I HEART TAIWAN

January 2011

BEIDOU

After spending Christmas at home with my parents and spending the New Year holiday with friends, I flew back to Taiwan with my mom early January to visit all of our relatives and then attend Ruby's wedding on January 15th. Our first stop was Beidou, where all of my relatives from my mom's side live. Basically, we all just caught up, ate, drank tea, ate more, repeat. It was a LOT colder than it had ever been when I've gone to Taiwan and Allison got me sick within the first few days :( I tried so very hard not to get sick but my immune system sucks! We went to see a local doctor where my little aunt lives and he didn't even make us pay for it since he was friends with my aunt! I guess that's how they roll around here...that would never fly in the US.

At Grandma's house

My "tien tsai" grandmother

We also decided to rent a cabin in the mountain for a few days!

Relaxing in the hot springs at the Ten-Ren hotel

(home of the Ten-Ren tea, the Lipton of Taiwan tea...tastes a lot better than Lipton though)

Unfortunately, it was rainy and foggy the whole time, but we made do

with these bright green umbrellas!

Cousins!

More cousins!

Reunion at this hot pot place where my little uncle knew the owner and we ate soooo much freaking hot pot. The owner is from this little island off of Taiwan and his brother sends him fresh fish that he catches every day, and he shared some with us!

Our cousin Maya's little dog--this little cutie is so hyper but rather spoiled--he will only drink milk and won't even touch water! Here he is in downward dog. He can also do many tricks.

TAINAN

After Beidou, we went to visit my dad's side of the family--my 3 aunties and all of our cousins, and now our cousin's kids! So many little kids to play with and they were all so adorable. My aunt has been fighting Breast Cancer for a few years now and she looked a lot better and still has so much spunk! Our aunties love reminiscing about when we were little because Allison was here until she was 3 and was a fiesty little one! We looked through old photo albums and I always get teary eyed when I see this one of my grandpa (my dad's dad) and me (I was only 1) at the airport right before our family left to move to the US. I never really met my grandpa because he passed away when I was young.

TAIPEI

We went back to Taipei to visit my dad's oldest brother and to pray to our ancestors there (since the oldest son is the keeper of the family shrine), and went to lunch with our cousin's little boy. He was quite a handful but super cute.

Then it was wedding time! After lots of stressful planning and complications with the groom's mother falling sick at the last minute (they found out she had kidney cancer only 3 days before the wedding), the actual day turned out just fine and we all ate ourselves into a food coma with the 14 courses. Weddings in Taiwan are more like a show, where the bride has to change into 3-4 different outfits (you rent them all), and mosts of the guests are friends of the parents rather than the bride and groom's. We even played some games! For one of the games they had to answer a question based on what they thought the other one would say. One of the questions was "What is your favorite part about Ruby?"--Harald answered, "I'm going to be honest...her chest." And Ruby thought it would be her neck. Therefore, Harald had to write "I Love You" with his butt, facing the audience/guests. Good times for all!

At the after-party at an Italian restaurant where we met lots of cool Germans and some of Ruby's friends from work, who were so nice we met up for dinner again (below)!

Taiwan Beer party with Ruby's friends! They were such good hosts--I guess it's their job since they all work for the Tourism Board.

For the rest of our time, my mom and I went up to Beitou for a day to visit the natural hot springs! We paid less than $1 to get into one, where there were a lot of locals you could tell go there on a regular basis (maybe for arthritis pains?). Then we went to the Hot Spring Valley, where the water is probably over 200 degrees Fahrenheit. My mom said they used to not have any of these fences up, and you could walk right over to the water and boil an egg!

Then Ms. Chen was so nice and drove me and my mom to Yilan Geopark! I was looking through a brochure of tours in Taiwan and had NO idea there was even anything like this...it was absolutely stunning even though we had poor weather. We had a fun encounter with some PRCs (People's Republic of China--basically rude people from the mainland) who refused to wait in line to take pictures with the "Queen's Head" rock. They kept cutting in front of us, even when they were yelled at by the guy working there--they just yelled back even louder! SO RUDE! I had never realized how rude some people from China are until this trip. When we were at the airport from Frankfurt to Beijing, the guy behind me was literally breathing down my neck and I asked him to back off and he did for about 1 second and then just got closer again! Then when I was at Taipei 101, I literally got pushed aside (with no excuse mes or sorry's) by these two PRC ladies who wanted to stand in my exact spot to take a picture (even though there was no one around me). I guess it's just their culture to be loud, rude, pushy, and ignore the concept of lines, but come on!

The "candlesticks" at the Geopark at Yilan

The Queen's Head rock, finally, after a run-in with PRC's.