Thanksgiving and Pottery Making

For Thanksgiving, we continued our tradition of making Turkey cookies.  A must for Todd.  His mom was so sweet to send us the ingredients in the mail and so we invited over our good church friends the Browns to join us.  We all had a blast making them and Sienna had a great time eating candy the whole night.  Olivia, Liam, and Elli were pros by the end!

Later that week, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving day lunch at one of our friend's house.  That night, we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner at our home with a bunch of friends here in Taiwan, none of whom were from the U.S., which made the dishes they brought very unique and memorable.  Then on Saturday, we co-hosted another Thanksgiving meal extravaganza with many of our friends who live nearby.  It was a lot of meals for three days, but it was a lot of fun.  

I (Heather) took a chinese class this year that culminated in a pottery trip to the nearby town,Ying'ge, known for its ceramics.  I asked if I could bring Elli and they said that was fine.  It made the whole thing that much more enjoyable and at the end, we had two awesome pots to show for it. 

Note: One of the last pics with my long hair! 

More Visitors, And How the Earthquake Ruined My Marathon

November started off with a great treat: more visitors!  My good college friend Maren and her friend Patrice came a visited us.  We had a fun time showing them around Taipei and catching up (it had been almost 8 years since Maren and I last saw each other).  

They even came down with us to Hualien for the weekend for my marathon race.  

It was really wonderful to see Maren again, and it was great to meet Patrice.

Here they are dressed up in traditional Chinese royal garb.  We went and saw a condensed Beijing opera performance in downtown Taipei for an evening.  Thankfully, it was condensed!

That Friday night, we hopped in the car and drove 4 hours to Taiwan's beautiful east coast for my marathon.  It has been a challenge to train for this marathon.  This race in particular goes through Taroko Gorge national park and is uphill for 11 miles before turning around and going back downhill.  So I had to do a lot of hill training on my long runs to prep, and that was especially difficult.  Interesting enough, the downhill portions were the hardest on my body, and I had to change several aspects of how I run and train so that my back and knees could handle the pounding.

But I was ready for the race.  However, the night before, we found out that the race organizers canceled the full marathon due to an earthquake that happened the day before (it was a 6.3 earthquake and the epicenter was right at the race location).  Although the route was still perfectly clear, the organizers were concerned about the possibility of rocks falling and mudslides (which is a real threat).  I was more than a bit disappointed, but nothing I could do about it.

So we all had to run the half marathon instead.  Still had a blast, though.  A group of AIT folks all ran the race, so it was really nice to run with everyone.  In particular, it was great to run with Cameron, my training partner.  My final time was 1 hour 41 minutes.  I was very happy with that, especially considering that the race had 8 miles or so of uphill portions.

Halloween

Halloween! Princesses, King, and the horse to carry them, of course.

I knew from last year that asking Elli to dress up as anything other than a princess would be torturous and our little Sienna just wants to be like Elli.  And Todd only indulges me on very limited costumes for him to wear.  So this is what I came up with and I think it worked out well! 

We had a lot of fun with this! 

I was lucky that my mother was able to stay for some of our Halloween festivities.  She went with me to the American school food fair and games and to the AIT party. I brought some tombstone brownies to the party.  This was the last big thing we got to do with my mom, but having her participate in something normal with us made me very happy.

Girls running around at the AIT party

My adorable Sienna! 

I will miss my mom a ton, but look forward to seeing her a lot this summer.  I love you mom!  Thanks so much for being here to spend so much time with me!

East Coast with the Carrs

Prepare yourselves, readers.  This post is a long one.

While Heather's parents were visiting, we decided to take a 6 day vacation on Taiwan's beautiful east coast.  We spent a few days in Hualian, where we rode bikes, went to a pebble beach, and ate some good food.  Unfortunately, a small typhoon was hitting the area during that time, so we didn't get to be outside quite as much as we would have liked.  Here are some pics of our Hualian activities, though.

The highlight, though, was the four days we spent in Taroko Gorge National Park, which is Taiwan's most scenic and beautiful area, in my opinion.  We stayed at the Silks Hotel, which was about 8 miles up the gorge and situated in a beautiful little valley.  Here are some pics of our hotel.  There were two outdoor pools and three indoor pools.  One of the indoor pools was shallow, warm, and surrounded by a massive horde of rubber ducks for kids to play with.  There was also an massive indoor playground area for kids with ping pong tables, foosball, a ball pit, and lots of toys.  On top of all that, the hotel provided a buffet breakfast and a great dinner each night.  Plus, most nights they also held aboriginal dance and singing performances.  It was a bit pricy, but well worth it!

Just outside of our hotel was a buddhist monastery, complete with a large tower, which we climbed.  It really offered some spectacular views.

We also saw several monkeys during our time in the gorge.  A few were even climbing around the top of our hotel near the pool.

So onto the best part of Taroko: the hikes.  The scenery in Taroko is truly amazing.  I wish I was a better photographer or that they invented cameras that could capture Taroko's many picturesque scenes.  I don't have a lot to add to the below pics, but I will add where I can.  Some of the hikes we wanted to do most were closed due to the typhoon that struck the east coast two weeks before we arrived there.  Because of the steepness of the gorge, heavy rains often cause pretty serious mudslides and rock slides.

One of the first hikes you encounter when driving into the Gorge is also one of the most pictured hikes. It's called the Shrine of Eternal Spring, which is a temple dedicated to all the Taiwanese who died to make the roads and tunnels in the Gorge.  It's a very beautiful and serene setting (if it wasn't for the throngs of mainland Chinese tourists, who are obnoxiously loud and disruptive).

Probably our favorite hike was the Baiyang Waterfall Trail.  The trailhead is in the middle of a tunnel.  You start by having to walk 10 minutes in a tunnel cutting right through a mountain.  Then it pops you out into this beautiful valley.  You walk through 4-5 more tunnels before reaching the end.  One tunnel had a bat in it, which was fun for the kids.

Just beyond the main waterfall area is a small trail that leads to this last tunnel.  The tunnel has water streaming down it through all these fissures in the ceiling and walls, like its a massive shower or something.  It was fun to walk through and get a little wet.

Another major trail we did was the Lotus Pond trail.  This one was farther up the Gorge and so more isolated.  Unfortunately, we couldn't hike up to the Lotus Pond due to some killer hornets that had nested there recently.  However, we were able to do a lot of the hike, including some fairly precarious suspension bridges.  Here is one of the bridges below.  This was was several 100 meters high.


Parts of this trails had been washed out, which made Christine especially nervous.  But we kept trekking forward anyway.

Part of the trail was paved.  But it looked like it hadn't been maintained for a while.  Here's a section of paved trail that looks like it's about to go crashing 100s of feet to the valley floor below.

This suspension bridge validated our faith in Taiwanese safety standards.  About 3/4 the way across, it appears as though the original bridge collapsed.  So the Taiwanese simply jerry-rigged a make shift bridge to span the final length.  Thankfully, no vehicles were allowed on this section of the bridge. : )  Can you say sketchy?!

I can't remember the name of this trail, but it was a fun one.

Here is the Swallow Grotto trail, which is the narrowest section of the Gorge.  Most of the trail is a tunnel cut out of the side of the cliff.  Very cool to walk through.

Remember how I noted that some of the trails had been closed.  One of the most famous trails had been closed for about 2 or so years.  But knowing how ridiculously overly cautious Chinese people can be, Heather, Bob and I may have decided to reopen this one particular trail.  I am not confirming or denying that we did reopen the trail, I am only saying that we might have.