Author: Doris

This weekend we went with our friends Asuka and Carrie to Taizhong to see the Kong Zi (Confucius) temple. Saturday was his birthday. He should be about 2553 years old now. The temple was quite grand, and very peaceful. We understand that there was a big ceremony there at 6AM, but we could not make it quite so early. Next year I (Jeremy) am determined. It is on Sunday, 9/28/2003 at 5:30AM and anyone else who is interested in very invited to join me. In addition to our visit with Kong Zi we went to the night market at the big university there. It was very lively and crowded, and quite a lot of fun. Vincent was strapped to my chest, and there must have been at least 100 people who said hello to him as we walked by. He loved it, and we all had a great time and tried many different good foods. We also visited Carrie’s cats, who are in quarantine in Taizhong. That was a bittersweet event for us, and reminded us how much we miss Yeager, but it was nice to see them reunited. We may cat sit for a week or two once the quarantine is over until their apartment is ready. This morning we toured around Taizhong a bit more, and visited the big Japanese department store Sogo. The store reminded Asuka of his childhood visits in Japan.

Today I went to Taipei to see Carrie. I took the van up with Kay Dee and Fran and got dropped off at the Formosa. We went to the zoo. Pretty cool zoo, with the regular zoo inhabitants. Hippos, elephants, camels, rhinos, ducks, zebras. We went through a whole nocturnal exhibit, but I think it freaked Vince out a bit, he was in the stroller in a dark place and I think he couldn’t sense where I was or where he was going, so he shrieked a lot. Vince did pretty well, but I should just ditch the stroller. He doesn’t like it, and I end up hauling it all around with me hitting people in the face with it. We spent some time in Carrie’s hotel room where Vince crawled and crawled around on the floor. He’s getting harder to travel with now, if he doesn’t get enough crawling time, he starts to get really fussy. I ended up taking a bus home and Vince fell asleep. Then we had a dinner of buns at home with Man fai. I finally got the books that Mom and Dad shipped, thank goodness. I really needed the reading material, it turns out that the address was practically invisible. So I’m glad that it made it here

Rained a lot this afternoon, Vince slept for about 4.5 hours this afternoon! We went out to dinner at our local Chinese place down the street. Watched the beginning of MI:2 on HBO and played a short game of Trivial Pursuit.

Spent time in the afternoon with Helen and Ms. Liu in the realtor’s office. They are working on moving Droopy’s parents into their apartment. It’s been quite a bother, they’ve had to send furniture back 4 times already. Helen got her hair permed, it looks really good. Vincie crawled on the office floor for about an hour; he goes after all the shoes and electrical wire he can find.

We drove into town after dinner to the special baby shop and got Vince some crackers and some more chew toys (just like a doggie these days…). He did something I’ve never seen him do before; as we were walking into the store, he started bawling like something really frightened him. I’ve never heard him cry with such anguish, big tears rolled down his cheeks. By the time we left, he was OK, but it was really weird.

Today was a quiet day. We spent the morning at home, talking with family and friends. Then we went out shopping for food. Jeremy doesn’t get to go to the market as much as he did in Austin, and was really missing being able to choose food from a grocery store. So we went and got lots of spaghetti sauce, jam, cheese and cookies (all kind of specialty items here in Taiwan). After lunch, we took a nap and had a simple dinner. We are a little bit homesick this weekend, so we found VCDs of Season 3 of “Friends” and have been watching old episodes. It makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside, mmmmmmm, all our familiar old TV pals, they say such funny things. There is apparently a big party going on downtown for the Mid-Autumn Moon festival, but Taiwan stays up later than we do, so we are passing on the big festivities (at least tonight).

Happy Mid-Autumn festival! We went to Taipei today to see Asuka and Carrie, who just moved here last week. They found a lovely place in Taipei and are waiting for all the details to be worked out. Turns out the Browns were also staying in Taipei, we bumped into them and into Kin-Sang in the lobby. We all chatted, then we went to Din-Tai-Fung to eat a delicious meal at about 10:45. Then we went to the Jade and Flower markets. Then we went to Da-An park and walked around, we had a foot massage via the accupressure stones in the ground. Then we went back to the hotel for a snack, then to Cave’s bookstore. Then back to the hotel for some Vince crawling time. The neighborhood near the hotel is super posh with Louis Vuitton, Escada, etc… Drove back and saw Ms. Liu, she gave us some moon cakes, she’s working very hard this holiday weekend.

My Chinese lessons with Mr. Hung, the security guard downstairs are going great. He helps me everyday with my lessons and I get to alleviate some of his boredom during the day. I met Jasmine today, a lady with two kids who are half Asian and half Caucasian. Her husband is a techy guy who also happens to be a Morman, so he is fluent in Chinese because he did his mission in Taiwan. I also helped Roger, a white guy working for Pressco, a tool maker for food and beverage packaging companies, jump his car. He lives on the 17th floor of our building and he’s here maybe 100 days out of the year, the rest of the time, he’s traveling all around Asia. He owned a beat up old Peugeot. This afternoon I drove (!) to the Lakeshore hotel and attended the Mid-Autumn festival of the International School.