Our New Garden

While there is still no OFFICIAL word, apparently the house is ours. Yesterday Susan took me back to the house to measure the rooms and choose paint colors, then to a furniture store to choose furniture. I'd say it must be ours...don't you agree?

The kids came along this time. They were SO excited. They got to choose their rooms. They had already chosen on paper, but I wanted to be sure. Once they saw the rooms, they chose differently. They are each very happy with their choices. They will each have their own bathroom which I think will be a good thing.

While I did all the boring measuring and took more photos, the kids explored the yard. Once I was finished they had to lead me on a tour of their many finds.

There is a bird's nest in a bush outside the main door.
In the back there are stone steps leading to a large grassy area. I love these steps, as does Anna.

There is this little thing, which doesn't look like much in a picture. I think it has the potential to be a small pond, if it holds water. Or perhaps we can raise mosquitoes in it!

The pathway along the back of the house.

The back patio.
A nicely sculpted bush, which is maintained by the "yard boy".
There is one thing noticeably missing: color. There isn't a flower to be seen! But that is okay. The stone steps and moss covered walls seem to me the most amazing foundation for a wonderful garden. As of this moment I feel like I am not going to want to leave after 2 years. Of course, there was the little issue of the lizard in the living room...

Maokong Gondola

I am awaiting confirmation of flights for the kids and I to return to the states. It is going to happen quickly, like, any day now. This confuses people because I say I'm leaving then staying then flying home, etc. I believe we will be living here, and so we must get home quickly to get the house packed up. School begins here in early August. Of course, we don't have confirmation that there are spots available for the kids at the school, but, details, details... I believe we will be flying to Boise rather than Virginia. The most recent plan has been that I would get to visit my Mom again, then head to Virginia to pack up. However Mom is, once again, in tough shape so I am not sure if I'll see her or not. In any case, I want to be there as soon as possible.

Having said all of that, I am trying to sort of catch up on posting some pictures from our recent excursions. Today I will show some of our trip on the Maokong Gondola.

I thought I would hate it, because I'm terribly afraid of heights. I HATED the Ferris wheel, and this is much higher so I was hoping I would survive. In fact, I was quite calm and very much enjoyed the ride. Except when Ethan started "what if-ing", as in "What if someone took a huge sword and sliced the cable?" and similar scenarios. I had to make him stop.

Here is our gondola:

A partial view of the city of Taipei. It goes forever.

A BIT of a feel for our route:

Looking down. Once you get past the crush of the city, everything seems like jungle. I was on the lookout for monkeys or parrots, but didn't see anything. I know there are monkeys, but I don't know about parrots. I have no idea if the live here.

I don't understand why so many people live on top of each other in the city, when there are areas like this:

A little difficult to get to, I suppose!

This next house is quite high up the mountain, very remote. I don't know if it's a farm or just a self-sustaining property. My guess would be the latter.

Once we arrived in Maokong we began strolling past the cafes and tea shops. I spotted some pretty flower boxes.


One of the pleasant cafes:

We were there on a weekday. I imagine on the weekend this place is bustling with activity. I prefer it this way.

We strolled past a couple of nice houses. Here is one. There was an even nicer one behind it.

Part of an outdoor cafe. Don't you just want to sit and sip tea?

There were several interesting gates and pathways along our walk.


As is our style, we just headed straight to the gondola without researching what normal people do. I believe they hike up or down part of the mountain - from one gondola stop to another. We weren't prepared so just strolled for awhile, had lunch (sort of - that was the earlier post!) and returned to the same gondola station.

We will add this to the list of things we want to do again, and better. But it was a wonderful experience, probably the most peaceful thing I've done in Taiwan.

Wedding Talk

Anna bought a new Barbie yesterday, and it's wearing a beautiful wedding dress. This morning she is sitting in my bed showing me all the details of the doll and we are talking a bit about weddings. I asked if the doll has a name (Anna has never been very interested in assigning names. Dogs tend to be called "puppy", rabbits " bunny", etc.). When she just looked at me I said "She needs a name so that when you are having a wedding you can say 'I Anna take you William to be my lawfully wedded husband'". Anna said "I always thought it was "waffly wedded husband!"

Also, yesterday we were looking at pictures of the weekend wedding of Princess Victoria of Sweden, and watched a bit of video from it. So we were discussing the bride being given away by her father. She asked why some brides walk down the aisle alone. I told her it might be because they don't have a father. Then I told her that when Grandma W. got married her parents had both died so a family friend walked her down the aisle. It brought back a memory of Mom to me...

Once Mom and I were out for a walk near the apartment I lived in. We were walking through a beautiful neighborhood in Bloomington, past a house on a very large, corner lot. I don't remember if Mom saw the owner working in the yard or saw their name on the mailbox, but somehow she realized this was the man who had walked her down the aisle! She had not seen him for many years, obviously - she hadn't even known where he lived. We ended up visiting with the couple in their home. Sadly, I haven't the faintest memory of their names. But I've always liked the idea that I spent some time with the man who walked my Mom down the aisle. I never knew my Mom's parents, so somehow this feels like a special link.

Food Photos

When we first arrived we ate a few times at New York Bagels, because they have a place in our building. Ethan ordered hot chocolate, and I thought it was picture-worthy:

I ordered a latte, or cappuccino or some such coffee-drink. It's presentation was equally nice. I didn't like the flavor though. For a few weeks we had Friday breakfast at NY Bagels, but then our last trip they were out of plain bagels, grapefruit juice and milkshakes. We've since taken to buying our own bagels from Costco. And making pancakes. LOTS of pancakes.

When we were in KenTing (was that really just last week? Seems a long time ago!) Eric and the kids ordered milkshakes. They came with knotted straws and colorful marachiano cherries. (did I spell that wrong?) The kids ate the cherries so fast I couldn't get my camera ready. So I made Eric wait until I had taken a picture.

Once again, pretty presentation but lacking in substance. These were apparently nothing more than flavored milk - no ice cream. A huge disappointment to the ice cream lovers in my family. I don't get excited about ice cream so I had ordered milk tea. It's taste is growing on me.

There is a blog about food which is proving very helpful for us. It's called A Hungry Girl's Guide to Taipei . On Thursday night Rosa, our babysitter, came over so Eric and I went to try a new Mexican restaurant that "The Hungry Girl" recommended. It is called Oola Mexican Grill.

Since I don't normally blog about food, I didn't think to take pictures of the food before we ate it. Most of my salsa was gone by the time I took this picture.

This was without question the best meal I've had in Taiwan. You get to choose what you want and they assemble it in front of you. I chose tacos and and had one with chicken and one with barbacoa. I'm told the barbacoa is beef and I choose to believe it. The barbacoa was absolutely wonderful. The chicken was good; it probably would have seemed better if I hadn't eaten the barbacoa first. They have 4 types of salsa that you get to pick from, and you can have them mixed. Mine (pictured above) was a mix of corn salsa and mild salsa, which is like pico de gallo. It was good, but next time I would mix in one of the chili salsas for more kick. We will definitely go back to Oola. It was so wonderful to eat something good and, for the most part, familiar.

On Friday we rode the Maokong Gondola. I will do a separate post with scenic pictures. It was a wonderful day. Once in Maokong everyone was hungry so we stopped at a restaurant. While waiting for our food to arrive Anna was trying to teach me how to use chopsticks. (She's already a pro!) She had it down to such a science that I took pictures.

Step 1. Bend 2 fingers.

Step 2. Rest the chopsticks on your bent fingers.

Step 3. Wrap your other 2 fingers around the chopsticks.

Step 5. Put your thumb on one stick and push it back and forth.

I tried. And tried. And TRIED. Until Anna gave me up as hopeless. I couldn't make it work. Eric says her method is not the method he learned, but it works well for her.

Meanwhile, our cokes arrived - in glass bottles!

(Maokong is famous for tea, and I think you are supposed to order tea in these restaurants. We did order Oolong tea along with the cokes.)

The proprietor brought us these lovely little cakes. Again, I began eating before realizing I ought to take a picture! Just one bite this time. I asked what these were called, but the lady could not think of a way to explain it in English. I am guessing this is something fairly common in Taiwan. I hope so, because I wouldn't mind eating more of this. It seemed a bit like a cross between cake and shortbread, and it had a filling of some fruit. It tasted rather like pineapple, but not too strong. (I don't actually like pineapple, but I liked this.)

Finally, our infamous chicken foot lunch. I felt bad for not eating most of the food, but this sight just pushed all of us over the edge. Bon Apetite!

Odd things in Taiwan, Part I

In case you're checking for news about the house, there is no news yet.

No pictures today, either. I have several to share, just need more time. Thought I would begin telling about some of the things here that are odd to Americans. It will no doubt be a partial list which I will add to over time.

1. It is not normal to have a dishwasher. Instead, there are dish DRYERS. I don't see the point of that. If I've gone to the trouble of washing the dishes, what do I care about a machine to dry them? I did notice, however, that most of the apartments and houses we were shown do have dishwashers. I am sure the landlords are specifically catering to westerners and they know that is something we want. Additionally, every dishwasher that I observed was a Bosch! Not a cheap, junky GE.

2. Another appliance anomaly. Rather than a clothes washer and dryer, they have one machine that (supposedly) does both. In our apartment it is a tiny little machine that holds little and takes long. The other night I put 3 beach towels and 2 kids swimsuits in before going to bed. When I got up at 6:30 the next morning the machine was still on! When I checked an hour later it had finally turned off so I opened it up. The towels were not dry. Apparently I overloaded it! I have adapted my laundry habits accordingly. Anything that will need to be ironed I set the machine for wash only. Then I iron the clothes while they are wet which partially dries them and gets them very crisp looking. Sometimes I set the machine wrong and it dries but doesn't wash. However, when I TRiED to dry only, it washed. The settings are all in Chinese, so it is quite a guessing game!

3. Food. Where to even begin?! Picky Americans with western palettes, such as my family, do not eat well here! I'll give one example today and I suppose many more in the future. The other day in a restaurant we looked over the menu. We didn't want the pork innards (that's what it said!) or the squid and ink sauce. We found some chicken that sounded safe. It arrived in a pot that for some reason looked a little scary to us. As Eric began sifting through the chicken pieces looking for suitable pieces for the kids, he stirred up a large, crispy chicken foot. UGH! Believe me, none of us wanted anything to eat out of that pot after that, but the adults had to try to be brave and set a good example. We ate a bit but left pretty hungry.

That's all I have time for today, but I will definitely add to this list in the future.

Okay, so today we went house hunting. Co-workers of Eric's have taken weeks or, in the case of at least one, months, to find an apartment they liked. And we were bound and determined that if we didn't find something GOOD we weren't going to stay. We at least had to see today that there was the possibility of something good.

My Mom once told me that Eric and I should not ever look at houses because, for us, it is like looking at puppies. You know: it is nearly impossible to "look at" puppies and not come home with one. We are like that with houses. We buy them way too frequently. But this time, THIS TIME, we made a list like the annoying people on "House Hunters" (my favorite TV show.) We had a column for "needs" and a column for "wants" and we were taking pictures and taking notes. Ok, we were not as studious about it as the accountant types with their lists, but we were trying.

The beginning lined up with my worst fears. We went into a fairly nondescript building with a tiny lobby, up a small elevator. When we entered the living room I almost wanted to turn around and leave. It smelled a little musty. The furniture and the painting hanging on the wall were straight out of the 50's, and I don't mean mid-century modern styling on new furniture. No, I think these pieces graced someones home in the 50's. But I put on a brave face and kept looking. There WAS a balcony off the living room, one thing on our NEED list. Things began looking up in the dining room. I actually liked the furniture and there were built in cabinets. The kitchen was fairly nice. There was a dishwasher (as opposed to the standard dish DRYER) and a full size washing machine and dryer! I have never written about the inconvenient oddities around here - need to do that sometime. Anyway, things continued getting better. The master bedroom was the hugest thing I've ever seen and it had doors opening to the balcony. It was large enough to be our bedroom AND my craft room. There were a total of 4 bedrooms and 2 of the smaller rooms also had balconies! Taking another look at the living room I decided it could be made comfortable. Eric suggested we could move the ugly furniture into a 4th bedroom, which we would use as a TV room. Okay, this could work. The building was old but the size of the apartment was wonderful.

We went on to see 4 more apartments. They were all newer than the first, had more "curb appeal" and grander lobbies. They were also all smaller. One was brand spanking new and backed up to a mountainside. It was beautiful and so peaceful. Some had very nice architectural features, some had good public spaces where the kids would be free to play.

We had expressed our desire that, if at all possible, we would prefer a single-family home. So Susan dropped us off for lunch while she went to see about "a house" for us to view. Over lunch we discussed the pros and cons of the various apartments. We eliminated some, and we chose our top 3 favorites. But we were hopeful that perhaps the house wouldn't be too dumpy.

When Susan picked us up from lunch she said that she had 4 houses for us to look at. The woman works fast! (And today is a holiday in Taiwan, so we were surprised she was working at all.)

Once again, the first house was everything we feared. It DID have a swimming pool, but everything was pretty much awful after that. The house was a wreck. Even still, the idea of a HOUSE in Taiwan and a POOL that we could use whenever we wanted was enticing. To me, at least. Eric, not so much.

For the next house Susan drove us "up the mountain". OH. MY. GOODNESS!!! Up and up we went. Around curves. And more curves. At one point instead of watching the road I looked at the view and I could see the entire city of Taipei. It was amazing. Surely, I thought, if the house "down there" was a dump, then anything "up here" was going to be worse. We drove past some houses which Susan pointed out were former US Military housing. I remembered reading about that area. Yep, this was not going to be pretty.

We drove into the lane of the next house. Actually the next 2 houses were on this one lane. As we approached the first my hopes began to rise. This is the front yard:

If you click on the picture and then look hard at roughly the center of the picture, you can just barely see Taipei 101 in the distance. This front yard looks out over all of Taipei. Maybe. Just maybe...

We went a little further into the yard and found this:

This lovely swimming pool which belongs only to this house. I am definitely interested.

Another view of the front yard. (Or "garden", as it's called here.)

We were both charmed as we walked in the front door and saw this:

What can I say? We are both suckers for different architectural details.

The living room is so large that I could not get it all in one photograph. The picture above is part of it, looking into the dining room. This next picture is another part, though not all. The fire place is a real, wood-burning fireplace!

Here is a view of the kitchen. It is not grand, but it is quite nice. And the windows look into the back garden. Lovely.

And that's it! Eric and I were both head over heels in love with the place! There are 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, plus a maids quarters. It's somewhat old. The bathrooms are no where near as nice as those in the apartments, but... THE VIEW! THE POOL! AND... the kids can go right outside our gate and be picked up by the school bus - whichever school we choose. AND...there is a more direct route down the mountain so that Eric's drive to work will actually be SHORTER than it is currently!

Did I ever say I didn't want to live in Taiwan? Forget it. Forget I ever said that!

We breezed through the remaining 3 houses but none of them captured our hearts the way this one had. It was kind of like looking at a puppy. We forgot to take notes. Except, when we got home and pulled out our list of needs and wants we realized that this home met every single thing on our list. And then some.

It's not ours yet. The realtor will be negotiating. But we are so excited about the possibility!

Temporary is the new Permanent

I've left hints here and there. I wasn't sure. We were "maybe yes" then "definitely no". I wanted to go home NOW, not 2 months from now. So 2 years? Don't even THINK about it.

Yesterday we arrived at "probably". Tomorrow we will go out with Susan the Realtor again but instead of touring the sights we'll be touring apartments (and hopefully homes!). It seems, for us, that TEMPORARY IS THE NEW PERMANENT.

(For the record, if this happens, we keep our house in Virginia.)