On our way to Boston on Friday we stopped off at Quabbin Reservoir for a walk and a picnic. We used to go there a lot when we lived in Belchertown, way back in the early 1980's. It's just as peaceful and beautiful as I remember.

This first week back in the states has been lots of family. My family has included lovely dinners, games at the table with family friends and attacks by my sister's tiny little special needs dog.

In Boston we spent time with Lee's family walking around the city's new park, the Greenway, celebrated a belated birthday dinner for Lee and hopped on and off lots and lots of subways.

Today we borrow a car and head to Simsbury for the week. We're hoping the weather clears up and we can do a lot of biking. My wrist isn't completely healed yet but I'm trying not to let it limit us too much. We're looking forward to reconnecting with friends after a year away.

Wednesday we took a quick day trip down to Simsbury. It was like traveling through some weird time warp. I know we've been gone - I've made over 300 posts to this blog, after all - but it's as though no time passed by in Simsbury while we've been away. It's kind of humbling to know that the world doesn't change just because you have. I guess that can be comforting in a way too.

It was such a beautiful day - sunny and dry, flowers blooming everywhere - it was hard to imagine why we left in the first place. Then I remember the few days we were here in December when it was about zero degrees and I think about the awful winter that you all had in New England and it reminds me that June is a really short month.

Weather, of course, is not really why we left. But it is one of the many factors that comes into play when I think about The Next Step. It seems like we talk about TNS every day. You'd think once you've made a decision you just live with that decision for awhile. But not this one, apparently. We spent about two years discussing options before we headed off to Taiwan and the plane had barely landed before we started talking about how long we wanted to stay and where to go next. Two years or three? Go to another international school or back to Simsbury? There are about a gazillion considerations, weather being one of them, that we keep weighing in on. On a good day in Taiwan my opinion swings one way, then something will happen that makes me want to leave the next day.

Since we've arrived in the US we've had many people ask if we're glad we went to Taiwan. The answer is absolutely yes. But we never intended to stay there forever so the question of what to do next is always looming.

We are well into our whirlwind summer vacation. During the seven week break we will be sleeping in ten or so different places. So far we've been to France and Germany, we landed in the US in Boston to see Lee's mom, and now we're in Amherst to visit my family. This is our home base, so to speak, so we'll be back here a bunch of times inbetween other trips.

It's surprising how cold it's been everywhere we've gone. At 5:30 this morning (no, my internal clock has not quite caught up to local time) it was 62 degrees. It barely ever got that cold in the middle of winter in Taiwan. I'm not sure if my memory of what's "normal" has changed but it feels really cold for a late June morning in New England. Is this really what it's supposed to feel like? I clearly didn't pack enough cold weather clothes.

Yesterday we hopped on the high seed train from Paris to Kaiserlautern, Germany. Europe has such a great train system. Fast, convenient, not expensive. And you get to watch the countryside speed by. It was very pleasant. A little less pleasant was the weather when we arrived - a chilly, rainy day. But it did clear up a little so by the time we met up with Gavin the rain had stopped, which made our drive around the countryside quite nice.

We drove to Landstuhl and walked around the castle. It was cool how they'd built the structure around the bedrock.

It was interesting to compare this place to other old structures we've visited - castles in Ireland, the temples at Angkor Wat. Even after all the centuries there are stories to learn about the people who lived here. They certainly had a beautiful view.

That's Ramstein Airforce Base just to the right of the center.

It was really wonderful to be with Gavin. Today he's taking us to Heidelberg.

Here's a quick recap of some of our Paris adventures.

We visited the grounds of the Louvre. We strolled around the museum and through the park next door on Tuesday, the day the museum was closed, so it wasn't too busy.

We also toured around the grounds of Versailles. We by-passed the crowds lined up to go inside the castle and found bikes to rent instead. We had the surrounding parkland pretty much to ourselves.

Another stop was the Pompidou Museum. We actually went inside this museum, although it was the least user-friendly museum I've ever visited. It was hard to find our way to the artwork but the views were fabulous.

We had another lovely meal with Amanda before parting ways. We both really enjoyed spending time with her. I think we may convince her to come visit us in Taiwan, if we can stay there long enough for her to find the time to come.

We've had busy couple of days so far in lovely Paris. The highlight, of course is getting to spend some time with our niece, Amanda. She's been living here for the past year and has been a wonderful host. Our first night here she took us to a Basque restaurant near our apartment for dinner. It was delicious.

We had veal wrapped in bacon and drenched in cheese. The sound you may be hearing is of my arteries clogging.

The next day we met her up at Montmartre for a wonderful view of the city and Sacre Coeur.

It was cloudy so the view was a bit obscured but well worth the climb, nevertheless. We wended our way back down the hill, with a stop at a cafe for some crepes - I'm pretty sure that's required - before hopping on the metro for a stroll through Amanda's favorite neighborhood and soon to be home, the Mouffetard section of Paris, near where we're staying.

This is Amanda's new home.

Luxembourg Garden

We parted ways in the afternoon with plans to meet up again on Wednesday.

Then later in the day on Monday Lee and I walked over to the Eiffel tower and wandered around the area for awhile.

We saw buskers, and park benches with pedals.

We also saw some quintessentially Taiwanese things - an Asian couple having their wedding photos being taken and Hello Kitty. I felt right at home.

For dinner we met up with a friend from Taiwan, Lech. He left Kaohsiung just before we did and landed in Paris a week ago to start cooking school. It was a real treat to spend the evening with him.

After many, many dull hours of travel we have arrived in paris. We're staying at an airbnb near Notre Dame and we've spent the last few hours walking along the Seine in awe of how beautiful the city is.

We found a lovely little spot to order some coffee and a bite to eat.

Lee was quite taken with all the charging stations for electric cars.

There's a wonderful walking path for what must be miles along the river bank. The flowers were beautiful.

Our airbnb is a room in an apartment overlooking Rue des Ecoles. It's about halfway down the road in this photo. (I love how the pigeon photo bombed the shot.)

When you sit in your living room with the air conditioner on watching the sun set you can get lulled into the impression that the air is beginning to cool off as the evening approaches. And then you recall your bike ride home from work when sweat was pouring into your eyes as you sat at the red lights. The evenings don't cool off much, the days climb into the 90's and the humidity can be stifling.

The good news is that we step onto a plane in about 48 hours and escape this weather for awhile. The weather report for the day we arrive in Paris is calling for highs in the 70's. I think I better find some socks to pack in my suitcase.

Here are pictures from a Wednesday afternoon bike ride to Cijin Island.

Heading out from the ferry terminal.

It was busy on the ferry. It's amazing how many scooters you can fit on one ferry.

The view from the ferry towards downtown was spectacular. Those are the central mountains sticking up above the clouds in the distance.

Sculptures along the bike path.

Black sand beaches.

 Lee takes in the view...

of the ships on the horizon.

 Another view of the city, from a different vantage point.

We have ocean to the west of us and mountains to the east. A nice place to be stuck in the middle of.

Dragon boat festival is coming up, unfortunately after we've left. I hope to be in Taiwan for it next year. I don't know anything about it except that there is a traditional food that's made around the time of the festival, rice dumplings (zongzi).

There's sticky rice inside that's mixed with a number of different ingredients, depending on the family's traditions and the maker's inclination. Often there's a boiled duck egg in the center, with pork, dried shrimp and/or red bean paste. The one I had for breakfast had boiled peanuts. The rice ball is then wrapped in bamboo leaves and tied with a string and you steam them until they're hot and eat them with chili sauce.

They're an acquired taste. I usually like them, although it depends on the filling, and you never know what you're getting until you open them up. My Chinese teacher gave us all one from her aunt (who grows the special, traditional Taiwanese leaf wrappers) plus a colleague gave us a couple. But since not everyone has acquired the taste (including Lee), I'm finding our freezer filling up with these little packages. They're a little like zucchini in August - they're everywhere and some people work hard to give them away. Kind of like lychees now in Taiwan.

Today was a much more productive day. By one o'clock this afternoon I had skyped with my sister, had breakfast with a friend who's moving back to the US, met with our new cleaning lady, shopped for a new vacuum for the aforementioned cleaning lady, and picked up a pair of chairs for our balcony.

The afternoon included starting to pack, watching a Red Sox game (which they won), booking a hotel in Germany and dining out with friends at the best dumpling place in all of Kaohsiung, which is saying a lot because there must be hundreds of dumpling restaurants to choose from. I think we may be ready to leave in six days. Too bad I can't bring Din Tai Fung with me.

One week from today we will be getting on a plane to start the first leg of our seven week trip around the world. The first leg will go from Kaohsiung to Singapore to Abu Dhabi to Paris. After a few days in Paris we take a train to Germany for another few days. Then back on a plane from Frankfurt to Reykjavik to Boston. Seven short weeks in the States and we take our final (very long) series of flights from Buffalo to NYC, then westward over all of North America and the Pacific Ocean to Hong Kong and then one last puddle-jumper back to Kaohsiung. Sounds pretty crazy to me, but there you go.

This morning we attempted to get some things done in preparation of this trip. We hopped on the bikes and headed to the bank - check. Next, get the apartment key copied so we can give our new cleaning lady her own set of keys. No check - we couldn't find the shop we thought we remembered on Yucheng and Huarong. Put that back on the list of to-dos.

Next stop the train station to do some last minute shopping at a store recommended by a friend. No check - either we didn't find the store our friend recommended or we need to remember not to take her advice again. That's okay, we also planned on getting lunch at one of the many Japanese restaurants at the train station. Check, we got lunch, but it will be counted as one of the worst meals we've had in Taiwan.

Since the shopping didn't work out we decided to go to our favorite grocery store and do one final shop for everything we need to get us through one last week of meals. The route there passed near our favorite tea shop so we made a detour for some grapefruit green tea. At least we knew it would taste much better than our lunches had. We were suitably rehydrated, but found ourselves unmotivated for tackling the shopping with the Saturday afternoon crowds.

So after three hours and 10 miles of biking we came home with one item checked off on our to-do list. Ah well, there's always tomorrow...

Today was graduation day for the 59 seniors at KAS.

The ceremony was very nice, with the right amount of speeches mixed with some lovely musical pieces. It was tastefully done and not too long. I only knew one of the kids, a faculty brat, since I have very little interaction with the high school students. But we're all encouraged to go and it's nice to show support for important events like this. Plus, I'm a sucker for ceremonies like this.

The ceremony wasn't until a couple of hours after school. Too little time to go home, so Lee and I walked around Lotus Lake and stopped at the Wakey to get a salad to tide us over until the after-graduation banquet. The walk was hot and sticky but well worth it to get out of the building for awhile. Plus, the lotus flowers and back in bloom and they're beautiful.