Pottery, BBQ, and My Birthday?

         Yingge is a little town near the outskirts of Taipei where they are famous for their pottery. It is a cute town full of personality, but one look at the store above (one of the many like this there) and I can understand why I was told not to bring a toddler.  I can see the image now: pretty purple bowl on eye level with 2 year old Elli; bowls above purple bowl all smashing and toppling to the ground as impulsive Elli runs off with now infamous purple bowl. 

         Back to reality-- thank goodness.  A group of women in my ward were all going there on Sept 21 (my b-day) and invited me along.   One of my friends, Erin, who has a helper everyday, said Elli could stay and play with her son Anders while we went there for the morning.  

Here are some of the things I fell in love with:

Block statues of martial arts/ taichi, and an engraving of chinese characters in the back

 

Little owls-- so adorable

These Chinese dragon puppets- I need to buy some someday soon

 I want to buy a tea set before we leave- these are way more expensive than I would get, 

but they were so awesome that I had to take pics

 My favorite:

 I took this picture because I loved the vase but right after taking the picture I got chased out of the shop by the owner.  Apparently, taking pics of the pottery is a no-no in some shops.  They are worried you will steal their designs and make the same piece yourself.  I think that was a logical fear with me, since my pottery skills are beyond compare.  Pretty sure I can make the vase below in a few hours, no problem, since I have the picture to copy it of course.  ;)

 Sienna was a great  pottery shopper.  She fell asleep too which was really considerate of her.

 Here are some of the women that went along with us and who have befriended me in our expat English speaking church ward.  They are all terrific ladies who I am really enjoying getting to know.

  Here is what I ended up buying: chopstick holders (to rest your chopsticks on during dinner), and chopsticks! The day we went was my birthday, so Brandy and Erin bought me that cool swirly bowl I was eyeing but wasn't sure if I wanted to buy yet.  I can be really indecisive.  They surprised me with it later!  So nice of them.  Next time we go, (now that I know what to expect and prepare for) I want to buy lots more!

That night: we went out to eat with a group of people in our community and from AIT, the "embassy" here.   My friend Sarah had organized it so we could all try this awesome BBQ place about a 15 min. walk from our house!!  I had a really good pulled pork bbq sandwhich in TAIWAN!  Awesome huh!  It was a great dinner and nice to go out on my birthday.

Note:  It would have been even nicer if Todd had decided to even mention to anyone there that it was my birthday.  Or if I didn't have to remind him that morning after we had both been up for a while that it was my birthday.  Or if he had thought, I know we already celebrated Heather's birthday in Virginia before we left, but I am sure Heather might like some flowers because you only turn 30 once- and since flowers are easy to get and fairly inexpensive here.  But he didn't.  I still had gotten to do some great things that day, which made things better, but when we got home and I sat on the couch and Todd said "let's clean up the house before we rest okay" I let him have it, kind of gently (but not really).

FYI to Husbands: Even if you celebrate your wife's birthday early, it doesn't mean that you can act like her actual birthday is just an ordinary day- especially if it is her 30th!

To Todd's credit, before we left VA, Todd and Kenny did throw a birthday bash for me and Nichole. They made it really fun with great BBQ (funny just realized that connection) and games with our good friends which was totally awesome.  We had it in our house that we had already moved our stuff out of, so everyone just brought camping chairs!  It was so fun. 

 Here are those pics since I haven't had a chance to post them yet: 

Birthday Girls

Masterminds

Friends!!!

Looking at these pictures makes me homesick a bit.  I will always be so grateful for such amazing friends in our lives.  I love you guys tons and miss you all a lot!

Play Place Palace

Yo Yo Kids

One of the first places we discovered when we moved here was this awesome play area in a ritzy Japanese mall named Mitsokoshi.  It is called Yo Yo kids and is full of unique play areas that I have never seen in the states.  I was sad that we wouldn't be near it anymore when we left for our permanent housing in an area much further away.  To my and especially Elli's delight, there was another similar type play place in the best version of a "Walmart" type store that Taiwan has to offer.  It does cost $3 US to play so we only do it for a special treat, but Elli loves it!!  I took a couple videos of the two places and a little of the girls.  

              As a tangent- Our helper Alile is in the second video (she is not the Taiwanese woman who took Sienna from me in the first one, although she was nice too.  Taiwanese women and men love to hold Sienna and play with Elli, and some of the time I let them.  :)  Alile (pronounced Ah-lay-lee) comes twice during the week in the morning and 8 hours on Saturday and is so great with the girls.  She watches them for me on Thursday mornings so I can go to my Chinese class and on Tuesday so I can go and do a few things that are really difficult to do with kids here in Taipei.  She mostly cooks and cleans on Saturdays or watches the girls after they are asleep so Todd and I can go out.  Since we have no car, and we live far from most people, getting a teen babysitter from our ward is almost impossible!  Elli has adjusted pretty well to Alile although when Alile and I are both around she often spurns Alile and says "No" to her about a million times.  Multiple timeouts are not uncommon during those times, although she is getting better.  Alile says Elli behaves really well when I am not around, which is really good, but frustrates me that she can't be like that when I am there!  Nevertheless, Alile makes our lives here a lot easier than it would have been, especially since Todd has been really busy with work.   I am very grateful.

Excursions and Fun Food and ADVICE

Things have been pretty busy for us in our new home here in the DaZhi part of Taipei.  Todd has been hard at work, and the girls and I have been trying to explore this new area and do some fun things along the way.  On Saturdays, we have been able to enjoy exploring things together! Be sure to check out my important advice at the end too.  

Excursion #1  On the first Saturday we moved into DaZhi, we decided to explore a butterfly walk that Elli and I had stumbled upon but been unable to hike without some Daddy help.  It had a placard at the beginning of the hike touting the beauties and the great butterflies you can see.   We enjoyed the trees and the greenery, but the water areas and parts of the path were not really well maintained, but well maintained for Taiwan so that's something!  And in fact, taiwan is a fairly clean city as far as big cities go.   We did get to see a great view of our area of Taipei at the top of hike.   Elli enjoyed watching the roaming homeless dogs which were plentiful; however, we only spotted one butterfly.  Guess we should figure out when butterfly season is in and dog season out!

Sienna slept pretty much the whole time!

There were a ton of stairs and so Elli was pretty tuckered out by the time we got to the top.

In the picture below, our apartment is directly behind Todd in the first line of buildings you can see.  The picture doesn't do it justice because we forgot our camera and had to take pics via iphone. 

On the way down, Elli only wanted Mommy so here I am holding both girls- no sweat! (Actually, I was sweating a lot by the end!)  This is in front of a temple on the way down.  

These types of Buddhist temples are everywhere and it amazes me how ornate so many of them are. 

Excursion #2  The next Saturday, we took an excursion to the north end of Taipei to a part of the city known as Bali ... nw Danshui.  Not Bali, Indonesia, but a very nice area nonetheless.  I will tell you what was not nice though-- the two and a half hours it took us to get there via metro rail, ferry, and walking.  We were actually going there to help with a service project with our ward to clean up the area, but we severely underestimated the time to get there.  By the time we got there, the service project was over, we were all hot and sweaty, and Elli was pretty tired.  She was a trooper though and did get a second wind (after a few tantrums of course).

It was a gorgeous area and they have a carnival type feel all along the water front.  They also had an awesome street with tons of vendors with interesting things to buy and eat.  Todd thought we were just going to a service project and didn't bring any extra spending money, silly boy.  He said he would bring the money for this outing, and I mistakenly assumed he would know by now that a woman must always be ready to shop, but he barely brought enough for us to get home.  We look forward to going again when we have a car to take us there more speedily and money to enjoy the street.   Just be grateful we didn't test out how to get to Bali with any of you visiting.

Even though we missed the service project, we did enjoy the service project lunch.  There are probably upwards of 2000 members of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints here in the Taipei area and almost 200 expats in the English speaking ward.  The turn out was fairly decent considering the location was far away.  The lunch was really good too and had so many courses that we were all stuffed by the end.

The stake president, President Liang, made sure that all the English ward members could sit together because we apparently were given less unique seafood dishes and more sweet and sour pork and the like.  Very considerate.

Our table didn't even touch this fish, since we were all so full by the other 7 courses of beef noodles, sweet pork, rice and soup, chicken, cabbage salad, mongolian beef, and shrimp.  We were there for over an hour and a half eating and we all had to get going.  As we were leaving, a woman from another table put our fish into a plastic bag to take home.  Many other tables were doing the same.  I was definitely okay with her taking it, since a whole fish in a bag with me for two hours on the way home did not sound pleasant at all.  And to be honest, I am still having a hard time finding a whole fish pleasant sounding to my palate in any circumstance.

Elli was sitting under the table for quite a while, which I realize wasn't the best, but she had had no nap and I was just happy that she seemed content down there.  I realized afterwards she was so content because she had found the roll-on sunscreen and had completely covered her face in it!  Well at least she didn't eat it-- I don't think.

Excursion #3-  This excursion I did solo.  I got a little lost on my way back from going to my Chinese class downtown and ended up in this nice big street market with tons of vendors.  I really enjoy these areas with all the unique foods and handicrafts on display.  On markets such as these, you can find diverse things from a sewing shop to an overly zealous umbrella salesman, to coagulated pig's blood for soups to live chickens in cages ready for the slaughter!  I had a great time especially because I was kidless and was able to look at everything without worrying what Elliana might be touching.  

CHICKEN FEET-  YUM!!!  These are a delicacy here.

Not sure what that hangy fat thing is- looks appetizing.

One IMPORTANT side note: I have 6 reasons why you should not buy and eat food from random street vendors if you don't know what you bought, even if you are really hungry.  

1. First off, in those situations, your body might have a certain sudden reaction to the street food, the speed of which might leave precious little time to find a restroom.  This could hit at any moment, such as shopping in a little toy store.

2. Second, because you are desperate to find a bathroom, you might have to mime the act of using a toilet to the toy store clerk because you can't find their restroom and because you don't have time to find the Chinese word for bathroom in your iphone (miming this is not a pretty picture).   This can be especially awkward if after your first miming attempt, the store clerk takes you to the section of training potties for toddlers.

3.Third, the bathroom that you finally make it to will probably be a sketchy, one-room bathroom where the trashcan is full of used toilet paper.  

4. Fourth, before you do your business, you might not notice that there is no toilet paper left in the bathroom.  This leads to some forced, and unpleasant, innovating.

5. Fifth, as you leave the store hastily, you might quickly purchase the toy you had your eye on before without looking closely at the price and calculating the cost in US dollars.

6.  Lastly, half a block away after leaving the store, you might realize you spent $23 on a random squeaky baby giraffe toy that looks like a dog chew toy.

Not that I know this by personal experience or anything...

With that last bit of advice- I will leave you to your thoughts of markets and butterfly hills and ocean views and... baby giraffe toys.

Todd's First Triathlon

Again Catch up from the summer time- April 2012!

 While on the Woodruff Vacation, Todd participated in his first triathlon.  It worked out really great because some of our friends had signed up for this triathlon before we realized our reunion was around the same place at the same time!  So there were a lot of friends for us to cheer on and friends to help cheer with!! Todd did really great and I am really proud of him!

Below from left is Todd, and our friends Kenny, Jeff, and Matt

Our brother-in-law Adam also did the triathlon 

and all the family came out to cheer Todd and Adam on!

Elliana was all decked out in style and there were alot of helpers for her and Sienna and ME!  Trevor and Jarod took turns pushing the stroller on the rough terrain and everybody kept both girls entertained.

There is Todd and Jeff about to start with the swim in the novice heat.  But they performed like pros!!!

Take it off baby!  Woo hoo! 

Transition to the start of the bike.

Just finishing the bike! He looked a little tired but quickly got a second wind!

Doesn't he look great!  He really did awesome.

The kids held up card board signs to cheer on Adam and Todd.  During the waiting periods, Izzy and Elli found the signs a great place to sit. 

STRONG FINISH!

He finished with a pretty good time and was careful not to eat too much too soon this time.  Great Job! Great Experience! If it weren't for the amount of time he took to train, I would tell him to do lots more.

WAY TO GO HONEY!

A Day of Firsts

After a particularly hard day after first arriving here, I came home and had to vent.  So I just wrote about my day hoping that someday I could blog about it (we had no Internet at the time) as it tells a little bit about some of our first moments here.  And just in case you were wondering, the house I talk about below was only temporary housing.  Since then, we've moved to our permanent home, which is surrounded by much bigger sidewalks and fewer crazy blue trucks!

A Day of Firsts- Monday August 20, 2012

#1.    1^st time I went out into the city without a stroller.  My stroller has been invaluable in being able to get around here, although I am definitely getting my workout since it can be a little difficult to wield on slanted sidewalks and bumpy terrain.  Even with this, it is usually worth the extra effort to have control of both girls when pedestrians seem to have the very last right of way even on sidewalks (motorized scooters don’t really have to follow any rules, including staying on the streets!).

There are some places though that only have stairs up or down and quite a lot of them.  The other day, I needed to go out to one such store, and so I left the stroller at home.  I put Sienna in a front pack, put on a small backpack with water, diapers, and snacks for Elli, and grabbed Elli by the hand to walk to the store.   We made it there but it was quite a long walk just holding Elli’s hand.  At one point, she turned to me, looked at me with sad eyes, and said “I wanna car” as she pointed to a car passing by.  I guess we both have to get used to this carless life of ours since Mommy (me) is not driving in this madness. 

 (I got these pics off another fellow Expat's blog, but I have seen things just like this! I just never have the camera ready because I am so nervously watching my kids as we navigate the traffic and sidewalks)

#2.    1^st time I almost got killed in Taipei and 1^st real cry in Taiwan:  So there are these big trucks around here that get paid by how many deliveries they make, so they are pretty much really crazy drivers.  During the outing I described above, while crossing the last street to our 1st apartment (remember I had no stroller, just Sienna in a front pack, Elli holding my hand),  Elli started losing it in the middle of the street.  I kept walking forward, dragging her a little.  Elli was moving, but not super fast.  We had the green walking man for 20 more seconds or so, and I had looked around in all directions before starting to cross.  Even though I was getting impatient with Elli, I was still trying to be aware of my surroundings.   I looked back at her over my left shoulder to tell her to hurry, when I heard a Chinese woman on a scooter yell frantically “watch out” in English.  

I am so grateful and blessed that she did say it in English, because it made me stop immediately.  Right then, this big truck flew right in front of me, with maybe 3-6 inches to spare. He had been coming from the opposite side of the street and was making a left turn across traffic onto the street I was crossing.  If he had been any closer, he probably would have clipped Sienna’s head because she was in my front pack.  I got across the street, and grabbed Elli and held Sienna closer and just started crying.  Elli started behaving and kept asking “mommy okay?”  I got inside our apartment as fast as I could and then I just blubbered and cried through a prayer of gratitude that we were all okay. 

For the next few times crossing that street (I had to cross any time I wanted to go anywhere) I have had to use all my strength not to cry again.  I still can’t imagine what that truck driver was thinking, almost running over a woman, an infant, and a toddler.  I am grateful that the Lord was watching out for us.  Maybe this was a blessing in that I am even now more cautious than ever—I was before but now even more so.  Some people after a while of living here,  get complacent and less careful.  Because of this experience, I don’t think that will ever be the case for me.  I know that traffic is really crazy in so many parts of the world and it has never made me that nervous until I had children.  Kids change everything! 

I took a picture of one of the infamous blue trucks around here.
This is the area where our near collision occurred (it was a much busier time of day.)

This is the side that I was walking from on this day.  I was almost across the street when the truck came from the right side, making a left hand turn, crossing in front of me.

#3.     1^st time I went to and ordered food at a Chinese restaurant without Todd there to help, and first time to drink tea (herbal, that is): So with the frantic feelings of the morning, I knew I wanted to have Todd come with me to get some dinner.  We still have a limited supply of things and since I have no spices and no recipes and no internet, I told Todd that I wanted to get some dinner at a place a couple blocks away.  Todd ended up having to stay later than expected however and here I was scared to cross that street but with a very hungry toddler and a hungry me. 

Well- funny enough- I thought about the time I got bucked off a donkey when I was younger, and my dad made me get right back on.  I remember thinking he was crazy, because I probably shouldn’t have tried to ride the donkey in the first place and I felt like I was lucky already not to have died,  but he made me sit back on it again, even though I was screaming and clawing at him the whole time. 

Well I am not afraid of donkeys now and I didn’t want to be afraid to walk outside without Todd.  So, I decided to go with the girls to get food.  Armed with my stroller this time and prayer we set out , crossed all the streets, and arrived safely. 

However, once we got there I had the next hurtle.  A nice woman pointed out a table for me to sit at and then walked away.  The menu was all in Chinese- no pictures or anything.  I just sat there not knowing what to do.  The original woman came back with another waiter who I thought probably spoke some English.  He did not.  He pointed at the menu (it was kind of a do it yourself order sheet) and gave me a pen and indicated I should circle something.  Then he walked away.   I did not know what to do.  The original woman came back and I tried to use my hands to ask for pictures and then I just started pointing at two tables that looked like they had food that was edible indicating I’ll have that.  She looked confused, then like she had an idea.  Then she brought out a menu with some pictures and some English!  YAY!  Don’t know why that didn’t dawn on her at the beginning.  I still ended up with some interesting dishes, and might have accidentally drank tea (I found out later that it was just herbal tea), but in either case, I think the Lord would be merciful in this instance, and the main point is … we did eat.  I also have been much more careful about what I drink.  A mom and a teenage girl gave me a little help halfway through too - a little tender mercy from my Heavenly Father (they were from California, but the mom wanted her daughter to learn Chinese too so they moved back to Taiwan).  They showed me some free self serve soup (that the teenager hinted to me wasn’t good) and told our waitress to give me some takeout things at the end of the meal.  Halfway back to the apartment, Todd met up with us, he had gotten home and went out to look for us wondering if everything was ok.

Still not exactly sure what I ordered, but one of the dishes was similar to this. A beefy type sesame noodle soup- Mine had much less beef, more like a couple small bits.

The next three "firsts" occur all over the world every day.  To me, they show that amidst the chaos of settling into a whole new life in a whole new country in a whole new language, life does continue, and all the normalcies of life do too.

#4   1^st time Elli went #2 in the potty: To end our very eventful day of firsts, when getting Elli ready for bed, she said she needed to go poo poo.  So we rushed over to the toilet, and yes, she actually went in the potty!!!  She was markedly proud of herself at the end.  Afterwards, she leaned against the full length mirror with one hand buck naked, crossed her leg behind her, looked at herself with a smirk and said “Elli went poo poo in the potty”.  She is such a character!  I tried to capitalize on her success, but constipation and other digestive issues that Elli has been dealing with put a huge damper on potty training.  I am hoping to try to tackle that potty stuff again soon.  Whenever I try to encourage it, though, she seems to reject it, so I have to figure out a new plan of attack.  Any ideas?

#5   1st time that Sienna ate food besides milk!  This didn't happen the same day (it was actually after we moved in to our permanent housing, but since I was sharing firsts I thought I would share this too.)  You will probably think I am crazy for waiting for so long to feed Sienna any baby food (since she is 7 months now), but I say you people that feed your kids baby food early at like 4 months are crazy.  :)  For me, it is tons of extra effort to feed a kid baby food and much more prep especially if you are just breastfeeding.  And since mama's milk is all they really need up to this point and since she was sleeping just fine, I felt no rush.  I have started now, because she needs to start to learn now and get used to feeding, and she is super interested in food now, so it works out great!  Elli really enjoyed helping feed her, although I had to really hold her back, since her idea of feeding her was shoving food as forcefully as necessary into Sienna's mouth, whether it was opened or not!!   

#6   1st time Sienna and Elli have bathed together and I think the last time Elliana has bathed happily.  (Since this time Elli has developed a ridiculous phobia of hair and bugs.  Since a strand of my long hair and sometimes hers inevitably gets in the tub or a small speck of dirt or something that is perceived as a bug often occurs during bath time, she has decided to pretty much scream all during her baths.  Thus Sienna and Elli have not really continued bathing together since she points, kicks, claws at and cries profusely at any perceived "threat".  I hope she gets over this soon-- until then-- I will cherish this photo.

Well that's the abnormal and the normal of a typical day in Taipei!  Love ya!