I spent another lovely evening down by the Love River, looking at all the lanterns that are on display and staying late enough for the fireworks. Lee opted out so I went with my friend Nancy instead. First, dinner. We met at a very popular traditional Taiwanese restaurant and for about US$10 we got more food than we could eat.

Next, on very full stomachs, we biked down the bike path and joined the crowds at the river. There were tents set up with dozens of sculptures, lit from the inside. I got the impression that there were professional as well as possibly school groups vying for ribbons and bragging rights. Most of the lanterns were made of gauzy fabric stretched over wire frames but some were made out of recycled materials - plastic bottles, milk containers, bottle caps. The variety and quality were incredible.

This year is the year of the sheep (or ram or goat. The Chinese language doesn't differentiate between them) so there were a lot of lanterns depicting them. The lanterns are on display for about a month but this is the last weekend of the official lantern festival so it was pretty crowded. But it was a happy, festive crowd and we found a cafe with seats overlooking the fireworks display so it was all good.

Shao Liu Qiu is the name of the island we went to yesterday. We had gone out there with some friends back in the early fall and have been wanting to get back there ever since. Last time we took our bikes and spent a very hot day riding around the circumference of the island. This time we took the metro to the end, took a half-hour taxi ride to the ferry, took the ferry to the island and then tried to rent scooters. Unfortunately they saw how me and our friend Nancy handled our scooters and took ours and Lee's away and gave us electric bikes instead.

This picture makes it look like a clown's bike but it was actually really nice. We couldn't raise the seats so Lee was a bit uncomfortable with where the pedals were but I loved mine. You get the power of the motor so I only had to pedal on the steeper hills and it was zippy enough for me. The scooter was pretty intimidating considering we had to figure out how to control the beasts in a crowd of people who don't speak English but wanted to give you lots of advice. We had some basic driving tips from our friends Les and Linda, who had brought their scooter with them, but it wasn't enough for me and Nancy to prove ourselves in the two minutes we had to figure it out. I'd like to try again, but in an empty parking lot instead.

But on we went, with Linda and Les in front going half the speed Les normally drives his scooter, but they were very patient with us putting along behind. We stopped along the way for some stunningly beautiful hikes along the coast. The island is an old coral reef so the rocks are all these interesting, craggy, jumbled shapes. As we hiked along I imagined how my brother and sister-in-law could have been scuba diving in among the rocks.

There are places where you have to duck to fit through the outcroppings but at least they warn you ahead of time.

The rocks were thrust up out of the ocean so recently that you can see the old coral formations really clearly.

The island is about 10 miles from the town where we caught the ferry but the difference in the ocean is like night and day. The water at the ferry terminal in Donggang is murky green with trash floating everywhere. The water at Shao Liu Qiu is aqua blue and crystal clear.

At our last couple of stops before we got back to town we saw sea turtles swimming along the shore. The next time we go to the island I want to spend a night or two and go snorkeling. It's supposed to be pretty spectacular.

When we got back to Donggang we decided to meet up for an early dinner at a noodle shop that Linda and Les like so Les took the scooter and Linda walked with us to find the restaurant. We got a little lost and ended up walking in a big loop for an hour only to find that the place didn't open for another 45 minutes. Les, however, was nowhere to be found and it turned out that Linda had both his and her phones so there was no way to reach him. We sat outside the shop until it opened and ate a fabulous dinner. In the meantime, Les gave up looking for us and headed back to Kaohsiung, figuring that we had all hopped on a taxi to come back on our own. It felt like we were living one of those Newlyweds game show questions, "If you were separated and lost what would your husband do?"

As Lee says, in Taiwan, it's all good. We had a great day and a delicious dinner. We left Linda at her apartment to figure out a different answer to that question with Les.

Too tired to blog tonight but here's a taste of my day today.

The Chinese really know how to celebrate. The New Year festival is one of the most important celebrations so they make it last as long as possible. New Year's Day was February 19 but there was a lot of ritual leading up to it. First you have to clean everything, your house, your car, your shop. It's important to sweep away all the bad luck and make room for the good.

There's all the preparation for the New Year's Eve dinner with the family, including all the ceremonial food. Then there's the firecrackers and fireworks all night long. There's significance to setting them off at midnight but there's nothing that says you can't supply yourself with enough to last the whole night. Children are encouraged to stay up because, according to legend, the longer they stay awake, the longer their parents will live.

New Year's Day also marks the beginning of the Lantern Festival, which lasts for 15 days. In Kaohsiung the Love River is the site for all these fanciful paper and silk lanterns on display. Every half hour during the evenings they put on a show on the river with water spouts and lights set to music, followed by fireworks at 9:00. This is every evening for two weeks. The Lantern Festival culminates with the full moon and people light candles and launch them into the sky in paper lanterns. The government is trying to discourage this because of the fire danger but in a country so enamored with firecrackers I can't imagine anyone giving up the opportunity to light something on fire.

I am three weeks into a four week online training course in MYP. For the uninitiated, MYP is the Middle Years Program, the IB (International Baccalaureate) program's middle school branch. So far I'm not a huge fan of the program but that's what the school follows so that's what I need to learn. I haven't felt the need to jump off a bridge in order to avoid having to do the course, but I am not having much fun with it either. I'm a little behind, so back to work....

Taipei, part 2.

Next to the zoo in Taipei there's a lovely gondola that takes you up into the mountains surrounding the city. The area is known for its tea plantations and it was well worth the long wait. The ride takes about a half hour and in the end you end up here:

That spire in the center is the Taipei 101 tower. (The spire on the right is a radio tower on a nearby peak.) There were plenty of people to share the view with,

but we just walked a little further than many people wanted to go and found a little tea house perched on the side of the mountain to have a cup of tea and a bite to eat.

 We had a dinner reservation with Simona's family at 6:30 and couldn't wait the extra two hours for the gondola so we took a taxi down instead. I'd love to go back when it's not Chinese New Year and enjoy the serenity without the thousands of other people.

Dinner with the Hsu's was wonderful. We ate at a very nice restaurant and had course after course of delicious food, starting with sushi.

We had a great time catching up with the family and hearing the Taiwanese perspective of the country, its history and relationship with China. We have an invitation to come up any time and stay with them, which I'm sure we'll do again.

The next day we headed over to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, which has been renamed the Freedom Plaza, or something like that. I guess the Taiwanese are not so enamored of their late leader. Whatever the name, the architecture was stunning.

We had a great time and plan to go back to Taipei. It took us 7 months to get there the first time, so who knows how long it'll be before we go again, but I'm sure we will.

Taipei, part 1.

We had such a busy couple of days I'm going to post a couple of times about our weekend. We met up with our friend, Simona, one of Lee's old students from Ethel Walker. She was born and raised in Taipei and was an excellent guide for us.

We heard conflicting stories on what the crowds would be like during the New Year holiday. It turns out that way more people came to Taipei than left it so the crowds were crazy. Our first stop was the Taipei 101, the second highest skyscraper in the world, where we were planning on having dinner. It's a little hard to see in this picture,

but the 140 you might just be able to make out is the number of minutes to wait for a table. Being the intrepid travelers that we are, we spent the wait time going to the 90th floor and having a look around.

I'm not sure that the elevator ride was a "journey that changed my life," but it was pretty impressive. The view was pretty impressive too, although photographs don't do it justice.

By the time we came down we'd missed our reservation but Simona turned on the charm and they managed to squeeze us in.

The next day we were up and out early to go visit the Taipei National Palace Museum. When the Japanese started advancing on Beijing in the early 1900's Chiang Kai-shek had quite a bit of the National Museum's collection packed up and shipped to southern China. Then he brought with him what he could manage to get out of communist China in the 1940's as he fled to Taiwan. As a result it was saved from being destroyed by the communist government and now represents one of the most complete collections of Chinese art from the last 4000 years.

As an American it's easy to be impressed by the age of a culture. When we were in Europe a couple years ago I was so impressed by the centuries-old paintings and sculptures we saw. But China is so much older. This weekend I'd look at some piece of art that was created in the 1500's and think, meh, because the piece next to it was equally beautiful and created in 200 B.C.E. Amazing.

This is Confucius, bestowing knowledge upon us.

Our next stop was the zoo and the gondola up to the tea plantations in the mountains. The idea was just to go on the gondola but the wait time was so long we spent a couple of hours in the zoo instead of standing in line. The layout of the zoo was such that I think we saw about ten thousand people for every zoo animal we saw. The best part was the aviary because you get to walk around where the birds live. 

This is an eye-spy. Can you see the bird hiding in the grass?

Scarlet ibis

We chose not to stand in line for the panda exhibit. I did see the baby hanging out on his wooden platform. Hard to see what all the fuss is about.

So that's it for this post. More to come...

Lee and I are leaving for Taipei for the rest of the weekend. We're taking the high speed train, which turns the usual 5-hour trip into just one and a half hours. Our friend Simona will be meeting us and showing us around her home town for the next few days. I am very excited! I am not taking a computer (because I don't have to) so I'll wait to post until after we return on Sunday afternoon.

新年快樂！Xin nian kuai le! Happy New Year!

Today is the first day of the new lunar calendar. For all those people who made new year's resolutions back on January 1st and have since broken them, now is your chance to try again. I don't usually make New Year's resolutions because I think every new day is an opportunity to start fresh. Why wait for the calendar to tell you? My plan for today - sleep in (check!), get some work done for my online class (unfortunate, but necessary), take a long bike ride (three hours! Check!), and beat Lee at Jenga when we go to game night at a friend's house. It's a pretty full schedule for a vacation day.

Last night we were invited to a friend's family dinner to celebrate New Year's eve. Lulu is a new fourth grade teacher at KAS. This is her family, including cousins, parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents.

Although we had dinner with Lulu's mother's side of the family, traditionally families spent New Year's eve with the paternal family and travel to their maternal family two days later. After sharing dinner with us, Lulu and most of her family were going to another part of the city for a second dinner with more family members. Lee and I declined her generous invitation to tag along since 9 pm is too late for me to start eating a second dinner. Actually, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been hungry enough to eat again at any hour last night, as there was so much food at our "early" dinner.

There is a lot of symbolism in many of the foods that were served but I'll only share a couple. First, there was steamed spinach, complete with roots. It's the first thing you eat. The long roots represent longevity so you eat the whole thing. It was quite delicious and an excellent start to a lot of delicious food.

Another tradition is the whole fish. It is served every year, but never eaten. 

The uneaten fish symbolizes that you will be back next year to eat it together with your family. Nice thought.

We biked over to Monkey Mountain with our friend Nancy this morning and had a fabulous hike. Lee had gone hiking there with a friend a couple of weeks ago and discovered new places to go, so that's where we headed this time. We parked our bikes in the usual spot but walked up an alleyway to another access point. Here is where the trail head starts.

When I walk down these little alleys I feel like I'm walking through people's backyards, or even their living rooms. There's an intimacy in peering into these quiet little spaces where people live that feels charming and voyeuristic, even humbling. People seem both happy to see us and a little wary as well. City living, and especially Asian city living, does not lend itself to much privacy and I guess people are just used to that. When we bought our house in Simsbury I was happy to have a fenced-in backyard for the privacy. How far my life has come in just 7 months!

So, back to the hike. The trail was almost all boardwalk through the jungle, including a lot of stairs. It was great for walking because they're wide and well-maintained, no scrambling over rocks and roots and the snakes tend to stay off.

The vegetation feels like it's straight out of Jurassic Park but all we saw were monkeys, not dinosaurs.

I didn't take many pictures of the monkeys but I love seeing them. It's just as cool seeing them the tenth time as it was the first.

The mountain is an old coral reef that's been thrust up out of the ocean, as all of Taiwan has been. There are a lot of volcanic rocks on the island but I love seeing these fossilized corals. The trees, especially the banyans grow in and out of the crevasses and form the most interesting shapes and designs.

The banyans grow huge. Well, everything grows huge, but the banyans are particularly impressive.

Part of the "root" system grows down from the treetops and takes root in the soil where it grows another tree trunk. It's so different from the trees I'm used to that I find them quite delightful.

At the top of the mountain I spied a little side trail and discovered this most amazing garden.

Somebody has taken the time and effort to haul up the equipment and water necessary to tend this beautiful space. It's so orderly in the middle of the chaos of the woods. It was quite extraordinary.