week 4 - sun moon lake, part 4

making an attempt to finish the taiwan documentary before the end of the year, if i can still remember it =p  and then we'll start catching up on the present, i promise!

after leaving a drizzling sun moon lake, we stopped by a peacock garden, where the peacocks weren't out 'due to the weather' (i suppose wild peacocks carry umbrellas? =p).  from there we went to the Puli Brewery, which is actually a museum and market of products featuring a local liquor, no brewing of any kind.

tasting various dried fruits

urns and more urns

look carefully, this is as close as i get: 'the house of drunk experiencing'

next stop was the Chung Tai Chan monastery.  we took a tour with an ostensibly english-speaking guide, but he was so quiet amidst all the other tours and visitors that the fact that he was indeed speaking english was about all i got =p  the building itself was quite imposing though, as was the view from the hillside, and ben enjoyed the museum.

have i mentioned you never leave home without an umbrella in taiwan?

 



on our way back to taichung, we visited my cousin's parents (my third aunt and her husband), and her brother, both of whom i remember from distant childhood.   we were warmly welcomed both places:

our cousin in the blue runs this food stand - doesn't he look like p at first glance?

enjoying some fresh-made fries

the cousins

and finally, before heading to the train station, one of my favorite meals - ma la huo guo (hot and spicy hot pot) =)

 

 

till next time!



still kicking

here i am poking my head back out of the sand.. it's been awhile!  i hope you'll excuse the long silence, whose cause you've no doubt heard:  baby #3!  due date, march 23, 2013, three days and five (?!) years after c's original due date.
 
i can't possibly catch up on on the last three, four, six (?) months, so that will have to wait -  probably till this baby turns five =p  for now, i just wanted to record a few thoughts..
 
#1.  God provides.  when that first test came up positive, i knew i had about two weeks before i'd be down for the count.  i tried to make some preparations, stocking up on trader joe's meals, doing some laundry, getting in a last blackberry-and-flower-picking excursion with the girls.  the funny thing about memory though, at least for me, is that i never quite remember what it's like to feel lousy till it happens, and it's forgotten nearly as soon as it passes.  i remember the facts of course, spending 16 hours a day in bed or on the couch, microwaving soup or noodles or kimchi (oh yeah) at midnight or 3 or 5 am, having a day's goal of getting a shower or taking out the trash.. i'll spare you the rest of the details. 

naturally, any kind of activities with the girls stopped abruptly.  in fact, most activity on my part stopped, period =p  and here's what amazed me:  meals, childcare, even money appeared out of nowhere, better than i could have planned, had there been a way to.  i can't count the number of times when i'd be looking at the day or the week with some despair, wondering what i was going to do with the girls, when some sweet friend would come pick them up and take them out for most of the day, or offer to share babysitters for an afternoon, or show up with an extra casserole.  i never would have made it without my surrogate mom, m, who brought me home-cooked chinese food two or three times a week for months.
 
on the financial side, moving into a more expensive ground-floor apartment (which happened in june), combined with not working for weeks on end is not exactly the way to solvency, but once again, the Lord provided, without my even thinking to ask really.  our new apartment required a much smaller deposit than our old one, putting forgotten money in our pockets, then ben got a completely unanticipated raise at the start of his second year, an unexpected monetary award at work, a unlooked-for travel reimbursement, to name a few things.
 
#2.  i married a good man.  of course, we all knew that already =), but he endured two months of loneliness, chaos, and just plain mess, without a word of complaint.  i don't think we had a family dinner all together for a month or more.  evenings were the worst for me, and i was often in bed before the girls were down.  on days he'd have to stay late, he'd come home to me on the couch, the house unkept, dishes undone, and have to take care of girly bedtime (a lot of times i couldn't make it through a bedtime story without running out) before scrounging around for his own late-night dinner.  so many saturdays and sundays he'd take them on some excursion or to church and lunch, and i would just sleep and eat and savor the quiet.  he took over completely when g&g nicholson came to visit for a week, adding tour guide and meal planner to his resume, almost completely without me.  a few weeks ago, he looked around at the living room and said to me, 'well, as the mommy starts to feel better, we need to re-establish some standards around here.. '  haha, that was an understatement.. what a patient man.  we love our daddy in this family! 
 
#3.  kids can do a lot of things.  a lot of things themselves, i should add.  of course you never wish for your mother to be incapacitated, but it surprised even me how little the girls actually need me to do things for them.  when put to it, two three- and four-year-olds can get their own meals (we're talking yogurt, granola bars, dried fruit, cheese), cheerfully fold and put away their own laundry, entertain themselves for hours at a time with crafts and books and imaginary play, even wash themselves with the exception of their hair.  and of course, the usual tooth-brushing, dressing, cleaning up after themselves (sort of).  now please don't go reporting me to family services ;-)  i just mean to say that they adapted amazingly well to 'mommy's not feeling better', as lu put it, relishing all the time with friends, and making the best of it in a way i'm not sure most adults would. 

 #4.  remember the sick.  i, like most of us i think, usually take it for granted that i'll have plenty of physical and mental energy to do the things i mean to.   i don't want to forget the thought that crossed my mind the one and only time i vacuumed the apartment during those foggy days:  'this thing is so heavy and so much trouble.. when this is over, i'm going to volunteer to clean house for some old lady or other.  there's no reason old or sick people should have to do this!'  there's nothing like physical illness to bring us back to reality on our human frailty.  i've done nothing to deserve my good health.  i'd better make good use of it!

we're in a different stage now, thankfully.  at 20 weeks, i'm feeling much, much better (though i had to interrupt this post to heat some dumplings at 6 am - been up since 3:30 with ben leaving for an interview =p).  and the baby has been kicking for some weeks now =)  we're in the heat of interview season, which also, thankfully, will be drawing to a close in a few weeks.  but that is a story for another time.. =)

week 4 - sun moon lake, part 3

the next morning, we had our breakfast in the lakeside dining room, with the usual eclectic taiwanese breakfast buffet fare.  something that e thought might be plain yogurt turned out to be salad dressing =p  ben experimented with several mixtures of coffee machine settings and dairy products before concocting a satisfactory cup.  i was a little sad that we hadn't gotten up early enough to take advantage of the hotel's complimentary bikes, but as it turns out, when my cousin came to meet us, she suggested that we all do just that.

so off we went, on two parent-child bikes (a fantastic invention with an extra seat and footrest for a child in front of the adult) and four single adult bikes, one sporting a babe-in-bjorn:

it was one of my favorite parts of the trip, and definitely c's favorite, despite the 'noooo!' emanating from her bike as daddy teased her by going crooked or too fast or off the sidewalk or.. ;-)  the views of the lake were beautiful, and there's something refreshing and wholesome about being on a bike.

nearly crashed trying to get this pic ;-)

we, of course, stopped to take pictures ;-), and here you see the first one of my cousin.   we had a lot of opportunity to talk in the car, and i think we were both pleasantly surprised at how easy - and enjoyable - it was to get to know someone who was essentially a stranger.  we laughed at how my mom had tried to get each of us to contact the other, which had never happened since we both felt at a complete loss as to what we might say.  i'm glad i had this chance to change a name and a title - 表 姐 (older cousin) - into a friend.

all the good pictures are p's ;-)

we didn't visit the aboriginal villages this time, so the girls' memories of sun moon lake won't be of dressing up in funny clothes and taking pictures in front of wooden boats.. at least, not this time ;-)  it was starting to rain as we left, so my cousin had to do some quick thinking for our afternoon destinations.

week 4 - sun moon lake, part 2

there's not too much to say about the boat ride, so i'll just let the pictures do the talking.  i did think it was amusing that we made a stop before turning around so passengers could disembark and buy tea leaf eggs =) 

k put up with a lot ;-)

eggy kiss =)

our hotel is the one with the wavy balconies

caught camera-handed ;-)

my cousin and her friend headed home while we were out, so after a stroll around the commercial area of town, we had an overpriced dinner, followed by similarly overpriced but much more enjoyable ice cream cones overlooking the harbor =)

p and e had brought some games, but a sleepy lu refused to stay in the room without mommy, so that didn't fly.  晚 安 to all and to all a good night!

week 4 - sun moon lake, part 1

when my mom went to taiwan just before we did, she met up with my third aunt and her daughter, who is a travel agent.  they had the great idea to set up a short excursion when ben came in town, and the original plan was to visit 日 月 谭 (sun moon lake) and 啊里 山 (mt. ah li).  both are in central/southern taiwan, whereas we'd stayed exclusively in the north around taipei up till then.

i didn't remember meeting my cousin as a child, but i did remember her brother, who's closer to our age.  i called her a few times to set up the trip, realizing more each time how limited my chinese is outside of casual conversation =p  fairly amazingly, when we got off the high-speed rail in taichung and called her, up she pulled in her car and her friend's, whom she had recruited to help ferry us around.  the train itself was pretty neat, reducing a 2 1/2 hour trip to 45 minutes, if you don't count the half hour it takes to navigate to it in taipei main station =p

we had planned to go to 啊里 山 (mt. ah li) first, but it didn't seem like such a great idea in the pouring rain.  so we turned back, and after stopping at a roadside specialty snack shop with everything from bamboo crackers to packaged sweet potato morsels to supersize bags of fresh taro chips, we sampled a regional specialty (so i was told) for lunch:  chicken roasted over a wood fire in giant drums.  i'm sure there's a more elegant name for it in chinese ;-)

the chicken was quite good, especially next to some of the more adventurous dishes like intestines and whole fried river shrimp ;-)

less than an hour later, we pulled up to sun moon lake, and were stunned to find that our cousin had put us up in rooms that might have been the nicest around.  the balconies, the lobby and the dining room directly faced the water:

the girls also found a few fun things inside the room ;-)

k found it pretty comfy too ;-)

after a short rest, we headed out for - what else?  a boat ride on the lake =)