Blue Eyes, Bubble Tea, & More Breakfast

Maura:

Wednesday morning, Catherine and Leighnae took us out to a local breakfast spot, where we had hash browns, scallion pancakes, fried turnip cakes, and omelets with bacon and chicken. I had orange juice and Tom had "fruit" flavored milk. All that for $7 American!!!

Then, we met with the language institute director, Yu-Mei, and the teachers who would be working with us in our American Sports class starting next week, Bin and Elaine. We are going to have 24 children between first and third grade. I was pretty nervous for this meeting; I usually develop my curriculum very differently than this, so I wasn't sure how they would react to our plans, but they seemed happy, so we'll see what happens!

Later, we visited Yasmin's English class for young elementary school children. They also interviewed us and were very perplexed by the color of my eyes, so we decided to call it "blue green." I am also considered to be blonde by their standards, which is interesting, too.

That afternoon, Catherine took us to the cultural center and national art museum, which are right across the street. They both had an interesting mix of modern and traditional Taiwanese art, and they're both free.

In the evening, we went out to dinner with Ruby (who came to Cambridge-Ellis a few years ago), Fran (who will be teaching at CES this upcoming year), Catherine, and Tiffany. They brought us to the restaurant that first invented bubble tea, which has now spread around the world.

The bubble tea was very tasty!

 Then, we went to Ruby's beautiful home where they told us all about some of the wonderful places in Taiwan that parents have signed up to take us to. Can you believe that? The families actually volunteer to take us sightseeing, even to some places that are 2 hours away!

Welcome To Taichung

Maura:
We walked out of customs in Taiwan and were immediately greeted by an enthusiastic woman shouting across the airport, "Maura! Tom and Maura! Welcome to Taiwan! St. James welcomes you!" This was Catherine, the school's liaison, and she will be with us for our first week in Taiwan. She took us on the high speed train down to Taichung, in the middle of the country, and brought us to the school. By then, it was about 7:00 at night and we hadn't slept in 27 hours, so we quickly met the principal Susan, ate some salad and sandwiches with Catherine and one of the English teachers/our apartment mate, Leighnae (pronounced like Renee, but with an L), were shown our room on the third floor of the school, and passed out.

The next morning, the school provided us with a lovely breakfast of delicious Taiwanese breads with nuts and fruit baked in and fresh lychee, which we had never had before (like a grape with a peel you take off and a small pit inside).  Then, Catherine took us to the school assembly where we went up on stage and were greeted by all of the children and teachers. We even saw Emma and Tiffany, who taught in the Mandarin class at Cambridge-Ellis with me last year! We then went on a tour of the school which is massive and very easy to get lost in. There are 300 children and 3 buildings. We visited two of the English classrooms in particular and got to play with the children, which was a moment of normalcy for me in this very different culture. The children then interviewed us, asking several interesting questions, such as, "Teacher Tom, are you a robot?" "Teacher Maura, do you like fruit? I have fruit for you." and "Who is your favorite friend?" (The Amandas, of course).

That afternoon, we planned to unpack, but ended up accidentally taking a 3 hour nap instead (whoops!). Then Charles, the retired rector of the Episcopalian church that runs the school, invited us to join him and his wife for tea. The church is located in the school, right below the apartment we share with Leighnae. Tea was in the apartment on the 8th floor of the tallest building of the school, where Tom took some pictures of the neighboring areas.

This is the shortest of the three buildings of the school.  The church takes up much of the second and third floors.  We are staying on the third floor.

Then we went with Charles and his wife, their son and daughter in law, Principal Susan, Tiffany, Catherine, the head of the language institute, and the current rector, Phillip. We went to a very nice Japanese restaurant near the school and had a delicious 10 course meal.

Charles is on the left, Catherine is behind Maura, and Tiffany is on the right.

The first main course was a beautiful sashimi boat.  Phillip and Susan are sitting next to Catherine.

Prawns.

Tom's prawn.

A cheesy mix of things that unfortunately included mushrooms was served in bamboo shoots.

This tasted pretty good, but it was basically a big fish in a bowl with soup.

Eyes and teeth included.

Five of the dishes.

Dessert was a little gelatin-type bowl and this fruit display.

This was the restaurant, Yamatoya.

What's For Breakfast?

Maura:
We left Paris on Sunday morning, and headed straight into a full 24 hours of traveling. First, we took an eleven and a half hour flight to Shanghai. I have to say, it wasn't as bad as I expected. I really thought I might have serious claustrophobia by the time we landed, but I slept some, and with a minor miracle (my ipod normally lasts for 4 hours before it needs to be changed, but it still had half a battery charge by the time we landed), it worked out ok. It ended with the smoothest landing I have ever experienced; Tom and I didn't even realize we had touched down!

In Shanghai, we had  9 hour layover, and had hoped to be able to go out and explore the city, especially since China had recently passed a law allowing travelers with lay overs to visit the city for up to 72 hours without needing to go through the visa process. However, we landed at 5:15 am, our flight to Taipei was at 2:30, but we had to take our luggage and couldn't check in for the next flight until noon. So, we spent the day in the airport (boo). It actually wasn't that bad. Tom even had his first authentic Chinese breakfast of pork dumplings, baby bok choy, and a pork soup. Um, yum?

The bok choy and dumplings were delicious; the soup broth was tasty but the pork was mostly bone.

We then had a quick 1 hour flight to Taipei and we had arrived!

Pastries, Wyrtzens, and the Louvre

We knew that it didn't make sense to try to wake up early on Saturday.  We had been up for 37 straight hours (Maura slept for a couple of hours on the plane) before going to bed at midnight on Friday.  Since our plans to visit the Louvre got messed up the night before, we decided to start our day whenever we woke up with breakfast at a local boulangerie (bakery; I don't totally know the difference between boulangeries and patisseries), and then take the subway to the Louvre to stay as long as we wanted.  We got croissants au beurre (croissants with butter) and pain au chocolat (croissants with chocolate inside) for breakfast and boarded the subway.  The subway was easy to use, relatively quick, and cheapish, so yay for Paris. 

It's hard to see, but this whole train is basically one long, open car; it's kind of like a much nicer version of the green line.

We got to the Louvre around noon, which already had a long line outside the pyramid, but we knew the shortcut entrance (yay for reasearch), so it only took us a short amount of time to buy tickets in the mall we mentioned yesterday and walk into the museum.  It's completely huge; the museum is separated into three separate wings which are each the size of a relatively large museum.  We decided not to hem and haw about what to see first and just randomly picked one wing to start in.  I imagine that trying to recount the museum exhibit by exhibit would be boring (even by my lofty standards for boring people!), so instead here's a bunch of pictures from the museum with captions.

We started in a big courtyard area full of French sculptures.

This was VERY creepy.

St. George.

Christ Decloue Croix

Maura was concerned by the Fountain of Diana.

The Code of Hammurabi

Maura may not be able to hold up the room on her head, but she does prove that the Greeks weren't as good as they thought at sculpting beautiful women.

Poor Athena looks pretty mannish here.

These four girls proved that the Louvre is NOT for everyone.  They were like this for at least five minutes.

Again, Maura puts the Greek sculptors to shame.

Hercules inventing the game of baseball.

This sized crowd is pretty much always in front of the Mona Lisa, which is that tiny thing in the middle of the room.

Seriously?

This MUCH more impressive painting was opposite the Mona Lisa.

We decided to walk from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe (less than 2 miles), since that was the last major landmark that we hadn't visited.   We started by walking through the Jardin de Tuileries, which is basically a large park with some artwork, lots of well-kept gardens, and several cafes.  We stopped at a crepe place; Maura got a strawberry crepe, and I got a chocolate banana crepe and a cappuccino.  They were all very good.

The Champs-Élysées is the road that runs from the gardens to the Arc.  It was a very enjoyable walk, lined with high-end stores and huge sidewalks.  The Arc de Triomphe is huge, and it's visible during the whole walk.

The Arc itself is only accessible by going through an underground tunnel, and there is a fee for climbing to the top of it.  It was closed to the public when we were there because some type of memorial event was taking place.  We were still able to look up underneath it, but not walk around.  After seeing the Arc, we took the subway back to our hotel to get ready for dinner.

My friend from high school, Jeff Wyrtzen, does a lot of business in Paris, so he's there relatively frequently.  Through a very fortunate coincidence, his wife was also going to be Paris the same weekend as us, so we decided to meet up for dinner at a very nice restaurant called 7eme Vin.  The restaurant is located right around the corner from the Eiffel Tower, so we walked there, taking a few pictures along the way, of course.

Dinner was excellent, as was the company.  Maura got tomato, mozzarella, and basil as an appetizer, roast chicken as her meal, and creme brulee as her dessert.  I got escargot, rack of lamb, and creme brulee.  All of the food was delicious, and we were there for close to 3 hours eating and catching up.  Jeff and his wife live in London, so I have now spent as much time with them in Paris as I have in the last several years in America.  After dinner, we all walked to the Eiffel Tower, which we were very lucky to see lit up with sparkling lights again, which we think they do every hour for about five minutes.  It's very stunning, although the pictures won't do it justice at all.

Still cool, though.

We were even lucky enough to be joined by Kevin Lally every time a bus drove by.

We didn't even know that he was an actor.

The next morning, we had a shuttle pick us up at the hotel at 9:00 am.  We got up early and walked to the same boulangerie and loaded up on a bunch of Parisian goodies for the flight.  We got croissants au beurre, pain au chocolat, an eclair, a grande maringue, and beignets.  The shuttle came on time, we got our tickets on time, and we boarded our plane without complications.  All in all, our stay in Paris was an excellent little vacation before moving onto the teaching segment of our trip.

A Very Tired Afternoon In Paris

We got back to the hotel at 2 pm, checked in, and brought our bags up to the room.  The room was small, but nice, and we both took much-needed showers while literally forcing ourselves to stay awake to try and alleviate the jet lag (we're told that naps are a bad idea).  We ambitiously decided to go to Notre Dame and the Louvre before dinner (they're pretty close together), and we decided to walk the 3-4 miles to get there so we could go through the Latin Quarter, which is exactly what we did.  Along the way, we passed the other long mall in Paris, this one being in front of the Hotel Invalides, about which we know nothing.

We got to Notre Dame and were happy to see that the line to get in was pretty short.  We snapped some pictures while we were in line.

Then, we learned that we were actually in line to sit for what appeared to b a concert that hadn't started yet.  No problem; we just left the bleachers and got in the slightly longer line for the actual cathedral, which gave us a chance to check out the architecture from a different angle, including the famous gargoyles.

We went inside, and were happy to see that there was some sort of musical service going on, so we sat and listened to that for a while before wandering around inside.  Out of respect, we only took one picture inside.

On the way out, we marveled at the handiwork that went into sculpting the exterior of the cathedral before leaving.

We're not sure if you can tell from this picture, but the sun actually came out by the time we left, and it was really nice out for the rest of the night.

Next stop: The Louvre (well, sort of; hold that thought). 

We made the short trip to one of the most famous museums in the world at about 6 pm, since the Louvre stays open until 9:45 on Friday nights.  It is absolutely gigantic, and the pyramid that stands over the subterranean lobby is cooler in person than in pictures.

But here's some pictures, anyways!

Now you can definitely tell that it's sunny.

The line to get into the pyramid wasn't that long, and there was a slightly longer line inside to buy tickets.  Unfortunately, we learned once inside that the museum was closing earlier than normal; they were going to start kicking people out at 8:15.  Since it was close to 7 at the point, we bailed on the line and decided to come back the next day, but not before learning that there was a store that sold advance tickets that would let us skip the line.  The store was somewhere inside a huge, underground mall attached to the lobby, and we tried to find it using the directions we were given, but we were working on about 30 sleepless hours at this point (more on that in a bit), and it took us a long time of wandering before we found the store only to see that it was closed for the night.  Oh well. 

We were both in a lot of pain (hold your insults, please) from the long plane ride and exhaustion, but we decided to walk back and stop at a restaurant along the way.  Remember that it's about a 3 mile walk.  I still don't know what we were thinking.  For those of you who know us really well, we are NOT decisive when it comes to picking restaurants (or tv shows, or movies, or clothes, or greeting cards, or ...), and there were MANY restaurants that we managed to talk ourselves out of stopping at along the way.  We also meandered way more than intended trying to find a place, turning the walk into something well over 4 miles.  We did get a great shot of the Hotel Invalides...

...and we got someone to take a picture of us in front of the Eiffel Tower, which sort of made it all worthwhile (mission smooth-out-the-memories is firmly underway).

We didn't sit down to eat until we were pretty close to the hotel and it was already 10 pm.  Still, the place we finally ate at was very authentic and delicious.  Tom started with French Onion Soup (very different tasting broth, but really good), and Maura started with escargot (she actually ate 2 before turning it over to Tom!).

 For our meals, Maura got salmon, and Tom got duck confit.

We both got creme brulee (of course) for dessert, and it was delicious.  The whole meal was great, and we really did feel MUCH better about our ridiculous nighttime trek through Paris.  We even sat outside on the street (it got much warmer), and we could see the lights flashing on the Eiffel Tower during our meal.  We headed back to the hotel in time to pass out, and that was the end of our first day in Paris.