Hong Kong, A.S.I.A. Conference

Ander and I up at The Peak

I recently had the opportunity to fly to Hong Kong with several women from my church to meet up with other English speaking women living in Asia for the Associated Sisters In Asia Conference. Besides our van being involved in a minor traffic accident on the way to the airport we all made it safely to Hong Kong. Riddle me this: who would be at fault when someone is driving illegally on the shoulder and someone else puts their signal on to move into said illegal shoulder and they have a minor bump???

Anyway, we did make it to Hong Kong, leaving a handful of capable husbands to wrangle 20+ children on their own.
As space is limited in Hong Kong you can't build out so you have to build up. I love the church building there. This is the 12 story meeting house where everyone meets for church on Sundays. It is made to accommodate many different wards.

We met here for several days to listen to awesome, uplifting and inspiring speakers. It was so awesome that it was geared toward women having similar overseas experiences as I have had. Everyone there understood what it means to have moved to and live overseas in Asian. It was just what I needed.
Course not everything was spiritually geared- got a chuckle out of ^ these two and their signs for instance. We actually did a lot of sight seeing in our limited time thanks to Nicole's mad navigational skills. My hands were usually full of Ander or something related to him so I didn't get that many great pictures. But Nicole did so feel free to click here to see what we did.

A highlight of the trip was taking this unedited photo. Man, I was feeling the burn from that squat, holding Ander, all on my tip toes. Any ideas how this was accomplished? Besides my Kung Fu Panda-like "pure awesomeness" of course. Lucky for you there is no charge.

This one ^ is for Lori. The picture is the product of a really late night in a HK night market and perhaps inhaling too much second hand smoke.

Because of Ander and other reasons I considered not going to the conf. this year. Above is one of the reasons I did. This is me with my long time friend Allison. If you'd have told me way back in middle school we'd both end up with our families in Asia at the same time clearly, I would've had to call you a liar.

Allison lives in China and I was SO glad to finally see her. We caught up while we diligently distractedly worked on the service projects. You know those friends who you may not see for long periods of time but when you do it's like no time has passed at all? That's the kind of friend Allison is for me.
I am so grateful for a husband who encouraged me to go to HK with these girls. It was so fun to explore, sight see and eat yummy food with good girl friends who, btw, were always willing to lend a hand with Ander or one of many things I was striving hard not to lose (ie: blankets, toys, burp pads, jackets, bjorn, stroller, back pack ETC!) as we got on and off buses, metro trains and taxis all over the greater Hong Kong area.

First impression of HK? I like it.

0.6 And 30

Well, I turned 30. After nearly 7 years I am finally back in the same decade as Nathan, ha! About the time I turned 30, Ander turned 6 months old. It's more fun, so let's talk about him.
Growing up in Asia our little white baby is, as you've heard, a bit of an anomaly. This is a small crowd that gathered while we were at C.K.S. Memorial. I had the blanket over the stroller so the baby could suck his fingers in peace without people trying to yank them out of his mouth like they've started to do (grrr) -when Aly threw back the blanket to the delight of the crowd who gave a collective little cheer when she revealed her brother. She was pretty proud of herself.
This is Ander on our first trip to Ping Xi, some of the locals took turns taking pictures with our little guy. They were all extremely friendly but don't worry, we still kept a watchful eye.
Our 2nd time in Ping Xi while we were writing on our lanterns the Father who was holding Ander was drawing quite a crowd. As a group gathered and started taking pictures of Ander Nathan started telling everyone to come in and buy lanterns here! trying to get the family some more business. He got his best response when he said, "Come in- paint your good luck wishes here- you will have white baby!" The crowd went wild over that, thought it was hilarious. And, well, it was.
To be fair, they were loving our friend's daughter Jaydn too, using just as much storage space on their cameras with her sweet little face as they did Ander's. I wonder what it's like through our children's eyes having all of this attention from strangers.
ANYWAY- besides being popular with the Chinese Ander has a few other accomplishments to report. For a little over a month now I keep walking in to get him out of bed and he will full on be up on his hands and knees, sometimes rocking back and forth which, if you have children you know this is a precursor to crawling. I'm not ashamed to say I usually *gently* pull his legs out from under him in a vain attempt to prolong the inevitable. He is just dying to get up and go with his siblings though.
He recently discovered his toes could be fun to suck on and he likes to yank off his socks and suck on his toes till they look like raisins. If you notice his irritated cheeks in the above pic- unfortunately I also think he is sensitive to dairy. I have given him milk-based formula 4 times- his cheeks flared up the first time and he vomited the next 3 times so I'm not really sure where to go from there.
We started solids with mixed results. I can't tell if he dislikes the food or just really enjoys spitting. Jury is still out on this one.
The one thing that is generally undisputed is that Ander continues to be a happy and easy going baby. I am so grateful because it's nice to have at least 1 out of 4 be that way. Holy cow you do NOT want me to post about the the older three right now. It's spring break and they are driving me nuts. Let's all pretend Ander isn't going to grow up and join his siblings in that shall we? You know, the whole ignorance is bliss thing.

Lantern Festival: Take Two!

Before you decide not to read this post, please know that the Lantern Festival (see post below) is my favorite thing that I've done yet in Taiwan. It certainly deserves more than one post. The festival runs for around 3 weeks and we so enjoyed our rainy day letting off lanterns with Ash and Shayn that we were excited to plan a date night with our friends Cody and Nicole to go back to PingXi on the last night when they do group lift offs every half hour. It is so packed with people you have to ride a bus up but other than some mild motion sickness that went pretty smoothly. Nathan and I wanted a chance to do our own lantern so we left the older 3 with a sitter and headed out on a most gorgeous Taiwan evening.

After I stole this picture off of Nicole's blog I realized she's not in it- just picture a pretty, hot mama :)

The crowds were insane. Trying to navigate two strollers through the masses was... trying. But we made our way down through the main street checking out all of the vendors and eating all kinds of different foods. Wait. I better be honest. Cody, Nicole and Nathan eagerly tried every new and different food- I typically nibbled, scrunched up my nose and passed the atrocity back to Nathan. For as much as I am coming to love and appreciate Taiwan and it's people, I have to admit I don't like much of their food. Sorry Taiwan.

Two foods we thankfully did not try this lovely evening: Snails still in the shell, and yes, you pop em in your mouth shell and all. I know, I just threw up in my mouth a little too.
And if snails aren't your thing you can always have Squid on a Stick! You know you want it.

As we made our way through the streets every half hour we would see, just up the hill, the release of hundreds of lanterns all at once. The whole massive crowd in the streets would suddenly quiet as we all turned to watch in awe the beautiful glowing lanterns float up into the sky. Nathan and I came to the realization right away that cameras were going to do a pitiful job of capturing the beauty of the lift off. I apologize for that.
Even in the crowds of people there were always random lanterns being let off on their own. Notice the wish on the one in the pic above, "Find a good woman" -makes me smile.

Some of the lanterns caught fire in flight and would come flaming down towards the crowd. We kept a watchful eye but also listened for the cries of alarm that would come from the crowd when a wayward lantern was spotted.

Also of concern were the lanterns being fueled by little kerosene tins (instead of kerosene soaked papers) that would drop flaming drops of kerosene down as the lantern flew through the air and over the crowd. I saw several people with gauze newly taped over an eye and we heard the ambulance sirens several times so I think there were definitely a few minor (?) injuries.
Eventually we made our way back to the Chinese family where we had made our first lanterns that rainy day. They were so happy to see us which made us feel good. The father held Ander the whole time while Nathan and I worked on our lantern. Cody helped Nathan with a few characters but I was pretty pleased to come across the ones Nathan had written below:

~ I love ej ~

Ander approved of our lantern, even took his fingers out of his mouth for the occasion.
After we finished our lanterns we headed back through the ^street lined with all of the food tents, up to the school grounds where they were letting of the huge groups of lanterns. It's a good thing we went up when we did because it turned out to be the last official let off of the festival and I would've been so sad to miss it.
Moments before we let our lantern off...
Notice the ginormous lantern above and how small the people are standing next to it and it will give you some perspective when you see it in the picture below.

^ Easily my favorite picture of the night.

It was absolutely breathtaking to see all of these huge lanterns all ablaze as they floated effortlessly upward. The pictures simply do not do it justice. I know the Chinese associate this tradition with superstition, luck and all manner of (lower-case-g) gods but for me and from my perspective it was different. For me it was like a visual representation of thousands of prayers lifting off in unison on an errand to heaven. Yes, many prayers may be sent Heavenward but each is individual and each will be seen and heard as such.
Amazing right? PingXi Lantern Festival 2011, join us? :)

PingXi

PingXi (pronounced, Ping-she) is a cool little town just over an hour from Taipei where an annual Lantern Festival is held every year. When Ashley and Shayn were here we ventured out in the dreary, rainy weather to go check out what PingXi had to offer. We were not disappointed.

The backdrop to our excursion was just beautiful, even despite the rain. The tradition is that you go and buy lanterns, write your hopes and wishes for the year on it, light the lantern and send it up into the sky. We were really excited to give it a try.

Ander's wish for the year: That his two fingers are never too far from his mouth. *granted*

We found this cute Chinese family selling lanterns and they welcomed us in. Their daughter who spoke English wrote Chinese characters for the children to copy and the mom held Ander while we all worked on our lanterns. They were great, you could just tell they are good people. This time the boys did a lantern and the girls did one too. The colors of the lantern are significant as well. I remember that pink is for "good marriage"- but the children were choosing and they didn't care so much about the color's meaning.
As always there is symbolism involved with the tradition. The circle hoop at the bottom of the lantern represents the year, the 4 sections that the wire makes through the middle represent the four seasons and the 12 pieces of kerosene soaked paper represent each of the twelve months of the year.

We went outside and with the help of the Chinese Father and Grandpa, successfully sent off our two lanterns into the sky.

Kohen's reaction in this picture pretty much shows how cool it is to watch the giant lantern float off as far as you can see until it is just a little speck, and then gone.

What you DON'T want to have happen is this ^. This occurred while we were there when some Chinese locals went to send off their lantern and instead it caught fire and burned to the ground without ever lifting off. For as superstitious as the Chinese are, this is very, very bad. The people whose lantern burned pretty much didn't say a word, turned around and solemnly left the area. The fates had decided. No luck for them this year, wishes decidedly not granted.
But lucky for us and Ashley and Shayn, all of our lift offs were nothing less than awesome. You can click here to see more pics on Ashley's blog. The random finale was when we went to leave PingXi, running on fumes. There were no gas stations to be found though locals assured us there was indeed gas though where kept getting lost in translation. After much searching and decoding what we were told we discovered the women we'll call the "Gas Lady" (meant as politely as possible) who literally carried out four 1 litre bottles of gas that she then poured into our tank with a funnel. Definitely got the small town feel with this little gem.

Even though it was COLD and rainy we were so glad we made the effort to check out PingXi.

Oh Taiwan, How I Love Thee

The trash system here is interesting. The trash trucks come around and they play music like an ice cream truck and everyone's helpers know to bring the trash out to the truck. We live too far up a mountain so we pay a guy to come pick up our trash on his scooter. He really stacks it on there, it's a sight to see in and of itself. We recently noticed that our recyclables and other randoms are being dropped off into a crazy weird trash people truck at the bottom of our hill. They are different than the big one that plays the music. These people sort trash out in the middle of the already narrow street all the time. We don't really know how they get all of their trash or why they horde it all over but they do. So there is your back story.
If it's possible, look past these two handsome gents to the atrocity that was the guest room curtains. On Ashley and I's Home Makeover these particular curtains were 1st on the list to go. They were at least 12 years old and just stiff with grime... yuck. They were promptly taken down and put in the trash. There would be no nifty play clothes made and no singing "Doe a deer, a female deer-" in some mountainous meadow.
Imagine my surprise when a few days later I drive down the mountain and notice something familiar on the back of the trash people's truck...
I love it. This encompasses Taiwan's strong fix it up and wear it out mentality. It makes me smile. "One man's trash..."

And The Winners Are...

I decided to cut out each name and put em all in a bowl. Then Nathan took pictures of each name as I pulled it out. He kept me honest. Okay, here we go!

By the time I pulled 5 names I was bummed because there were still so many names left, so I decided to grab a bonus name.
Yay! Congratulations: April, Mandy, Mike, Cindy, Jetta and Trevi!

(Mandy and Jetta, I'm not sure I have your most recent addresses so leave them in a comment or email me)

Thanks for playing everyone. I really love giveaways so I'm thinkin' I may need to do them more often...

Here's to Blogging!

Valentines Date slash We're Okay!

Thank you everyone for your concern after the earthquake that happened in Taiwan yesterday. To ease your mind, it was a ways away and was very minor up here in Taipei, neither Nathan or I even felt it. The power did temporarily go out but other than that no effects at all. Thanks for thinking of us though!

Typically I'm not huge into Valentines Day. I wasn't the least bit sad that the schools here celebrate Chinese New Year rather than Valentines. I planned on doing the same, until Ashley and I came up with a brilliant date night that is. I haven't planned a surprise anything for Nathan in a while so it was so fun to do and have another couple to do it with. We started out with dinner. Saffron = best Indian food ever.
Then we treated the boys to their first Taiwan Foot Massages. It's a thing over here, they have foot massage places all over where you can just walk in and get your feet rubbed on the cheap, men and women alike. The atmosphere at this particular place is so nice though, hot herbal tea, soft music, freshly sawed pieces of wood hanging from the ceiling (?) - it all adds to the experience. Shayn was our comical relief, enjoying his foot massage as he does most things-to the fullest. He even went so far as to seriously ask his Masseuse #95 if he ever got a turn, maybe from #96???
Then we took the boys for Hagaan Dazs Ice Cream Fondue that Ashley and I had stumbled upon one rainy night. For as beautiful as it looks? I'm not gonna lie, it tasted even better. I dare say it would be difficult to top our date night but we'd be willing to let the boys try :)

I'm going to leave the GIVEAWAY open for just a little longer, if you haven't had the chance to put your name in it's a few posts down. Winners will be drawn soon! Yay!