It's actually raining this morning. Not the thick air mist kind of rain but the drops you can hear falling on the trees. It'll be a wet ride into school today but maybe the air will be a bit cleaner than it has been. Taiwan would like to blame China for the smog that hovers over Kaohsiung and I'm sure that's a factor but this city produces plenty of its own pollution and it's been bad recently. When we flew back from Hualien Cierra used the word horrifying to describe the blanket of smog she could see from the air that lay across the western half of the island. Horrifying is right.

We fly back for Christmas in less than ten days and I'm really looking forward to breathing some clean air.

Yesterday we hopped on a train for a day trip, something we almost never do. It's easy to do, if you're willing to look blankly at the ticket machine and wait for some kind soul to help you out. We were trying to buy tickets to Tainan and a young woman came to our aid, translating what the ticket booth gentleman was trying to tell us, then confirming that we were waiting on the correct track and finally, finding us on the train to let us know we'd arrived at our destination. People can be so nice.

We'd decided to go to Tainan and check out a couple of places I'd been to last January. Lee hadn't come with me on that trip so it was new for him too. Zach and Cierra have seen just about everything we could think of to send them in Kaohsiung, or at least the ones you can get to either on foot or on the MRT. They also accepted an offer from a friend of ours to spend a day driving to places a little out of the city. On Thursday they visited a huge Buddhist monastery, a former brick factory and some mud volcanoes. I hope to go to these places before we leave Taiwan so you'll have to wait until then to hear all about them.

Our destination in Tainan was the Anping Port area. Tainan is the oldest city in Taiwan and the former capital. It's where the Dutch set up headquarters and where they built their fort when they briefly controlled the island. This was in the latter half of the 1800's. The Japanese took over around 1890 and didn't leave until the end of World War II. Tainan has just a few European buildings and quite a bit of Japanese influence, as does most of Taiwan. When we were in Hualien there was also a lot of Japanese history to see.

Although there were signs to read at the Anping Fort about the history of Tainan we didn't really spend much time exploring any of the historical sites except for the fort. Instead, we wandered through the streets and tiny alleyways where the street vendors set up shop. It appeared to be bring-your-school-group-to-Tainan day because it was packed with teenagers dressed in school uniforms, most of which look like polyester leisure suits. I finally got to eat one of the foods I'd read about before coming to Taiwan: coffin bread.

It's a thick slice of bread that's deep fried, then the center is cut out and filled with various things and the top is put back on. This one seemed like chicken pot pie filling. I thought it was quite tasty and the vendor seemed very proud of his famous food.

The highlight of our Tainan trip was visiting the Tree House. It's an abandoned warehouse that a banyan tree has overgrown. Some clever entrepreneur cleaned it up and started selling tickets to walk through the old building and it's worth every NT (in this case, $50NT).

When we got back to Kaohsiung Cierra decided she really needed to go back to the night market and find some stinky tofu. You can't come this far and not try stinky tofu. Well, actually, you can, judging by Cierra and Zach's expressions.

With the arrival of December the weather has definitely changed. For the past few days I've been wearing a windbreaker for the commute into work and we haven't been turning on the a/c in the morning. I haven't had to resort to socks yet but that may be coming soon. The problem with the a/c is that the pollution levels have risen dramatically and the air in the apartment needs conditioning but not cooling. There's an option for that on the remote. Too bad I can't read Chinese.

Zach and Cierra are still with us, but just for a few more days. I'm putting a sampling of photos from our trip to Hualien after I finish these thoughts but time is marching along and I may not do much of a recap. I'm sorry for that because this blog is my journal - I'd like to be able to look back at what I did while I was in Taiwan - but having house guests really eats into your free time so it's hard to keep up with posting.

We've been out to eat nearly every dinner, walked and wandered all around this area and taken the subway to areas too far to walk to. It's pretty exhausting! I still have Christmas shopping to think about, not to mention having to go to work every day. Finding time to blog has been lower on the priority list than getting some sleep. But the kids went to Taipei for an overnight trip - and had a great time with our friend Simona and her mother - so I'm sitting down to hopefully catch up a bit.

Here are some pix from the east coast.

We biked around Liyu Lake and only got rained on a little bit.

We found a weaving studio!

Cierra and Zach at the beach.

Overlooking the coastline.

 

No explanation required.

We went back to Sanxiantai, the Eight Dragon Bridge where we went we Josh in October.

Sunrise from our hotel room.

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.