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.