Today, I spent a long time talking to my family and then we had a *long* expedition. We went to Carrefour in ChuBei, then we tooled around HsinChu and went to the port. There were these beautiful, beautiful kite stands that were being blown by the gusting wind, there were many, many kites set up and I picked one that had a long, colorful dragon tail. We flew kites for a little while and then went downtown to look for eyeglasses for me. No luck. Then a nap and finally dinner at a little restaurant that Jeremy’s Chinese teacher recommended. Finally, we say a movie that’s a spoof on these old Chinese movies. Had moves from Pulp Fiction, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. So many jokes that I didn’t get…

This was the big 10-10 weekend in Taiwan, so we decided to go to the island of Kingman with Jeremy’s coworkers on a tour. We left Hsinchu Wed. night and got to the Smith’s house at 10 pm. Jillian, Mattie and Dakota were all up waiting for us. We had fun romping around their apartment for a little bit until we all fell asleep around 11:30 or so. The next morning (after a breakfast of pancakes and eggs), we went to the Taipei airport to catch an 11:30ish flight.

We got into Kingman and had a nice lunch, after lunch we went to: knife factory (where they make knives out of shell casings), peanut candy factory, birds and their underwater friends, beach where we looked across the water to China. That night, we had dinner at the hotel where we were hosted by Jim’s wife’s mother and father. It was Jim’s mother in law’s birthday. She turned 30 again. This was the big drinking night of the expedition. They have this very famous liquor called GaoLiang. Jeremy and Jonathan were “toasted” numerous times, (Jonathan especially well “toasted” with many three-cup toasts.) It was pretty funny. The kids were bored. And Jonathan and Jeremy regretted it the next morning when we had to climb a mountain.

Next morning, we climbed a mountain. The guys were a bit hungover, the kids were unimpressed and uninspired, we trudged up most of the way. After lunch, we went to a war memorial and played on a big playscape that happened to be there. The playscape was impressive, three stories tall, a bit rickety in places, but the kids had a great time and were not seriously injured. Then the Smiths went back to the hotel for a nap, and we went on… Saw a fake lighthouse, a huge tunnel carved in granite for boats to dock in safe from enemy fire, and a noodle shop. For dinner, we had an all beef extravaganza. All parts of the cow were represented.

On Sat, we took a boat to Small Kingman, we saw another boat tunnel and more shops selling peanut candy. Small Kingman is a 10 minute boat ride from big Kingman. First we went to a beach and peered out onto a small island where they kept all their lepers (there are none there now…) We saw a lot of China today. We were within 2 kilometer of the mainland. Then back to Kingman for lunch. We also saw a beautiful old village built by a family with a lot of money they made in Japan. Then we came home :).! Had pizza at the Smiths, let Vincie crawl around for a while and then drove back to Hsinchu!

Our impression of the island is one of concrete bunkers, camoflage, howizters, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, military men and peanut candy and drinking. There were also a lot of cows. Also, the air was so deliciously clean, it was nice to breath easy for a while. It was fun, but a lot of it was lost in translation.

Today I decided I am going to learn how to play the recorder. Spent the morning surfing the web for recorder-related items. I think I’m going to buy a 50 dollar Yahama plastic alto recorder and some method books. I learned how to play Silent Night on a cheapo recorder from the RT Mart. Ms. Liu and Ms. Ong came over this afternoon to play with Vince. Ms. Ong had bought a ton of clothes for the V-man. Every mom who sees me says I’m not dressing Vince warmly enough. Now I know why my parents made me wear a down jacket in 55F degree weather. Jeremy also told me that I am kicked out of the carpool. If I continue to use George, it’ll cost us about $450 a month. Crap-ola. We also went out tonight and got Vince some nice shoes and some nice clothes. They were pretty pricey, but we had some fun…

Saw my first scooter accident today. Bam! Two scooters ran into each other. One driver got up, the other lay under his scooter which had flipped over. I didn’t stop to help, there were people already there and goodness knows I can’t even really speak the language. So I left the scene of an accident today. Bleh!

Vincie’s first tooth! Woo hoo! Bottom right one is barely poking through. He’s growing up, sniff, sniff. Went to Taipei today, saw Carrie and Asuka and had a nice time eating Peking Duck in their hotel. Yum, yum. It was quite different than what we are used to. The pieces of duck had more meat on them and the pancakes were very large, almost like whole wheat tortillas and the onion was not finely chopped, just a huge stalk of it in the center. They also had thin, thin scallion pancakes which were wrapped around green beans. That was yummy, but Jeremy thought they were too mealy. Then we went to Costo, and stood outside the door because we were too stubborn to pay the membership fee. They wouldn’t even let us look around to see if we’d like it… Sigh. Asuka urged me to be more aggressive, but he didn’t know that I’d already done my agressive thing by just asking if we could look around. I think Navier, one of my goldfish, is already slated to have a short time on earth… He’s swimming kind of sideways.

Today we went out to lunch with Ms. Liu, her husband, Leah and Droopy’s parents. It was *great*. Finally, Jeremy had someone to talk to in English. Turns out that Droopy’s dad works in the same field as Jeremy and speaks English very well. It was such a relief for Jeremy, I think, to be able to shoot the breeze with someone. Then we went to Ms. Liu’s house, which is an old, old house in which his family has lived in for more than 50 years. It was cool to see their stove which has huge gas burners. We picked up our 3 fish that they gave us (I’ve named them Luther Deux, Navier and Stokes) and put them next to our TV. Vincie is a bit unhappy today, he made a pretty big puke after dinner tonight.