We finally found our favorite drinks!

After almost 2 months of searching, Aaron and I have finally found Amaretto and Relax Riesling.  Success!  We are ready for the New Year...

 

Funny Tidbits: 

1. The other day we had a waitress named 'Water'. I swear. LOL

2. The name of the grocery store down the street is 'Wellcome'.  ;-)

Traditional Chinese Shirts

We bought traditional Chinese shirts. How cool are we?!

Our first Christmas together...in Taiwan!

Even though we weren't with our families for Christmas (and missed them so much!), we had a wonderful holiday together. Here are a few pictures of our Christmas:

This was the temperature on Christmas day-- too warm!

Here is a video of Santa Clauses marching around the park across from our apartment.  I really don't know what they were doing...  :)

Our Christmas Dinner!  mmm...mmm...the ham and homemade stuffing we made were delicious! We were pretty proud of ourselves...  :)

Check out Cedric on Christmas Day--HAHA! he looks so happy!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Our apartment in Tainan

Here is our apartment!

Christmas cookies

Baking ingredients are hard to find in Taiwan, but I found enough to make these cookies for Aaron's colleagues. Mmmm...mmmm!





I see that one is missing...I wonder who ate that?! ;-)


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Chihkan Tower

Here are a few pictures from our visit to the Chihkan Tower:

Teppanyaki

I had lunch at a Teppanyaki restaurant today. It was delicious! Here is a collage of the pictures I took there.

I was so proud of myself that I was able to tell the chef that the food was delicious (all in CHINESE!).  But then, I had to have his response translated...haha! :-)  He asked if I learned anything from his cooking and I said (in CHINESE!!!) 'You are the good teacher and I am the student."  Go me!

Christmas has arrived!

On a cold and rainy day in Taiwan, Christmas packages arrived!





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Asian Fondue?

This is so yummy!  It's called Hot Pot...usually very spicy, but mine was made with tea!  You put all the fresh vegetables in the boiling put of tea. The white 'paste' is fish paste, and you scoop out pieces and drop it in the hot pot.  You can also crack the egg into the hot pot or just put the entire egg in and make it a boiled egg.

View from our apartment

Here are a few reasons we love the location of our apartment:
1. Under the ESLite bookstore is a Starbucks.
2. Across the street is a park.
3. A little past the park is the night market that takes place M,T, & F.

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It's beginning to look like Christmas

Our first Christmas tree together!


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I channeled my inner Gaga and just danced!

Here is the description for the meditation session I went to on Thursday:  AFRICAN DANCE - a meditation which combines African rhythms and other indigenous music.


I thought this sounded really cool and since I've always wanted to go to a mediation session and try yoga, I decided to go.  I make my trek across town and wait in a room with 5 Taiwanese women who only spoke Chinese.  Luckily the leader was a German man and I was able to ask him questions.  He started 'class' right away and I didn't feel right if I just bailed right after he said we would be dancing while he played this African drum.  So, everyone got in their own space in the room and they started dancing, spinning, humming, yelling, jumping, and moving around as though some strange spirit had taken over their bodies.  WTF?! What was I supposed to do? I'd already paid my money... I also stick out like a sore thumb...there was no sneaking out now... so I channeled my inner Gaga and just danced!  HAHA

The front of the room was a giant mirror, so I could watch myself dance--well I don't know if what I was doing can actually be qualified as dancing. In my head I was laughing at myself and I wouldn't have been surprised if my husband or brother jumped out and said I had just been punked.   The craziest lady was of course behind me and 'danced' into me a few times! She was screaming and making all sorts of noises.
This lasted for an hour!  Yes, I watched myself dance around like a looney person for an entire hour (every 15min we took a break to meditate)!  I guess I was wrong to assume that they would show us some African dance moves. 

After the session, we sat in a circle and shared our experience.  The first woman who spoke asked if anyone had ever hurt themselves in one of these sessions because she felt like throwing herself out of the window.  WTF?!  I definitely did not feel like doing that...

I will say, that it was an interesting experience to let loose and not worry about what others thought.  I knew that I would never see these people again and I just used my inner built up energy and just moved my body to the rhythm.  That was the whole point of the session, right?

Oh man, put this on a list of things I never thought I would have done...

Trash Days

I've always considered sorting the trash a big deal when I was living in Germany.  Each city has a different way to sort the recyclables but everything is well organized and but at least you know how to get rid of your trash.  In the States, you aren't even required to recycle and everyone has huge bins to throw the trash and once a week it is picked up.  But here in Tainan, garbage pick-up is at 9pm pretty much every day of the week!  There is a truck that drives by playing a melody and as soon as you hear it, you get your trash, make your way down the elevator and this little old lady is standing there with a shopping cart ready to take your garbage (or recycling, whichever day it happens to be).  Ummm...I must have been like a minute late going down the elevator and the lady was gone!  Ugh!  That's two days in a row.  Now I'll have two small bags of garbage sitting in our foyer.  Should I just stand outside with my trash around 8:55 and wait for the lady?

And for your entertainment, here is the Garbage Truck Melody in Taiwan.

First Chinese Lesson

I started my Chinese lessons yesterday.  Wow!  I know I'm just starting out but it is already very frustrating. We worked on pinyins (never even heard of those until yesterday), pronunciation, and Chinese tones for 2 hours. She put a sheet in front of me yesterday and told me to read through the alphabet.  How am I supposed to read the alphabet in Chinese if I've never heard it before?  Then at the end of the lesson, she told me to memorize the pronunciation and combination of sounds. We obviously have completely different teaching methodologies.  She is giving me a test today by saying words and then I have to identify which of the tones she is using. What the heck! I need to find some online pronunciation help... 

The Chinese use only one syllable "da" and yet can tell the difference between "to hang over something" ( da1 ), "to answer" (da2), "to hit" (da3), and "big" (da4). Yes, the secret lies in the tones. 

Flavor of the week

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Thanksgiving 2010

I have to admit that we had Burger King for our 2010 Thanksgiving dinner! Because of poor planning on both our parts, we didn't have a reservation at an American restaurant nor did I know where to get ingredients for an American T-day meal. So we missed our families terribly but we were happy to have one another on this first Thanksgiving as a married couple. It wasn't traditional, or glamorous, but definitely special.


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Thank you Costco

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Earthquake

We had a minor earthquake tremor on Sunday night!  It was the first time I've ever felt one.  I thought Aaron was jumping up and down in the apartment...haha!

Urban Forest

That's the name of our apartment!  We are very happy we found such a great place to live.  We were worried after our initial searching, but we've found a very modern (pretty hi-tech) abode.  :-)  We moved in on Saturday and went shopping for some essentials like toilet paper, towels.  Then on Sunday we explored the area around our apartment.  One of the best (so we've heard) bookstores and Starbucks is on the corner of the street--maybe 50 feet away from our apartment!  Our view out of the bedrooms is great and there is a park across the street.  I love people watching, so I've been glancing out every now and then to see what's going on in the park!

We are the only tenants on the 5th floor- 2nd Floor is EF Tours, 3rd Floor is a Beauty Salon, 4th Floor is a Psychologist office (but hasn't moved in yet).  The elevator always smells good because of the salon!  ;)  We discovered that our apartment includes security cameras in the bedrooms, dining room, hallway, and elevator.  So, as soon as we hear the elevator, we watch to see who is getting in the elevator and what they are doing.  Usually the women check themselves out in the mirror and fix their hair.  HAHA! 

We will take pictures of the apartment soon! Here is a picture of our business card that our real estate agent, Bettie, made for us  (BTW, her son's name is Kaiser!  hehe!):

Feel free to call us, or better yet, send us a package!  ;-)


Here is our rental car and our American sized parking space!  HAHA!  Aaron realized that parking in those spaces was pretty tricky, so the security guard showed him this spot.  He took it right away!  :)  The parking space is in the basement of the same building as Starbucks. 


It took forever for our internet to be set up because of all the wiring they had to work around throughout the building.  Then we went to IKEA!  IKEA in Kaosiung, Taiwan!  How cool!  (We also went to Costco, but I didn't take a picture of that.)  Kaosiung is the 2nd largest city in Taiwan.

Check out the scooters too:

My lunch today including a rice dumpling filled with pork and some sort of soup.  There is a place across the street from Starbucks that advertises that they make the best rice dumplings.  That's about all that's in English at this shop.  I just went there for lunch and risked asking them if they spoke any English and ordered a rice dumpling with 'pig'. They cook the rice dumplings in (I think) corn husks that are tied into a triangular shape and dropped into a big pot of boiling broth (again, I think!).    I have no idea what was in the soup, but it was good!  I do know it included what they call a Chinese doughnut for the dumpling part of the soup (that's the part of the soup that looks sort of slimy).  I got this entire meal for $50 NT, which is equivalent to about $1.50 USD!  So cheap!

 Here are some pictures I've just gotten around posting from Taipei:

Taipei 101

Our hotel

     

Eating chicken noodle soup with Chopsticks.  Go me!

Aaron at an American restaurant in Tainan.

 An Engrish sign at a department store:

Oh my, what a long post!  That's what happens when I don't have the internet for 4 days.  Talk to you soon!

I'm sort of a big deal...

I'm sort of a celebrity here in Taiwan. Three girls just asked to take pictures with me. No big deal.  :)

There is so much going on in Tainan in the evenings.  As I walk around during the day, many stores are closed and people are cleaning and organizing for the evening.  The city definitely is vibrant and comes alive at night.

Tuesday night we went to our first night market!  Too cool!  There were so many different people cooking and selling things.  There were socks and hats and a little bit of everything in between.  Fruits, veggies, and meats and other things I couldn't identify.  I smelled stinky tofu for the first time--BLAH!  I did try chicken feet too.  Just one.  It was chewy and didn't taste like much (not even like chicken!).  We would like to invited one of Aaron's coworkers to one of the night markets with us, so he/she can tell us about the different foods.  And maybe get us a better deal on some of the clothes.  We've heard you can bargain the price down, but because we're Americans, we will usually get the 'American price' for things.  I'm looking for a holder for my iTouch, so maybe that's the goal for the next night market. 


 Last night stumbled upon a different night market.  We started walking through and I saw chickens caged along this wall.  The next thing I see is someone butchering the chicken!  AAHH!  Blood, guts, and feathers everywhere!  Then there were seafood bits and fish heads everywhere.  I feel I'm so far removed from the food I eat in America.  I just go to Kroger and buy a pound of chicken and think nothing of it.  But here, you see the slimy scales of the fish before they are cooked...or they are just eaten raw.  Fish heads!  What the heck do you do with the fish heads?!

Hmmm...what's for dinner tonight?  Maybe there is another night market close by--no slaughter houses though, please!

Royal engagement

 I understand this blog is about my adventures here in Taiwan, but I just can't get over the fact that Prince William and Kate Middleton are engaged!  I just think they are too cute!  She's so pretty and seems very down to earth.

I love the fact that William gave her his mother's engagement ring too!  Isn't it gorgeous?!  (I like her dress too, btw!)

Oooh...and I can't wait to hear about all the wedding details!  I bet she is going to have an outrageous dress!  :)
Cheers!

International Apartment Hunters

After we arrived in Tainan on Saturday, we met with a real estate agent and started looking for an apartment.  I was so excited about this because along with looking for a place to live, you also get to see how others live and it is just a huge piece of culture that I wanted to learn about.  Well, ugh....the first place was awful!  It was dark, dirty, and stunk.  The appliances were old and the refrigerator was duct taped because it was broken.  Aaron and I took notes and acted enthusiastic about it because the owners were there and still hadn't moved all of their belongings out!  As soon as we got into the car, we had to tell the lady that this was not what we wanted and expected to see more in the top range of our budget.  The next 4 apartments that we saw were okay, but definitely not what we wanted.  The furniture was old and nothing was clean.  I just couldn't get over that--just cleaning the floors and furniture would have made a big difference!   So, Saturday's apartment search was a bust. I would have taken pictures to share with you, but they didn't let us. We were so tired that we fell asleep at 7pm without dinner.

Sunday's apartment search went MUCH better.  The first place we went to was sort of a Sex and the City meets Taiwan theme--very cool!  I know Aaron liked that it was more modern, but it was small and really girly!  It was like right out of a magazine. So, we told the lady that we would look at the other two apartments we were scheduled to see, but thought we'd take that one.  Man, are we glad we looked at the second apartment!  It's beautiful and spacious and in a great part of the city.  It even has a dryer and an oven which is unheard of here!  Even though we loved the 2nd apartment we wanted to take a look at the 3rd.  But it wasn't in as nice of an area and it wouldn't be move-in ready until December.  Again, I haven't taken any pictures yet, but I'll send some as soon as we move in (hopefully next week)! 

Breakfast is the hardest adjustment so far.  It has been an adventure in and of itself.  The Taiwanese (and I assume Chinese) eat salad type foods for breakfast.  They also eat congee (rice soup) that I have pictured in another post. They put all different types of seafood in it or pickled vegetables. The current congee soup at the breakfast buffet today was 'milk and fish congee'.  Umm..no thanks.  I feel that I can identify about 20% of the food on the breakfast buffet.  I'll be honest, I like trying new food but some of the breakfast items make me sick to my stomach.  I wonder if I am just so far removed for raw and natural foods that seeing a whole fish on a plate makes me queezy. 

I'm trying to be adventurous and taste new things so for lunch I ate this:

Again, I don't know what everything is, but this did taste good!  The meat was pork and the miso had shells in it.  It was served with chilled green tea.

Last night we went to an American restaurant that was recommended to us by Aaron's colleagues.  It was sort of like a country saloon and had things like steak and burgers.  Aaron ordered a steak and I had a chicken burger.  Well, I honestly don't think it was chicken.  How do you mess up chicken?!  When they brought us our food, they brought Aaron a  burger, so he corrected them and asked for a steak.  She took his back and brought out the steak within in a minute.  He steak was raw---chewy red rawness.  and I think the waitress messed up my order and gave me the ostrich burger.  Now, I've never had ostrich and I would have been okay with trying it, if I knew that that's what I was eating.  Neither of us finished our meal.

We might try the German restaurant tonight, so I hope we have better luck with it!

Tofu pudding

This looks disgusting, but it's good! 

Tofu pudding dessert topped with tapioca balls and red beans with brown sugar syrup. I did not add the red beans...yes, BEANS in the dessert!! ick!  The tofu isn't very sweet, but that's why it's surrounded by syrup.  mmm... :-)

Engrish

I'm going to keep a list of funny names we encounter here in Taiwan.  Aaron says that the Taiwanese choose an English name when they are in grade school and that's their name for life.  So, some of them are pretty interesting.  First off, Aaron works with a Peter Pan.  Of course when we gets emails from him it's "Pan, Peter" because Pan is now the last name.  hehe   At the 7/11 we met someone named Dragon and just now one of the hotel workers' name was Porsche. 

I'll also continue to take pictures of Engrish sayings like this:

That's all for now, but I'm sure I'll have more to share later!

Yes there are two bathrooms

This might take an hour or so before the video is available.

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Tokyo airport

The flight flew by! Ha! Aaron was able to sleep more than half of the trip, so he's wide awake and on his laptop working already. I slept about 5 hours and am now people watching. I don't think it gets much better than people watching in another country- It's just fabulous!







Oh and here's my snack from the lounge... Vegetable sandwich and a sushi roll with some oolong tea! Mmm...Mmm... Good!









Congee soup

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No turning back now...

Here we are in Atlanta waiting for our flight to Tokyo! We only had a few hours of sleep so we are ready for a nap on the plane. After the nap I hope that there will be some good movies available to watch. I must have packed my eReader in one of the checked luggage pieces so I am glad I decided to throw "The Girl With The Dragon tattoo" in my purse before we left so maybe I will finish that during the flight. First priority is sleep though...

I'll be sure to post as soon as we arrive in our hotel in Taipei! Until then...



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We'll be back soon...

Driving to Buffalo was exhausting! 4 meowing cats + 8 hours in a car = headache and exhaustion. The first 1.5 hours was awful. Poor Aiden made a mess in his carrier so we pulled over and cleaned him up and wrapped him in a blanket and he slept on my lap the rest of the trip. He had some excessive drooling issues but he's doing better!

This evening we brought Aiden and Connor to the nice couple who is taking care of them while we are in Taiwan. They just put their kitty down so they are very happy to welcome two cats into their home. Surprisingly Connor was out and about in their house! He is such a brave special needs kitty! We didn't see much of Aiden but I'm sure he's doing fine. He just loves people and he will warm up to the couple soon. There were definitely some tears shed as I left, but I know they will be fine...

Tomorrow morning we are meeting at Chrissy's for brunch prepared by Tom! Yummy... I can't wait! Afterward we will be oohing and ahhhing as Chrissy tries on wedding gowns! I can't wait!

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Packing for Buffalo and Taiwan

We are leaving in the morning for Buffalo! We're still getting our things together. Here are some of our bags...







 Although this is a bit stressful double checking to make sure I have everything I need for 30 degree snowy weather in Buffalo and 80 degree super humid weather in Taiwan, I can't wait to just be there. (not really looking forward to 8 hours in the car with 4 meowing cats!)

I'm looking forward to seeing the family too!  We're dress shopping with Chrissy on Saturday and I can't wait!  She's going to be such a beautiful bride!  I just love her!

{Dad Cooke, Aaron, Mom Cooke, Me, Chrissy, Katie} Sasha-not pictured  :-(

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Kitty bath time

Aiden was in need of a bath! He did so well and didn't complain at all! Here are some pictures of his experience...






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