Food: Volume 1

Tom:

So I've been meaning for a while to make a post that just shows all of the new foods that we've been having on our trip.  I think I'll start that off now.  I'll try as much as possible to cut back on the commentary so I can show more deliciousness (and a little not-so-deliciousness).

Taiwan has lots of delicious fruit, and lychees are one of our favorites.

A close-up lychee.

You have to peel them first, which is pretty easy.

This is what they look like peeled.  There's a pit in the middle.

Pre-meal spread at a Taichung restaurant.

This is my meal at the same restaurant.  Pork, rice, soup, a fruit, a vegetable, and a tofu & pork thing.

Maura's meal.

This place claims to have invented bubble milk tea.
You can see the pearls (bubbles) in the bottom of the tea.

This is one of our school's lunches.

Chicken feet.  I was disappointed to learn that I don't like them.

Mona Harper

Now this makes much more sense.

"Hello Teacher Tom and Teacher Maura"

So, we've been teaching American Sports for 4 days now, and it has been an interesting experience. We have 24 1st-3rd graders with varying levels of English, ranging from absolutely none to pretty good for an ESL third grader. Tom has basically no experience with children this age, and while I am technically trained to teach them, it has been about 10 years since I taught elementary school children, so it has been an adjustment. Some of the activities have gone really well, and others not so much, but the children seem to be having a pretty good time.

There have been a couple moments of hilarity. When we were playing a game involving baseball and the alphabet, we asked the children how many letters are in the English alphabet. Some didn't know, and several said 26, but one child insisted there were 24. We tried to explain to him that there are 26 and even started to show him, when he said, "No, it 24. ET went home." At first, I thought he was crazy, but after a moment we realized what he was doing and laughed our heads off. It's pretty impressive to be able to tell a joke in your second language!

Another time, we were playing Simon says. We had just started and were trying to get the rules straight. So, I said a few easy ones: "Simon says touch your head. Simon says swing a bat (pretend). Wiggle." When none of them wiggled, I said, "Wow you are all really good at this game! Not one of you wiggled!" To which one of the children said, "No, we don't know 'wiggle." Whoops! That would explain why they all just stood there staring at me!

Harper!!!

So I haven't yet acknowledged that my brother and his wife just had their first baby last week.  I'm very happy to report that everyone is doing well.  Huge congratulations to them both.  Also, a big thank you to them for being very awesome and letting Harper come and visit us in Paris so that we could meet her!!

She thought that the Mona Lisa was just so-so as well.

Taipei Personalities (Part 2)

The next day, we went to the beach. It was beautiful and very refreshing when trying to adjust to Taiwan's temperature and humidity. It was also almost empty because apparently it was "too hot" to go to the beach, which makes no sense whatsoever to native New Englanders.

The water was much warmer than back home, not surprisingly.

After the beach, we headed back into Taipei and went straight to Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world. Tom was very excited, I was not quite as gung ho, but up we went. So, yeah. It's really high and I felt kind of dizzy and nauseous but survived, so it all worked out okay. Afterwards, we celebrated still being alive with some delicious ice cream from Coldstone Creamery (you need a little touch of home every now and then, right?).

Taipei 101 is - you guessed it - 101 stories tall.  Those buildings way down there are other skyscrapers.

Then we made a not so quick stop at the Taiwan Handicraft Promotion Center for several authentic items, including some beautiful tea cups!

Our last stop was the Shilin night market. That stinky tofu will try to sneak up on you at these night markets, but you can spot it a mile away when it instantly activates your gag reflex. Once we found a slightly less "stinky tofu" scented corner, we had some yummy oyster omelets, fish balls, noodles, and iced black tea. We then walked around for a bit, did a little shopping, and said goodbye to Catherine and Jenny.

Tom and I then headed back to Taichung all by ourselves (eek!) and with only one wrong turn and needing to call Leighnae just one time, we made it back to St. James in one piece.

On Monday, we start summer camp, so we'll see how that goes! Wish us luck!

Taipei Personalities (Part 1)

The museum is on the right.
They don't allow any photography.

Maura:

We arrived at Catherine's house outside of Taipei late on Thursday night. We awoke early the next morning and set out for a full day of sight-seeing. We started with the National Museum of Taiwan. In 1949, when the nationalists and the communist movement were at war in China, Chiang Kai-Shek and the nationalists moved almost all of China's historical artifacts and artistic treasures to Taiwan to keep them safe. Since he and his compatriots never returned to mainland China, the treasures remained in Taiwan and are now displayed here. This museum has the largest collection of Asian art and cultural pieces in the world over 680,000 artifacts, including a carved jade cabbage that seems to be their cultural equivalent to the Mona Lisa!

This is the National Theater, which is opposite the National
Concert Hall.  Both are in the plaza in front of the Memorial.

After the museum, we met up with Catherine's friend, Jenny, a native Mandarin speaker and sophomore in high school, who joined us for the rest of our time in Taipei. We then had a delicious lunch of pot stickers, dumplings, and soup courtesy of Jenny's helpful ordering! After lunch, we visited the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, which was amazing to see in person.

This is the Memorial.

Changing of the guard.

Then, we went and had tea with Bishop David Lei, the head of the Episcopal church in Taiwan. He taught us about the traditional way of serving tea and that adding milk or sugar is a BIG no no! Then, we headed back to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial to see the changing of the guard and were on our way to the Tamsui night market, when Tom spotted something called a Coffee Hot Dog. Yes, you rea
d that correctly. A hot dog wrapped in a coffee bun. Well, who could resist? Not Tom, apparently.

Mmmmm...coffee dog.

There were paddle boats giving harbor cruises.

The night markets are very popular in Taiwan as it is (a little) cooler when the sun goes down and people can go out for cheap food, shopping, and socialization without melting. This market had some delicious food including freshly made juices, fish ball soup, a-gei (tofu with rice noodles cooked inside), fried noodles, and soft serve ice cream. Tamsui is most famous for something called "Iron eggs" which we brought back to share with the St. James teachers.

They put American soft-serve to shame.

"Congratulations on your anniversary! Now kiss and we'll wrap you in toilet paper."

Maura:

On Thursday evening, the teachers at St. James threw us a welcome party. We had delicious food and a lot of fun!

I (Tom) mistakenly got two plates of food, not knowing
about all of the extra food we were getting soon.

They shared some local delicacies with us, including stinky tofu (somehow it tastes a thousand times worse than it smells, which is already really bad), tea eggs, chicken's feet, fried chicken steak, mango shaved ice, and bubble tea. To introduce us to the country, the office staff and teachers told us about the different regions of Taiwan and the specialties we would find in each area. we were also told if we don't visit the eastern coast of Taiwan we can't actually say we've been to Taiwan, so we'll have to see if we can fit in a trip to Hualien.

Everyone gets their food.

At the end of the party, Catherine and the teachers had a big surprise planned to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. In the days leading up to this, there were some cryptic warnings that we might not want to wear our nicest clothes, so we were a little worried. So when Catherine stood up and announced that we needed to stand in the middle of the room with our eyes closed and kiss for one minute, we were dubious, but complied. They then proceeded to wrap us in about 6 rolls of toilet paper, which was much less sinister than I was thinking!

...while kissing for one minute in front of everyone.

After the party, we headed back to the high speed train to spend 2 days with Catherine in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.

I tried valiantly to eat all of the perishable goodies they got at the party on the train.