We just returned from an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving weekend in beautiful Hualien on the east coast of Taiwan. It was a whirlwind of touring the city, driving down the coast to the Dragon Bridge we went to with Josh, touring the rift valley and a day hiking in Taroko Gorge. I have excellent photos to share and stories to tell but not right now, as the work week looms ahead. Having visitors can sure be exhausting.

One note, however. The hotel in Hualien, the Anntiss Ocean View, served sandwiches for breakfast and, while the fruit sandwich and the chicken sandwich were perfectly fine, I decided to try the fish sandwich on our last morning. Picture toast with tuna salad, heavy on the mayo, topped with sliced cucumber, shredded cabbage and onion, and peanut butter. I decided to skip the fish part and had cabbage and peanut butter on toast for breakfast. It lasted fine and I got to finish off the day with a delicious bowl of ramen from the Red Bus, a lovely little restaurant-on-wheels along the Love River back here in Kaohsiung. Meals here in Taiwan can be pretty hit-or-miss.

A trip to Kaohsiung would not be complete without a hike up Monkey Mountain. The day started out cooler than earlier this week and clear, although the smog had really taken over as the morning moved along so the views were obscured by the haze. But we did see plenty of monkeys.

We also saw some beautiful spider webs, one of which Lee got a very nice photo of.

There was a gentleman playing music for the hikers, and the monkeys apparently. By the way, I shot this video before the monkeys peed on me and Lee, which is supposedly good luck. It didn't feel much like good luck to me, but what are you going to do? The music was nice anyway.

Zach and Cierra very kindly agreed to come to school on Friday and be the audience for my students. My lower level ELL kids had prepared a slide show of sorts and recorded an essay they had written describing a space at the school.

It's good for the students to have an opportunity to share their work and they were happy to have Ms. Bestor's son and his girlfriend listen to them talk. A couple of the kids with no filters peppered them with personal questions, like "When are you getting married?" but Zach and Cierra handled them with grace and patience - and a couple of none-of-your-business kind of answers.

I also got to treat them to lunch from the snack bar and give them a tour of the school.

We finished the day with dinner at an Indian restaurant and were quite surprised to find it raining when we finished dinner. I hasn't rained in a month and I hadn't expected it to rain again for another six months. But it felt pretty good and it cleaned out the pollution a bit so we didn't mind. We walked up to the fruit store to restock the larder and came back with persimmon, pineapple, passion fruit, Asian pear, oranges, grapefruit, dragon fruit and wax apples.

Delicious.

We took Zach and Cierra to the night market, on a round-about route along the Love River bike path.

The weather had gotten a smidgen cooler a few weeks ago but it's gone back to the "comfortable-hot" range, according to the government weather page. It a bit sticky for everyone else's liking, although I don't mind it too much. I prefer less humidity but I don't find it unbearable, the way I did last year. It was nice to walk along the river, anyway.

The night market was busy, but not too crazy, the way it can be on the weekends. 

Cierra wasn't feeling up to eating too much (their clocks haven't quite synched up yet) but we did get a nice sampling of foods, even if we did skip the stinky tofu. Our menu included fruit smoothies, German sausages, Hungarian pizza, odd chicken parts (butts and skin, maybe?) and my new favorite, candied sweet potato. We will make an attempt to go back for stinky tofu and scallion pancakes before Zach and Cierra leave. I'm pretty sure their friends will shun them if they haven't at least tried these Taiwanese delicacies.

Zach and Cierra have arrived, a little bleary-eyed and travel weary. One of my goals is to take them to all of our favorite restaurants. I hope they came hungry!

First stop, Din Tai Fung, a Taiwanese original. Anthony Bourdain of the Travel Channel fame calls the dumplings there "little pockets of heaven."

They're up early this morning so they've gone off to find our favorite dumpling cart to bring back some breakfast before we head off to work. Tonight we'll go to the night market. I'm pretty sure they'll need naps in between.

We have gotten into the habit of eating out many nights, and who can blame us? The food is great and inexpensive, we have an incredible variety of cuisines to choose from and, frankly, I don't really like to cook all that much. Christmas cookies, yes, but the every day not so much. But I also don't want to never cook. It's satisfying to cook a really good meal at home. Lazy Sunday afternoons are a good time to plan, shop, prepare and then have your home fill with the smells of delicious food cooking.

So today I made the commitment to roast a chicken. Not such a big deal, you say? I am not interested in preparing a chicken that still has many of its parts that I've spent a lifetime trying to imagine were never attached. The chickens at the market here still have their heads and feet. I know that they're supposed to have those parts when they're alive but I'm just not used to seeing them when the bird is ready to come home to my oven. So, no fresh chicken from the street vendors. Instead we picked up a nice, clean plastic bag of chicken from Costco.

It even claims that this was a happy chicken, running free on some chicken farm in Taiwan. All was fine and good until I opened the bag and discovered, to my dismay, that our dinner had not lost its head, or its feet either. I really, really wanted to be strong and embrace my carnivorous self but I just couldn't do it. Fortunately, Lee overcame his own qualms about beheading this poor dead bird and took care of that part. I did cut the feet off all by myself, however.

I didn't eat meat for a number of years but have been happy being a meat-eater for quite awhile. I may have to rethink that position. But not tonight. The bird is in the oven as I type this.

It smells good and I'm getting hungry. When it comes time to slice into it I may lose my appetite for an animal that just a short time ago still had its head. I'll let you know after dinner.

Addendum: I did not lose my appetite. The chicken tasted good, although not great. I think I've been cured of the desire to roast my own chicken. The next time I get an inkling that I'd like some roasted chicken I think I'll just get Costco's already-cooked version. I know those do not come with either the heads or the feet. Although you can get them in the chicken parts section of the store. No thank you.

Today has been a day to think of Paris, including the people I know and care about who live there.

The school's string orchestra put on a mini-concert the other day and boy, were they good. They set up their chairs in the lobby at the end of the school day and serenaded the students as they headed out to the buses. There are about three dozen students in the orchestra, some as young as 6th and 7th grade, as well as seniors who have their eyes set on going to schools like Julliard.

The program included three pieces by Handel, Pachelbel's Canon, and Mouret's Rondeau (well known as the Masterpiece Theater theme music). The performers were all dressed in their black performance outfits and made an interesting contrast to the swirling crowd of exiting students who would pause as they passed by. There was also a small crowd of parents and faculty who stood around and listened to the whole 20 minutes of music and went away humming the classics. Or maybe that was just me.

Earlier in the week Lee and I went to the solo performances by the IB music students. Those are the ones who end up at Julliard and Berklee College of Music. Music is taken very seriously here and they love the classics. The two music teachers at KAS take every opportunity to let the students perform and we go to every performance. These kids are not like my peers back when I was in school. There is no cringing at missed notes or being off-key. Even the kindergartners do an impressive job up on stage.

And not only are these kids good, they seem to be really enjoying themselves. There is definitely some nervousness at having to perform in front of an audience but once they get started they pretty much all seem to relax and really get into the music, smiling, concentrating, enjoying themselves. It's pretty magical.

This weekend was the Lion Dance competition. Saturday's competition was held at a swimming pool because the poles they were dancing on were 5 meters tall. I guess they figured there would less likelihood of death if the dancers fell into the water, provided they were fished out before they were drowned. We didn't go but it must have been pretty impressive.

Instead, we went to Sunday's event, which was held nearby at the Kaohsiung Arena. Here's a sample:

We learned recently that there is a tunnel on Cijin Island that leads to the point below the lighthouse. It's an area we've wanted to visit but couldn't figure out how to get to. So this morning we headed out on our bikes to find it. If you've read much of this blog you know we spend a lot of time biking around Cijin. It's got a long, quiet bike path right along the black sand beaches. There's very little traffic once you get beyond the little town and because it's such a tourist destination there are plenty of bathrooms and little shops for snacks, drinks and trinkets. Heaven.

Today did not disappoint. The entrance to the tunnel was right where we were told to look and it led to a delightful little bike path around the end of the island, right at the mouth of the harbor.

In one end....

... and out the other.

Like most places you can go, if you're willing to go a little ways off the beaten path you can find a lot of uncrowded, lovely little spots. The bike path and beaches here were splendid.

Since we were in the neighborhood we walked up to the lighthouse as well.

A walk in the park.

Fan dancers in the shade of the trees.

Next in line, dancers in beautiful, native aboriginal costumes.

New flowers were being planted along the walkways.

This gentleman was out with his family, taking his dogs for a walk.

The family was quite pleased that I wanted to take pictures of the dogs. And who wouldn't want to take their pictures? They're adorable!

This family was feeding the turtles in the pond.

For today, a short quiz on the traffic laws of Taiwan.

You are sitting at a red light, waiting to turn right. Who has the right-of-way?
1. Everyone. It's a free-for-all!
2. The cars on your right and left, because they have the green light.
3. The scooter with the red light turning left.
4. You.
5. The pedestrians.

1. Incorrect. This is not Ho Chi Minh City, after all. I may be unhappy with the traffic here but I have seen worse. Much, much worse.
2. Correct. But they better look first, just in case number 1 is in effect.
3. Correct. Because the scooters always have the right-of-way. Or at least they always take it. They usually drive slowly enough that the accidents that happen are relatively minor (except for the scooter that hit me last spring, but that's another story).
4. Correct. The law says there's no right on red but most traffic laws are mere suggestions, right? I am less-than-native since I, at least, look first, but there's usually a scooter lane you can slip into, so it's okay. Lee says I'm picking up some bad habits.
5. Incorrect. Pedestrians never have the right-of-way. Never. You just have to believe you're going to make it across and maintain a steady pace. It's like being a gazelle on the Serengeti. Don't make any sudden moves and the scooters may leave you alone.

That is the end of the quiz. I hope you enjoyed it.

As a friend once said, I've never met a Friday I couldn't get through. Today marks the end of the first third of school we've all settled into the routine, which sometimes feels like drudgery, like today. But we got through it in the best way we know how - an evening at the Wakey with friends and a stop for dessert at the 7-11. What, you may ask, does the 7-11 have in the way of dessert foods? Only the best, I answer. Happy Crispy Cups and 7-11 shots, in this case Black Pearl (coffee and vanilla cream liqueur) and China White (butterscotch and cream liqueur).

Life is good.

Congratulations Zach, or should I say Dr. Zalinger? My pride reaches from one side of the world to the other. We can't be there to celebrate with him today so we'll have to wait until Zach and Cierra arrive in two weeks. You can't tell but I'm beaming from ear to ear. Well done.

Halloween in Taiwan. You wouldn't think it would be much, but of course we work at an American school, so we like to celebrate those traditional American holidays. The lobby of the school was elaborately decorated for the festivities, thanks to the PTA, who spent a bit of money to hire a crew of professional balloon decorators.

The elementary kids got dressed up in costumes and spent the afternoon playing games and trick-or-treating around the offices and the middle and high school classrooms. My ELL colleague and I decided to skip teaching in the morning and had a little middle school party of our own with our students. We found some mildly terrifying videos to show them, in English, of course. This is ELL class, after all. We also fed them candy and taught them the history of Halloween. Sometimes it's nice to teach outside of the box.

On Saturday we went to the beach. The excuse was to celebrate a friend's birthday but you don't really need an excuse to watch the sunset on the beach on a beautiful Saturday evening. It's starting to get a tiny bit chillier in the evenings but it was very nice to swim in the warm ocean water on the last day of October.

In addition to a lovely sunset there were people nearby setting off fireworks (of course there were, as there are nearly always fireworks going off somewhere) to add a nice touch to our little party.