A friend of ours, Jenn, took us out last evening for a beautiful view of the city. The skies have cleared a little and we actually got some sun yesterday which meant it was a lovely evening for a drive. First stop, mango ice at the best mango ice place in the city, down by the ferry to Cijin Island. Jenn had taken us there one of the first weekends we were in Kaohsiung, way back ten months ago. Lots of fond memories.

Mango ice is one of the best foods that's unique to Taiwan, as least as far as I know. It could be really popular in other places but I've never seen or heard of it anywhere but here. You can get the ice with lots of other flavors - banana, mixed fruit, even red bean - but when mango is in season there's nothing better. The ice is shaved really thin so it's smooth and silky. They add a little sweetened condensed milk and mango sherbet to the pile of ice and ftresh mango so it's a bowl full of sugary goodness with melt-in-your-mouth chunks of mango. Yum.

Anyway, after our treat we drove up the southern tip of Monkey Mountain to the Martyr's Shrine. We've biked up there many times but always during the day. It's a great view of the city overlooking downtown, the harbor and Cijin Island. It's especially dramatic at night when the air is clear.

We spent our first night in the new apartment. Clearly we didn't think it all the way through. This morning I had to quietly slip upstairs in my bathrobe to retrieve some morning essentials - coffee, cups and a pot to boil water. But it's all good now. Except for the bed. Like many Asian mattresses, it's really hard. Not unlike sleeping on a towel laid out on a concrete slab. Okay, maybe not that bad, but not my idea of comfortable.

We had dinner down here last night - pizza while we waited for the cable guy - so we have leftovers for breakfast at least. This evening's job will be to move the kitchen down. In our previous life that would have taken many, many boxes. Now we only own two pots and a fry pan so it shouldn't take Lee more than a couple of trips on the elevator. I have an elementary school faculty meeting so I'll leave the rest of the moving to him. I'm not sure who has the better afternoon ahead of them.

The monsoon season has officially begun. That's just another word for rain, rain, rain. I get that we needed all this water but I was hoping for some sunshine mixed in as well. It's been a week of rain and the ten-day forecast has no little sun icon peeking around the rain clouds. In the past 48 hours Kaohsiung has received over 650 mm of rain. It sounds especially impressive in millimeters but even 25 inches is pretty incredible. Today's forecast calls for "extremely heavy rain" through this evening. Yippee.

We had an "every day is an adventure" kind of lunch today. We've biked by a sweet looking cafe numerous times and decided today to finally stop. It's right on the bike path, overlooking the Love River, about five minutes from our apartment. I refer to it as the cafe in a glass. This morning was very rainy so the effect of being in all that glass with the rain washing down the walls was like being in some kind of weird inverted fish bowl.

When we walked in the waiter wanted very much to help us but his English was no better than my Chinese. The menu was all in Chinese, which is not uncommon, so we did what we often do in that case and just chose by price. Lunch for NT$260 sounds delicious. There aren't many foods that Lee and I won't try and we figure the worst that can happen is we leave the table a bit hungry. I could tell the waiter was uncomfortable with our just randomly making a choice. I guess there were options with the choices we made - what flavor "sauce," coffee or tea, did we want mushrooms with the eggs?

We finally got all of the selections made and waited eagerly for our mystery food to arrive. While we waited, I got out my phone and tried to get Google translate to interpret our bill.

What did we order? "Full division 7 thermal, "fresh vegetable sticks big lesson," and "fresh whole Maishi division II." This is what finally came to our table.

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The food was delicious and the coffee was excellent. I was, however, a bit disappointed with Google.

This blog hit a milestone of sorts yesterday - over 10,000 pageviews since I started writing a year ago. I decided to blog about our travels as a way of letting family and friends know what I was up to without having to email each individual person. I've heard it said plenty of times that Facebook is where people stay in touch but I'm not a big Facebook fan. So I started blogging back when we started packing up to come to Taiwan, way back in April of last year. I love that people are reading what I write. It keeps me coming back to the keyboard. But frankly, I'd write even if no one was reading. It turns out I like writing. Who knew? Hmm, there are a lot of things I've learned about myself in the past ten months. Anyway, thanks for hanging out with me.

In news from my corner of the world, it's raining. I know, who wants to hear about the weather, but we've needed the rain so badly and here it is. It rained all day yesterday and it was delightful. We rode our bikes to and from school and it really was quite pleasant. The air temperature was in the low 80's so the rain is more refreshing than chilly, even on the bike.

However, the rain did complicate the musical performance the kids planned for after school yesterday. But this is Taiwan and we, apparently, don't let a little rain get in the way of our plans. The high school students have a performance club that performs mostly pop songs to the delight of their peers and yesterday was their last concert for the school year. They set up on the high school courtyard but the rain started to get a bit heavy so they tucked themselves under the eaves and brought out the umbrellas.

I think they mostly perform for each other so the audience isn't crucial. (Kind of like my blog - see how I brought this post full circle?) My classroom is on the second floor, all the way to the left in this photo so I could sit in my room and listen while I got some work done after school.

I've got big news to share. We're going to move! It's not very far, just eight floors down, as a matter of fact. We had heard that the apartment next to another one of the KAS teachers was available and it got us thinking. There are things we don't like about our apartment - the hot water heater leaks, under the kitchen sink smells awful, the kitchen is way too small. There are things we like too, the main one being the location.

As teachers started making the decision to leave Kaohsiung we'd look around their apartments to see if it was an improvement over ours. There are always things that are better but the location was never better than where we are now. Then when we heard about this one we figured we'd take a look. The rent is a little higher than what the school covers but not by much and it's a much nicer space.

Lee and I met the landlord and looked around the apartment this evening. We spent about a half hour there but we made our decision in the first five minutes. The landlord is really nice and wants to rent to someone who will appreciate the space. She used to live there and put her own touches into the decorating and such and says she wants to rent to someone who will enjoy it. She got an offer from a company in Taipei that wanted to use it as office space but she likes us better.

It's got two bedrooms, a study room of sorts off the master bedroom, two baths, a big (by Taiwanese standards) kitchen and a nice little living room. There are some disadvantages of course. I'll miss the view from the tenth floor balcony and we'll be closer to the street level noise. Another issue is that we have to be moved in about three weeks. Good thing we don't have too much stuff.

Why is it at the end of the school year teachers are surprised at how busy it is? After all, it's busy at the end of every school year, year after year after year. Even in my previous life at the Children's Center there was that sense that there are more commitments, more loose ends, more curriculum to cover, and not enough weeks left to do it all. Anyway, it's that time of year.

Yesterday, though, we took a little break from all that and rode with a friend to the outskirts of the city to see a little cabin-in-the-woods spot that he thought we might enjoy. It translates to "leisure farm" but that phrase conjures up some odd images. It's more like those little motels you find in the mountains of New Hampshire (and plenty of other places as well) where there are a bunch of little cabins clustered along the road. This place is tucked in among some pineapple farms and scrubby hillsides and can be reached on bikes in an hour or so from our apartment. I can imagine us heading up there on a Saturday morning for a respite from the city and combining some biking with some hiking and coming back on Sunday morning exhausted but replenished.