Today is Tu-Di-Ma’s birthday, so there is a big party going on in the temple behind our apartment complex. Today I saw a puppet show, but I didn’t understand it at all because it was all in Taiwanese. We went out to dinner with Johannes tonight at the Japanese BBQ place. Vincie was a squirm-meister tonight.

Ran into Kay Dee at the rt mart today, we had lunch at mcdonalds and chatted about how things were going for both of us. I saw the mayor of Hsin-Chu. He was outside our apartment where a new highway has opened. It has only been open for two days, and there has already been an accident. He was discussing what should be done about it with a TV camera crew. I watched the local news, but I didn’t see myself.

Vince got his 6 month shots today. What a big boy! It was my first medical experience in Taiwan. I thought I was going to be able to avoid seeing Vince getting his shots, but I ended up holding his leg in place. Jeremy did the biggest job by holding him in his lap and his arms. The doc was very nice. No more shots until 9 months!

We had lunch with a couple, Erdam and Eloina, who work at Infinion, the third company associated with AMD and UMC. The have a cute 10 month old, Victoria. They are an interesting family, Elonia is Brazilian and Erdam is Turkish and German. So Victoria will have to learn: English, Turkish, German, Porteguese and now Chinese. We ate at a Japanese retaurant in the Science Park as they are staying at the Lakeshore Hotel. Lunch we really good and the kids had fun playing around each other. Vince hit his head against a wood railing and got his first real “goose egg” on his head. Then we drove around and found the Orange Mart and bought some baking powder and baking soda. They are impossible to find around here. I made some banana bread from some over-ripe bananas I had. Jeremy installed speakers from the computer in the dining room, so we listened to Car Talk while we ate dinner.

We celebrated my 30th birthday by driving into Taipei and going to the National Palace Museum. Man Fai came with us. We planned to leave at 8:30 am and got to the gate of the museum by 10:30 am. We had a snack at their tea house and went through the 2nd and 3rd floors. The creepiest thing I saw was in the Buddhist exhibit where they had taken monk’s skulls and cut off the top part where the brain is housed and turned it upside down, lined it with gold and precious stones and turned it into a bowl. Bleech! Jeremy and I were running out of steam quickly and Man Fai wanted to see the rest of the museum, so after lunch, Jeremy and I took a tour of a nearby park while Man Fai toured the bronze section. We fed fish and took a nap. Then we decided to head to the paper museum downtown, but traffic was so bad we abandoned that idea and headed home. We came back to Hsinchu and Jeremy did his first set of illegal parking/driving moves to buy me a birthday cake and some buns for dinner.

Went exercising today at the spa, ran about 2.5 kilometers, not a bad start. I spent the afternoon with Yvonne, the expat coordinator for AMD, and George, our driver, and pretended not to know Chinese when we were filling out our visa extension applications. A bit frustrating when they are talking about you and they think you don’t understand but you really do and they are saying mildly preturbing things about you. Then I spent the bulk of the afternoon making scallion pancakes from scratch! I even got the two kinds of flour they recommended, cake and all purpose. They came out with just the right texture, but needed a bit more salt. They were perfect with the stir fried beef that we made, the juice from the beef and the crunchiness of the scallion pancakes were good together. I prepped all the ingredients and Jeremy came home and did all the actually stove work.

So today all the wives went to Taipei to get a physical so we can get our resident alien cards. Woo hoo! We got a chest X-ray (ugh!), blood tests, stool samples and urine samples. They had all the bodily fluids covered. The bummer thing that I found out is that I need eyeglasses! That’ll be a change for me. I guess I’ll get them sometime this week. I’ve known for some time that my perfect vision was starting to fail me, but this confirms it. We all then went out for lunch at TGI Fridays and then the two Taipei wives (Lora and Christine) went to pick up their kids from school and the two Hsinchu wives (Fran and me) went shopping! We went to caves book store, I bought Jeremy a chinese cookbook with his favorite shrimp wrapped in rice noodles recipe. Also splurged on an English book for him. At Costo, I’m not finding too many things I need there, I’m getting a big kick from shopping at the local traditional market everyday. The fruit guy and the chicken ladies are starting to know me. The vegetable ladies don’t know me yet, but they will. It’s pretty hard to miss Vince and me, I’m carrying him in our backpack. In the picture is Fran, Christine and her son Dakota and me.

Got up early this morning, Jeremy’s daily taxi driver gave him about 20 buns this morning, still piping hot from the steamer. Man Fai also got 20 buns, hee hee! So much to eat, I ate one and dispersed the rest. One to our security guard, Mr. Hong and the rest to the Elephant Daycare, where I hope all the little kids will eat them. Jeremy took Helen’s cakes that she got from Tai-chung and shared them with his coworkers. Apparently they are very famous. I had one and it was really, really good. We hung out at the Daycare for about 30 minutes. It’s funny to see how some kids react to being dropped off, some are wailing and crying, others are all calm and collected. They are getting used to me hanging out there, I’m helping out in the tiniest ways, making a bottle, conforting some tykes. It’s nice. Then I dropped Vince off at the nannys and I went and joined the Carlton Spa. I am a Spa lady 🙂 Woo hoo. I’m going to start running this week, thank goodness. It’ll be good for my mental health. Then I spent some time studying Chinese in the front lobby of our building with Mr. Hong. Then I picked up Vince. We spent the day crawling all over each other, took a late nap. We were going to go to the pediatrician tonight (they are open until 9 pm! No appointment necessary.), but Jeremy had a tough day today and I am planning on going to Taipei tomorrow, so perhaps it was OK not to get vaccinations today. I had my dictionaries all ready in case of translation issues.