Year: 2003

Packed today and said farewell to the realtors, Helen, Debbie, Mr. Hong and Linda. Hmmmm… I will miss everybody. At the end of dinner, Helen reached out to touch Jeremy’s beard, she was so curious to find out if it was smooth or rough, it was a funny way to end the evening.

Helen and Ms. Liu cook on grills at ankle height. I think BBQ was inspired by the American habit; they all kept saying how American this was. But it was modified for Taiwan. Squatting at the grill, sweet BBQ sauce was used for the marinade.

So the whole point of the barbeque was to make this huge mound of earth with a little cave in the middle and start a fire in it with sweet potatoes also in the center. Then the structure was suppose to collapse and the potatoes were to roast. It kind of worked and kind of didn’t really work.

We went to an orchard and pick many, many buckets of oranges. My fingers were so sticky with the juice. The orchard owner told us the many different varieties he was growing and we all crowded around the trees for some good farming time! On the right hand side of the picture is Ms. Liu and Polo. They sure do know how to ham it up for the camera.

We had a great day today! We went to the house of a classmate’s of Mr. Lin in the countryside. There was a nice guy from Toronto named Terrance who we met. He just moved into an apartment of Ms. Liu’s. We left at nine and drove about 15 minutes. We went and picked oranges and then BBQed in the beautiful, beautiful sunlight. Jeremy and Vince went for a bike ride, Jeremy was the only one who got sunburned. There was also this big pile for sweet potato roasting. It really was a lovely way to spend our last weekend in Hsinchu. We will really miss this place. Tonight we are packing as the movers are coming tomorrow! Wish us luck!

Big shopping day for us on the internet! Bought all our new winter clothes and computer equipment and had it shipped to New York. Went shopping this afternoon and bought a great outfit for me from SOGO and some glasses for Jeremy. Then tonight we went to dinner with Erdam, Eloina, Scott, Christine and Victoria to TGIFridays and the Ambassador hotel for dessert and coffee.

These are my friends from Japan. Their husbands all work for the high-tech industries in Hsinchu. Most of them have small children or are trying to have small children. We usually go to yoga in the mornings together.

Vince’s nanny is the sister-in-law of our friend Linda at the Ambassador Hotel. I left Vince with his nanny every morning for 3 hours. Vince is a tricky boy, he would drink out of a bottle when he was with her. He would always refuse a bottle from me or Jeremy. Vince’s nanny lived in an apartment about 10 minutes from our place in Holland Village.

These are all our realtor friends from Taiwan sitting in our apartment eating this wonderful dinner. Helen cooked the dinner, she shopped and chopped and took command of the kitchen. Such wonderful food and wonderful company.