about Green Eggs and Ham was much livelier. Every day has its ups and downs.

We spent yesterday afternoon with our friend Pearl. First stop, the eyeglass store where Lee and our friend Nancy had their vision checked and Lee picked out new frames. The people at the store spent a lot of time with us. We left school at 3:30 and didn't finish at the shop until 6:00! In a week or two Lee will have a second pair of glasses, ones that will be his reading/computer glasses, at about half the price of his current ones.

This is Lee in his Borg-style glasses. The optometrist added and took away little slices of lens until he got the right prescription. Then Lee walked around and looked at things close and far away to check that he could see well.

Our second stop yesterday was a new-to-us dim sum restaurant. Pearl had eaten there many times but it had just undergone renovations and she was a bit displeased with the new decor but the food did not disappoint. It's the first time we've had dim sum since we got here and Pearl is such a great person to introduce us to it. She, of course, knows what everything is and could make suggestions of which baskets and plates to choose when the carts came rolling by.

I could've tried one of everything but we settled on dumplings, shumai, steamed cabbage, sauteed greens, smoked pork, more dumplings. There wasn't anything I tried that I didn't like, but I think my favorite was the scallops wrapped in shredded sweet potato. Or maybe the steamed scallions in rice wontons. Or maybe the tapioca and yarrow soup. Or maybe I didn't have a favorite since it was all good. 

I've been watching the news as the "crippling and historic" blizzard moves in on the east coast. I hope all of you are bundled up with cups of hot chocolate, a cat curled up in your lap and a crackling fire in the fireplace as you wait out the storm. I can't decide if it's better to show you pictures of flowers in the park and turtles swimming in the pond or if that's just being mean. I guess I'll just send you my sympathy. Stay safe!

Went to the ocean yesterday:

I went back to the British Consulate with a group of friends for high tea. It was lovely.

The food was delicious and the pollution levels were down so the views were spectacular.

The flowers were beautiful.

And so was the sunset.

We set out in search of a mall near here but discovered that it had closed down. Instead we found a place that sells Magners (Irish hard cider) and another that sells un-smelly white board markers. Not bad!

Since we were out and about and it was quickly approaching dinner time we poked around in a new-to-us neighborhood next to the bike path and found this cute little spot:

The menu was all in Chinese but they had some pictures and one of the clerks spoke a little English, although pork and chicken seemed to be interchangeable. We ordered the chicken (pork) with rice and it was delicious.

In fact, it was so good, we apparently ordered two of them.

We also ordered dumplings (fabulous) and wonton soup (eh).

All of that for NT$390 (US$13.00). We'll definitely eat there again, if, of course, we can find it again.

This afternoon Lee went for a bike ride around Lotus Lake, got to talking with a Taiwanese man on a scooter and got invited to join him and his son for a plate of stinky tofu.

This afternoon I had a faculty meeting.

Guess who had the better time.

How do I know that I'm almost to where my Chinese class meets? I pass this atrocious looking building:

It's a western style restaurant called Smokey Joe's that serves pseudo Tex Mex and pasta. Expensive, mediocre food, if it's anything like the Smokey Joe's near my apartment.

But the nice thing is, it's a good landmark. In a city where just about every street looks the same and the street names change on the whim of some bureaucrat, it's good to have the occasional unmistakable building.

In Chinese last night we expanded our useful vocabulary to include words such as duzi (belly), e (hungry) and tu (vomit). I can see the makings of a really interesting story using those words.

It's hard being a Patriots fan when you're 13 hours away but I did manage to not learn the score of the playoff game and enjoyed watching them make fun of the Colts last night. Go Pats! I think it will be harder to stay in the dark for the Superbowl though. Apparently Chinese New Year falls during the Superbowl weekend every other year but this is the off year. Next year we'll be able to go the local expat bar at 7:00 in the morning and watch it live. This year we'll have to watch it on delay so no internet for the day and be careful who we talk to so we don't learn the score.

Tonight I'm going to watch the NFC game even though I know who won. After all, there's only one game left and then we have to wait for two months before baseball starts. (I have a good feeling about the Sox this year....)

Last night we went to bed with a plan to bike out to Cijin Island in the morning. The smog almost made me change my mind but I put on my smog mask and off we went and I'm glad we did. The alternative was sitting around the apartment doing school work and who wants to do that all day?

We've been out to the island many times - by bike it's about a half hour from our apartment to the ferry and about 10 minutes on the ferry to the island - but this was our first time up to the fort and lighthouse at the tip of the island.

We parked our bikes at the base of the promontory and walked up the path, although we did not do any striding. At least I don't think we did.

We passed some tunnels dug into the hillside but didn't venture inside. I'd just as soon not find any of the local snakes, thank you very much. (See yesterday's post.)

The fort was pretty cool. Lots of little courtyards and staircases to the ramparts. It would be a fabulous place to play hide-and-seek or stage a dungeons and dragons campaign. 

Lee did his best impression of a military stance, seeing as we were at a military installation. (For those of you who know our kids, he kind of looks like Gavin, don't you think?)

The lighthouse was quite pretty and, despite the smog, had really nice views.

Lee checked out the huge melon growing in a little garden on the grounds of the lighthouse.

This is most of Cijin Island. The ocean (and eventually China) is off to the right with the island stretching out in front of us. It's hardly more than an overgrown sandbar but it's pretty essential to protecting Kaohsiung's harbor, which is to the left of this photo.

Here's the left-hand side of the island with the harbor and the Kaohsiung skyline looming in the haze.

This is the mouth of the harbor. This promontory is at the south end of Monkey Mountain with the British Consulate (where I was last weekend) on the last little knoll. 

After we walked back down to the bikes we passed this sight:

Squid drying in the sun. Yum.

Busy day today. At the produce market I bought an excellent variety of fruit:

and vegetables:

The bag in front is slivered ginger. It's so nice to have someone else do the work of peeling and chopping. People here go through a lot of ginger.

For lunch Lee and I packed a picnic lunch and headed out to the MRT (the subway). The pathway through the park to the subway stop by our apartment is one of my favorite spots:

It still seems so exotic to walk through rows of palm trees. It's one of my little oases in the city.

We went north on the train, which was a first for us. We usually travel south to the center of town. But today we wanted to go back to Metropolitan Park and Lee's not quite healthy enough for the nearly 2 hours round-trip on the bikes so we hopped on the MRT.

Some of the stops are named for the local schools nearby since so many kids take the subway to school. There aren't any school buses, as far as I can tell, although some parents contract with private buses for transportation. Anyway, one of the northern stops is called Oil Refinery Elementary School. Maybe not the most scenic spots to send your little tyke.

Our destination was a few stops further along and was quite nice - clean and artsy.

We walked the short distance to the park and dined on a park bench - dumplings and baked sweet potato from the food cart plus apples and cukes from this morning's shopping. Doesn't get much better than that!

We discovered a little pond full of fish:

And I'm happy to say that this is the only snake I've seen so far:

(According to my phone's translator this sign says, "Eco series, please be careful slow.")