We'll be picking Josh up at the airport in about 24 hours. I am very excited. Not only do we get to spend time with one of our sons but we also get to show him around a country I've fallen in love with. I hope he gets plenty of sleep on the airplane because he won't have much time to sleep once he arrives.

Friday is a holiday - Double Ten Day, Taiwan's Independence Day - which means no school, so we're taking Josh with us to drive with some friends to Taitung, a small city on the east coast of Taiwan. As the crow flies it's about 75 miles from Kaohsiung but because there's a string of the mountains down the spine of the country it's virtually impossible to drive from west to east without having to go way out of your way. What that means for us is a four hour car ride on Friday morning.

We'll be back on Sunday in time to do a little neighborhood touring then Monday morning Josh will come to school for awhile. (I hope I mentioned this to him.) The students in two of my classes have been working on presenting interesting Taiwan attractions using Google maps and their budding oral language skills. It should be fun.

With Josh only here for a week we're going to have to cram a lot in in a short time. I'll make sure he drinks plenty of fluids and suggest he naps while we're at work. I'm sure he'll be fine.

Before I trundle off to bed I want to send a shout-out to our fabulous friend Nicki. I found a surprise package in my box at school today - candy all the way from Connecticut! Lee's favorite, Swedish fish, as well as one of mine, candy corn. Thank you, thank you. A surprise and a delight. What a nice combination.

Taiwan is surrounded by typhoons this weekend. Mujigae just passed over the Philippines to the south of us and Choi-wan is on its way to Japan to the north. This is what the surf looks like on our coast.

This morning's bike ride made me long for fall, real New England crisp-air autumn. Usually there's an army of people out sweeping the leaves off the roads but no one had gotten to the bike path this morning so we were treated to the sound and smell of fallen leaves underneath our bike tires. There's something unique and memory inducing that happens when you hear the crunch of the leaves and smell that wonderful dried leaf smell.

I was reminded of days when the kids were young and we'd take them apple picking. There would finally be a nip in the air and I'd insist that the boys wear long pants and bring a jacket along. By the time we'd get out to the orchard the sun would have burned off the morning mist and the air temperature would be climbing into the 80's. We'd all be hot and sweating but still came home with bushels of crisp delicious apples. Today Lee and I got the hot and sweaty part but no apples.

We did do some great shopping later in the day though. We went with our friend Pearl to Meinong, the center of the Hakka culture of Taiwan. We went shopping at the umbrella store where the traditional hand-painted paper umbrellas are made. I admired some of the fabrics decorating the store and the shopkeeper told Pearl where we could find a little fabric store that sells the traditional Hakka designed fabric. Meinong isn't very big but they were celebrating an important deity so the streets were quite crowded.

The celebration included lots of firecrackers, a parade of people carrying little temples on palanquins, and a stage on the back of a truck with scantily clad women dancing to traditional Chinese music. It was pretty raucous. It also made driving through the little streets adventurous as we tried to avoid the parade. We did finally find the fabric shop where I indulged in one of my favorite pastimes. Without Pearl I would have been lost. But with her help I came away with yards of beautiful fabric that may never do anything more than sit folded on a shelf looking gorgeous. I may some day make some pillows with it, but mostly I just wanted to own some Hakka fabric.

I woke up in a bit of a funk yesterday. Some days are just like that. It's like a Monday morning in the rain, except that it was Tuesday and the rain was a typhoon. It wasn't much of a storm for us in Kaohsiung - Lee called it a typh-izzle - but it shut down pretty much the rest of the island. There were hopes that we would have school cancelled, but no.

I think part of my funk was that I knew in my heart that it would be bad to have school cancelled because it would mess with my lesson plans. Ugh, I sound like a grown-up. How dull.

But today is another day. It's weaving day with my middle school club, yoga in the evening and kung poa chicken at the snack bar. It's all good.

We are anticipating yet another typhoon. This one is named Dujuan, it's currently classified as a category 4 super typhoon and it's heading for northern Taiwan. They got slammed about a month ago with Typhoon Souldelor. Down here in the south we should get a bunch of rain - the forecast is calling for about 5 inches by the end of Tuesday - but we'll probably still have school tomorrow.

At least the storm held off for the Moon Festival fireworks last night. The holiday is also called Mid-Autumn Festival but that seems like a misnomer since it's hardly the middle of autumn. It's celebrated on the full moon towards the end of September/early October and involves barbecuing with your family, eating moon cakes and setting off fireworks. Our next door neighbors entertained us with theirs.

We've just come back from a very lovely weekend in Hong Kong. Lee surprised me by booking the flights and arranging the plane tickets without my knowing. I knew something was up when I started suggesting things to do for this, our first long weekend, and eventually guessed his plans. It's a very romantic, and much appreciated.

We may have set a record for the least amount of shopping by anyone in this mecca for shoppers. We came home with a refrigerator magnet and one postcard. We also came home with some wonderful memories and some stories to tell, with photos as visual aids in the telling of said stories.

Let me start my story telling by introducing you to a woman we met on the bus on our way to Victoria Peak. We got on a city bus to take us to the tram but didn't know either how to pay or how much it cost. This woman sitting near the front of the bus rummaged around in her purse for some coins and paid for us, told us where our stop was, how to walk to the peak tram and then wished us a lovely stay in Hong Kong. I thought all the nice people lived in Taiwan but it turns out there are quite a few who live in Hong Kong too.

I could also tell you about how we got lost on the subway but I'll save us the embarrassment. Suffice it to say, it was all our doing as the subway system is fabulously easy to use, clean, with excellent signage.

We spent the whole morning on Saturday walking around Victoria Peak. The peak tram takes you up to the summit and we then followed the path that circles around the peak. About halfway around the mountain we turned off the main trail and spent a couple of hours walking through the woods and over streams. Here are the photos to go with the hike.

The tram station at the summit.

Lee taking in the view of Victoria Harbor.

Hong Kong in the foreground, Kowloon in the background haze. 

The summit trail was beautifully maintained.

The second section of our hike was less traveled and a bit more rugged.

Later in the day we walked from our hotel down to the harbor and admired the Hong Kong skyline.

Daytime view with Victoria in the background.

The same view after sunset.

Across the street from the hotel was Kowloon Park, where we spent Sunday morning before our flight home. It's a fabulous space with statues, ponds, a series of swimming pools, an aviary, fitness equipment and lots of people exercising. Here are your visual aids.

The avenue of cartoon character art.

Flamingos

We finished our trip with our first real airport snafu since we started all of this traveling. We've been lucky with all of our flights (in our first 12 months in Taiwan we flew on about 20 different airplanes) and this mess-up was pretty minor, all things considered.  Our flight was cancelled and we had to hang around the airport until they found us a new plane, which took about three hours. Considering the flight is barely more than one hour it was annoying to have to wait for so long. But we did get a flight and now we're home in time for the Moon Festival fireworks. More on that tomorrow.

Monday is Moon Festival and in honor of the event some of the parents at school have sent gifts to the teachers. Yesterday we came home with these:

The tubes are little tiny apples imported from somewhere and the three fruits in front are pomelos. Pomelos are an important food this time of year because they look a bit like the moon and they're the favorite food gift for moon festival, along with moon cakes. Moon cakes are kind of hit-or-miss for me. The "cake" part can be flaky, gummy or dry and the fillings can be fruit jellies (yummy) or bean paste (not so yummy) so you never know when you first take a bite if this particular one will be any good.

The pomelos are a much better choice. They're a bit like a grapefruit but sweeter with very thick skins. They're a commitment of time and effort to eat but worth it since they're delicious. The skins are apparently a good odor reducer when you let them dry out under the skin. We'll see.

Many families celebrate moon festival with barbecues. It's a chance to gather family together, get outside, and watch the full moon rise. There's a typhoon heading our way which may dampen some festivities but will probably effect Taipei more than Kaohsiung. It won't be a problem for us in Hong Kong.

Our little nod to Moon Festival was to buy themed cupcakes for dessert last night.

The one on the left is a little barbecue and the two on the right are pomelos. The chocolate one in back is just a mound of chocolate because how can you say no to a mound of chocolate. They were a new finale after a fabulous dinner of Vietnamese food.