Europe Trip, Part I: Castles, Stain Glass, and Macaques

As many of you know, Heather, the girls, and I recently took a long trip to visit our good friends Jeremy and Rochelle in Switzerland.  The government paid for our plane tickets (as they do for all the diplomats here in Taiwan), and we covered the rest.  We spend almost three weeks touring all over Switzerland as well as parts of southern Germany, a quick stop in France, and a few days in Prague.  The trip was amazing.

No way we'll be able to cover everything in one blog, so we're going to break it up into several posts, starting with this one.

LENZBERG
After traveling for almost 24 hours with two very tired and sleep-deprived kids, we decided to take the first day in Switzerland easy.  So we went to a to a nearby castle called Lenzberg.

 Lenzberg was a great castle with many floors and rooms that we could look through.  Each room was filled with items from different periods of the castle's existence.  There were also videos in many of the rooms showing how people would use the room.   Legend has it that the whole castle was built on top of a rock outcrop on top of a hill that was originally a dragon's lair.  They even had a recorded shadow puppet show showing the legend.  The girls loved it.  One unique thing about the castle was that many rooms had little holographic movie experiences.  For example, on the table below, food and hands would appear and recorded voices would reenact a little story of people having dinner during that time in history.

The top floor of the castle was an enormous play area where kids could do castle-related crafts, dress up in princess clothes and jewelry, play with toy castles, etc. They even had dress-up clothes for adults which Heather and I may or may not have taken advantage of!  The girls could have spent hours playing in there - they are our little princesses after all.

ZURICH
After the castle, we drove into Zurich, which seemed to be a surprisingly small city for one of Switzerland's major cities.  It is a beautiful city: clean, organized, lots of small alleys, a river dividing the city by two.   We loved that even in their biggest city, there were no high rises ruining the horizon.

Sienna and Rochelle's daughter Liza had a good time playing together during a half-day tour.

The main attractions in Zurich are two churches: Fraumunster and Grossmunster.  Fraumunster's claim to fame is its stain glass windows designed by Marc Chagall.  There are five windows altogether lining the walls of the abbey.  The windows are all vibrantly colored and very beautiful.  Pictures are not allowed inside, so here's the best picture I could find of the windows online.

Grossmunster also had some very unique stain glassed windows.  Here are some pics below.

EGUISHEIM 

The next day, we traveled to a small town in northeast France in Alsace called Eguisheim, which is a quaint little medieval town chalked full of old, well preserved buildings.   We were surprised at how much we loved this little town.  We walked around and poked our heads into various buildings, shops, and stores.  Heather was so happy to have a great lunch of warmed goat cheese, bruschetta, and a crisp salad; she was in heaven!

MONKEY MOUNTAIN

Near Eguisheim is an area that Rochelle and Jeremy call Monkey Monkey.  It's located on the top of a hill.  It's a large park full of macaque monkeys all in this fenced in area.  They give you popcorn at the park entrance to feed the monkeys with.  The girls weren't timid at all in getting right up close and personal with the monkeys.  Even Sienna was got right up close to them, enough to make us a bit nervous! 

Wulai Waterfalls and Hot springs

Here's an outing we did back in February to a little town close by.  It was a pretty hazy day at first, but the weather cleared up in the afternoon and it turned out great.

Some of our friends joined us for the waterfall fun.  Tami and Jeremy Klomp are great people and they have really fun kids that get along great with our girls.

This is an aboriginal village so they were selling native art and clothing. Usually people take pictures of and with the native people in their traditional gear.  This day, all the cameras were snapping pictures of our girls instead.  So funny.

We road a gondola up along side and then over the waterfall. By this point the haze had cleared and it was a great view.  On top is a whole little world of things to discover from lakes, to hiking trails, bridges, rock climbing walls, and even a wierd haunted ride.

Elli and Evelyn

It was such beautiful, serene, calm atmosphere.

After exploring that area, we headed out to another waterfall and hiking area near by.  Also a beautiful spot.  The water hear is special mineral water that is said to be amazing for your skin.  It was very blue and looked good enough to drink.  

The only problem with some hiking areas in Taiwan is that everything is too clearly marked and even fenced off.  It makes it so you really can't walk right next to the waterfall which is sad because it takes away a lot of "in nature" type of feeling you could get if it wasn't so blocked off.   Todd and I were debating about hopping over the fence to get right next to the waterfall, maybe even put our feet in a bit, but we were pretty sure that we were already conspicuous enough.  I already had every other person telling me I should put more clothes on my children!  I promise NONE of us are cold!! It is humid and warm outside!! It's funny how bundled up everyone was- like they were going skiing, especially the kids.  After the sun went down it was a tiny bit chilly, and guess what!  I put sweatshirts on my girls, because that's when it makes sense to wear a sweatshirt.  In chinese, the way I tell them my kids aren't cold is "Ta bu pa leng" which literally means they aren't afraid of the cold.  This is greeted by exclaims of amazement that I have such miraculous children that aren't afraid or affected by the cold.  It's very comical most of the time, a little annoying other times.  

I did get scolded quite fiercely one time by an old chinese woman who couldn't fathom why my children didn't have jackets on at night in the LOBBY of my apartment building.  Did I mention I had to wake them up in a rush when the fire alarm went off and had to carry both of them down 9 flights of stairs on my own, since Todd wasn't home?  I'm sorry I forgot their jackets but I think they will survive the 5 minutes of being outside without them especially when its still 70 degrees outside.  That lady got close to being punched.  That was the first time I have felt anger about that issue before- usually I just laugh it off, but something about alarms going off, perspiration dripping down my head, crabby children, and finding out it was a false alarm because our ovens have no proper ventilation system, made me a little less patient.  But I digress.... Where was I?

Oh yes- in beautiful Wulai.  

That makes me feel better. 

We went back to the town to enjoy our own soothing hotspring bath.

So in Taiwan, they have communal bathing areas like you would think of for hot springs in the states, but more often you get a private room for two hours and enjoy the hot spring bath by yourself or with close friends.  This was perfect for our girls because we could make the water the right temperature and enjoy the mineral cleansing water all together.  

A very nice full day of family fun and a very nice memory.

Little Stories

One of the saddest things about living abroad is that everyday our little girls do the cutest things and no one is around to see them.  All our family and closest friends are in the States.  So, I wanted to share a few small things with everyone that we find humorous.

Elli loves all things princesses, especially Disney princess movies.  Sleeping Beauty is her favorite, and it's not unusual for her to refer to herself as Princess Elli Aurora.  The other day, she called Heather "Your Majesty" all day.  We think she got this phrase from her favorite movie.  Well, this lasted until Elli became upset when Heather told her she couldn't do something, and Elli stormed off to her room.  When she came back, she stopped calling Heather your majesty, instead using that title on Sienna.  It was Elli's way of punishing Heather.

Elli also calls any person, animal, or thing that she likes her own name.  For example, she sees a pretty girl walk by in a purple dress and she will say "That Elli, that Elli."  She's watching the cartoon Olivia, and Olivia gets on a ballet outfit and  starts to dance.  Elli then turns and emphatically says, "Elli, Her Elli."  Her favorite baby doll is also called Elli.  Sadly, she might be a tad superficial since she likes to be the step sister in Cinderella more than Cinderella because the stepsister wears a purple dress.  "Her Elli, K daddy?"

Heather and I often call Elli Sweetie or Honey.  Recently, Elli has started to use those terms of endearment on us and Sienna, too.  It's pretty cute.  "Can I watch movie, Sweetie?"  "I don't want to nap, Honey."

Elli is trying to make sense of her world and has also finally figured out that people are speaking another language around her and its not just that she doesn't understand them. We realized her view had reached greater clarity when she was playing with her dolls and one doll said to the other "Nihao, I take Chinese class."  Up to this point, she has thought that most Chinese speaking people's names are XieXie which means thank you, because that's pretty much the main words Heather used when we first arrived here.  Now, she still uses this title with them but more as a category of people much like we would use the term Taiwanese or Chinese rather than their name.  It's fun to see her growing and understanding.

Elli's vocabulary is expanding quickly at this age too.  She often parrots words that she hears from us, mostly Heather since that's who she's around all day.  She doesn't quite get the words right, but she's close.  Here are some examples:
- "I want to wear my swim soup (suit)."
- "Let's ride the alligator (elevator)."
- "I saw the kolala (koala) bear today."
- "This is ree-DIK-oolus (ridiculous)!"
Of course, along with the good, Elli's also picking up some words we wish she wouldn't.  "Crap, I spilled it!" We definitely have to start watching the words we say!

Sienna is not saying as much yet, but what she does say and do are so adorable.  She says "thank you" and uses it correctly on her own.  She counts to 10, in her own way but you can definitely here 1,2, 4, 6, and 10 very distinctly.  We play hide and seek constantly since this is Elli's favorite game.  Sienna loves it too and she will often hide in the curtains or behind something and then come out and say "P a boo!" She loves books still and will do a little turn and plop herself down in your lap for reading time.   She is also very brave.  We went to the water park the other day and Sienna wanted to climb up and go down the the slide all by herself.  I let her do it mostly alone, but was still there as a backup.  The Taiwanese were quite awed by the fact that such a little thing was attempting such big feats.

Elli and Sienna actually play really well together and Sienna gets SOOOOOO excited when Elli wakes up from her afternoon nap (Sienna only takes a short nap in the afternoon,  whereas Elli takes a long one then).  Sienna will scream and jump up and run to Elli and give her a kiss. It's really sweet.  If I have to wake Elli up early from her nap, I send in Sienna to do it and this guarantees that Elli is almost never grumpy or upset when waking up early if Sienna is involved.

Spreading American Values on Elevators

Overall, Taiwan is a great place to live.  The food is good, the weather is mostly fine, and the people are nice.  However, anytime you live abroad, it's inevitable that there will be moments of frustration with the local culture.  Heather had one such experience a few weeks ago with the elevator.  Here's what happened.

A two minute walk from our house is one of the best malls in Taipei.  Heather was running errands at the mall one afternoon with Sienna when Sienna, being tired, started to get fussy and cry.  It was time to head home.  Heather was on the fourth floor and so headed to the bank of elevators.  She pushed the button and waited for the elevator to arrive.  And waited, and waited.  The mall elevators are notorious for taking forever to arrive.  One can literally wait 8 minutes for the elevator; there are four of them in this one area, so it's kinda ridiculous that it takes so long.

As if the waiting with a crying child was not enough, right in front of the bank of elevators was a small vendor with a lot of balloons.  Sienna desperately wanted the balloons, and cried all the louder to get one.  Meanwhile, Heather was still waiting for that stupid elevator.

Finally, after enduring several minutes with a fussy, screaming baby, the elevator arrives.  And it is jammed packed full of people.  And I don't mean that it's full of old people with canes, pregnant ladies, or kids with broken legs, it is full of people all fully capable of using the escalator (which is located right next to the elevators).  To fully understand how frustrating this is, you must understand that the Taiwanese have a love affair with elevators.  If the Taiwanese have the choice between walking one flight of stairs, taking the escalator, or waiting 10 minutes to take the elevator one level, they will take the elevator.  For parents like us that often have a large stroller with two kids and bags, it is aggravating to have to wait for 2-3 rounds of perfectly healthy people to go on the elevator so we can finally use it.

Normally, Heather would've taken the escalator, but this time, she had the large stroller and it was loaded with groceries, so taking the escalator would've been challenging.  So when the elevator finally arrived after enduring a solid 6-7 minutes of a blood curdling screaming Sienna, Heather was a bit peeved to see it was packed full of perfectly healthy people.  But she gritted her teeth and forced her way on the elevator.

Of course, now that she was on, the "too heavy"  bell sounded when the doors tried to close.  Everyone looked at Heather expectantly since she was the new comer.  Heather ignored them.  Finally, someone in broken English said to Heather "too heavy" and pointed to the door, trying to tell her to wait for another elevator.  And that was the last straw for my Texas fire ball.  Heather roared back loudly to all in the elevator with big hand gestures, "I HAVE A BABY STROLLER!!!"

At this subtle hint, the other passengers on the elevator finally understood.  Several of them sheepishly muttered "of course, of course" and got off the elevator to allow Heather (the mother with a baby stroller, screaming infant, and bags full of groceries) to ride the elevator.

This is just another example of how we have shared America's cultural values, such as common courtesy and thoughtfulness, with the locals.