week 3 - extended family

during our third week, we got down to business as far as meeting up with more extended family.  with the exception of my grandma and my dad's youngest sister, i hadn't seen these aunts and cousins since my college stay, nearly 15 years ago.  what surprised me was how familiar they seemed.  apparently, we've reached a stage of life where 15 years doesn't show that much =p

we met my aunt r on monday, since she was leaving for the states that week, ironically.  i remember going to her wedding in middle school (?), and regretting that i was too old to be a flower girl =p 

on the way to the metro.  i think we took our first bus ride during this trip too.  impressively clean and easy to use

buffet at the fulong hotel near aunt r's house

definitely see the family resemblance with nai nai

what do you talk about with someone you see once every 15 years?  what i remember most about the conversation is aunt r describing how 'filial' one of my other aunts has always been.  it's a word that doesn't translate well, but the idea is extreme respect and care for one's family, especially zhang bei [older generations], often evidenced by financial support.  this particular aunt is quite a bit older than my mom and aunt r, and after coming to the US, she contributed significantly to their educational expenses along with supporting my grandparents.  i'd heard this from my mom before, but it reminded me again to be slow to judge others, whose stories are always deeper and more complex than we know.

we 'biked' to her house for a quick visit

that afternoon, my aunt a on my dad's side picked us up to spend a few nights with her and my grandma: 

look carefully - can you tell what lu immediately found on the desk?

i'm pretty sure there's a bribe going on here =p



my grandma at her early morning exercises.  that's a very taiwanese thing - every park in the city must have its group of senior citizens (and some younger folks too) practicing tai chi chuan in the mornings.  my grandma always kept it up when she visited us in the states too

as you can see by the fact that we were ready to go see ah zhou (great grandma in taiwanese) at 8:30, the girls didn't sleep very well there.  littles had fallen asleep in my arms at dinner the night before, then refused to go to sleep till after 10 pm.  still, at the crack of dawn, she wanted up.  by the time we were leaving the park and headed to some chinese breakfast (do jiang [soy milk], luo buo gao [radish cake] and shao bing [sesame pastry]), we nearly had a girlie meltdown.  thankfully, after a quick shower for each of them, both girls ended up taking a morning nap, and were relatively refreshed for lunch:

@bei tou yiou yu - mmm, noodles!

i had no luck getting them down for the afternoon nap they clearly still needed, so there was more whining on the way to dinner about who was going to walk and who could be carried.  it was a whiny few days, i won't lie.  the girls were always tired, they missed baby k and a place where they felt at home, and it was their first time in a primarily chinese-speaking environment.  surprisingly, their grumpiness didn't seem to bother my aunt and my grandma all that much.  i'm not sure if they were being gracious, or if they chalked it up to being kids, or if they just didn't catch on to the bad attitudes (not sure if that's possible).  in any case, i definitely felt like we didn't put our best foot forward, but we were welcomed and appreciated all the same.  that's the beauty of family!

on wednesday, ah zhou and aunt a and my second aunt on my dad's side took us to a kiddie amusement park, our first.  that warrants its own post, so stay tuned. 

on thursday, two cousins on my mom's side took us out to what was billed as 'afternoon tea.'  turned out to be a full-fledged fancy buffet, so popular that the line started queuing at 2pm for the 2:30 opening.  have i mentioned that taiwanese people love their food?

digging into some tempura sweet potato

flanking e on the left and right are my cousins h-l and m-l.  i remember them as young single adults, and it never registered that they're actually around 15 years older than i am.  i felt like we talked easily and connected well, laughing about everything from kids to travels to how none of us could get all the aunts and uncles and cousins in our extremely large huang family (my mom's side) straight =p  we stayed till a waiter politely gave us last calls on the food, implying that we'd better scoot to make way for dinner service.

a rather large baby got a ride out

not bad for a week's work!