I'm Elli!

This won't surprise you who know her, but Elli has fully embraced her role as older sister to Sienna.  As anyone with an older sister knows, being the older sister also means acting like a second mother at times, and Elli loves mimicking how Heather and I discipline Sienna.  This includes our efforts to teach Sienna the meaning of no.  When Sienna gets into something she shouldn't or tries to play with light sockets or whatever, Heather and I firmly tell her no.  Lately, Elli has followed our lead and will emphatically shout "Senna ... NO!"  Heather and I often try to temper Elli's enthusiasm by telling her that we are the parents and we will take care of disciplining Sienna.

The other day, Elli surprised us with a response to our attempt to curb her disciplining enthusiasm.  Sienna had just gotten into something, I can't remember what.  Heather told Sienna no, and Elli backed her up with her own energetic no.  Heather then said, "Elli, I am the mommy."  Elli then thought for a moment, and replied with a huge smile on her face, "I'm Elli!"  

We laughed really hard.  We love our girls!

Jiufen

Like most people, we took a temporary holiday break from blogging.  But with Christmas behind us, we wanted to catch up on several things that we've done since Columbus Day.  These next few blogs won't be long posts, but they should give a sense of some of our recent adventures.

One of our bigger adventures was going to a famous mining town on the north coast of Taiwan called Jiufen.  It was made famous by a local romantic movie in the late 1980s as well as by the cartoon movie Spirited Away.  The city is the inspiration for the village in the movie.  It's a quaint little town high up in the mountains overlooking the coastline.  The main attraction is an old street with lots of interesting and unique vendors selling all sorts of treats and interesting items.

Because of the way it was built, another interesting attraction is the several "tunnel" like alleyways crisscrossing the mountain village.  These alleys run in between the houses and link one level of the village with another.  They are very narrow and really feel like a tunnel with stairs.

Since October, we've taken two trips to Jiufen.  Heather and the girls went in mid October with a bunch of women from our church.  Then Heather and I went by ourselves with a group organized by AIT in early December.  Both were fun trips, although the weather was beautiful during the first trip and rainy and cloudy during the latter.  Here are some pics.

Some of the snacks and food they sell here are typical Taiwanese snacks.  The first pic below is taro and pineapple ice cream wrapped in a crepe filled with peanut shavings and cilantro.  Actually very tasty, although the cilantro is strange. Elli really loved it.  She wouldn't even share with Heather.   The third pic below are buckets of nuts and little fish or mini shrimp (whole shrimp) mixtures.  Delicious!

Elli attracts a crowd most places she goes.  She's like a celebrity.  Here she is hamming it up and posing in front of a bunch of locals/tourists.

On the first trip, Heather got to go to a nearby temple.  It's a huge temple and decked out in gold trimming, since the town used to be a gold mining town.  The details of this temple are really beautiful, and the views were pretty amazing too.  

Definitely a place worth a visit!

Hiking in Neihu: Discovering Gems

A few Saturdays back, we set out on a family hike in an area just a few metro stops away in Neihu.  It turned out to be just a wonderful day for a hike and the kids were mostly happy throughout which made it very enjoyable! We discovered some great things along the way that we wanted to share.

 #1 Gem: A little family farm on the hillside, so serene

 #2 Gem- An old coal mine area

From  a later trip with the play group! 

 #3 Gem- Well not really a gem per se... actually quite the opposite.  A big banana spider- these things are about the size of your hand!  Creepy and they are everywhere.  Yay.

 #4 Gem- A really nice temple that we just happened across.  It is a family temple maintained by the Ye family but they were really nice to let us wander about.

On our way back, we walked home a different way and saw a beautiful park down below.  The kids were tired so we didn't explore it then.

 I came back with the girls and found it was a very beautiful little walk, and river.

Gem #5- A Butterfly haven!! I wish wish wish our camera hadn't broken right before this (yeah- the shutter stopped working. way lame) So I had to take all these with my phone and it is really hard to see just how many butterflies were fluttering about.  Elliana loved it because they didn't really fly away when you came near.  She even touched some of them.  Sienna seemed quite taken too.  I hope you are able to see at least some of them- they were all colors, white, big black ones, orange, sparkly blue... it was so awesome!

We came back another day with our play group because we loved the butterflies so much!

 Gem #6  On our way out of the park, we saw a lady walking  6 very done up poodles.  It was so funny to see them all running up beside her with their little bows.  I think it was mostly comical too because the woman was very Not prissy or the kind of woman you would think would have 6 poodles.  Elli was in awe of course!    People here in Taiwan love their dogs!

 #7 Gem- Saving the best for last folks.   On the second trip out to this park, the temple was doing some sort of festival and these three lovely hogs were being presented as gifts to their gods.  I have never seen a dead hog like this and I was surprised that it didn't stink.  They looked almost fake, kind of like a how somebody looks in a casket after they have died.  Really interesting cultural gem.  I wish we could have stayed for the whole celebration, but at least we got to see these three big pigs splayed out as an offering.