Happy New Year from Taipei

Been here for a few days...kinda lost track of how many days. It's the 17th so that would be around 7 days. We landed at around 5:20 the morning of the 10th after a 12 hour flight. Twelve hours was one less than we expected but after 6 hours it doesn't really matter how long the flight is; you lose track of time. Everyone was tired and had some measure of a head cold, cough, jet lag etc.... The first few days were a haze of sleeping and thanking the gods of instant coffee for getting me through the day.

I'm going to be a bit slow on getting photos up. The new camera (or maybe lens) is giving me some headaches. I can't get a clean, sharp, natural looking photo out of the thing. They were so bad I was suspecting that the camera orlens was faulty but after getting some time to run some test shots in, I'm suspecting user error.





It was sunny 80 degrees the first day so that was a bit of a shock to our pallid Seattle dispositions. Then it was 50 and rainy the next few days so I should stop complaining. It beats coming here in July. Over all, it's been cloudy and bearable. Good cool spleeping weather. Bit cold the last two days. You just got to get out and keep moving or you freeze at home.


Meg has loved exploring the big park across the street (Da An Park). There are ants to find, puddles to play with and even a big stage she can get up on and dance on.

We spent 20 minutes taking turns being the audience and being the dancer. I was a bit miffed when she decided to go all the way to the last row when it was my turn to dance.



Meg's other favorite thing is to water Gong-gong's plants on his terrace. He has the top floor of a building so has a great patio outside with tons of plants. Meg water the pants with him last time we were here and that was the first thing she wanted to do this time. Would have gotten some great photos if the camera would cooperate. Here's a few of the OK ones.

We went over to Taipei 101 today but didn't go up top. It was cloudy so we went to the basement and the mall area instead. The basement is where the food court is (typical of malls and department stores in Taiwan). We had a great meal there. I managed to get a second bowl of beef noodles in. It was OK but I'm still looking forward to going to Yong Kang Niu Rou Mian. After that we browsed the "Designer" level of the mall. Cartier, Tiffany's Dolce & Gabbana Louis Vitton, Gucci etc... When the in-law got a bit tired, we split up and they headed home and we went off to buy some books for Meg at Eslite book store. Along the way we ran into a performance by some students playing some taiko style Japanese drums. It was pretty good.

No pictures up yet for that day but email me if you want to see some....once I get them up.

PS. Food.

We also managed to get a bite of Stinky Tofu in. Meg and I-Chwen enjoyed that.