We’re back in California for the summer! Here are some of the things that have stood out to Floyd and me in the last few days since we’ve returned to the States:
Wow, everything is so much more expensive than it was last summer. The price of gas is horrifying!
Look at all the sidewalks everywhere! Why aren’t there cars parked all over them?
There’s so much sky visible (because all the buildings are so short)!
It’s so quiet here. Sometimes at night we can’t hear a single sound. Where are all the singing trash trucks and screeching birds?
Speaking of trash trucks, they’re all so quiet and boring. Why don’t they play Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” and “The Maiden’s Prayer” loudly enough to be heard for blocks away while everyone in the neighborhood comes running out with bags of trash?
Most of the streets have only cars on them. Where are all the motorized scooters and wandering dogs?
Speaking of dogs, all the ones we’ve seen here are naked! (See my post about Taiwanese dogs here.)
Speaking of cars, why are they so HUGE?
Why are there so few vegetables on the menus at restaurants?
So many people speak English. It’s weird to understand what’s being said around us all the time, and to actually be able to read all the billboards and street signs.
There are so many white-skinned people here! When I catch a glimpse of one, I keep finding myself taking a closer look to see if I know them.
How does everyone manage without a 7-Eleven on every corner?
Where can we get REAL Chinese food????
Today Floyd and I traveled to the city of Lukang (pronounced “loo-gahng”), about an hour’s drive south of here, to attend their annual Dragon Boat Festival celebration. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I first heard of the holiday six years ago, but we’ve usually already been in the States for the summer by the time. But since it’s based on the lunar calendar, the exact date of Dragon Boat Festival varies from year to year, and this year we’re staying in Taiwan a little later than usual. As a result, this time we were able to be here for it!
Some would say we were crazy to do something like this the day before flying out, but we purposely got ahead on our packing and cleaning, and it worked out just fine.
This was another way to beat the heat! Those teenagers were having a lot of fun in this bounce house/giant wading pool. I was tempted to jump in with them!
More fun for kids! (Notice the Oppa Gangnam Style balloons?!) Below: more adults were interested in the gorgeous hand painted lanterns and dragon-themed art for sale at this booth.
While people browsed the booths and ordered food and gift items, dragon boat races were going on in the background the whole time. Two boats would race each other and then get towed back to the starting point, and then two more, and so on. The guys at the back were using rudders to steer, and there was always a drummer at the front beating the rhythm so all the rowers would stay in sync.
When they got near the finish line, the people you see at the very front would balance on their tummies on the dragon’s head and lean way out to reach for a little floating flag on a buoy. They would grab the flag and toss it in the air to show that their boat had finished the race.
Well, I’ve experienced my first Dragon Boat Festival in Taiwan. That’s one more thing I can cross off my Bucket List! Now to discover if any place around here is actually open for dinner, and then finish the last of the laundry and packing. California, here we come!
This post is part of a blog hop. To enter your own blog in the hop, find out more, or take a look at other people’s featured blog posts, click here.
Yesterday, on our way home from a vacation in Hualien, Floyd and I drove through beautiful Taroko National Park. Known as the Grand Canyon of Taiwan, Taroko Gorge is one of the top vacation spots in Taiwan.
We had been there before when my parents came to visit a couple years ago (you can see pictures of that in my other blog post here), but we didn’t really get to go hiking at that time, because there had been an earthquake a few days before and almost all the trails were closed off due to landslides.
We didn’t have as much time on this trip, but we did park the car and walk around a little in an area that had been inaccessible the last time. It was nice to see some scenery we hadn’t seen before, even though it was mostly just from the side of the road.
This area is called Swallow Grotto because of the many swallows that make their homes in the holes in the rock. You can read an explanation of how the holes were formed in the sign below.
The day was overcast and the lighting wasn’t the best, so unfortunately a lot of my pictures didn’t turn out all that great. The gorge was a lot more impressive in real life, but hopefully you can at least get an idea of how beautiful Taroko is!
It would have been fun to actually hike along one of the trails, but we were short on time and we would have had to buy a permit to do so anyway. So we contented ourselves with walking along next to the road. There were sharp drop-offs just to our left, with sheer cliffs stretching down to the canyon floor hundreds of feet below.
Warning signs were everywhere. The national park service wasn’t leaving anything to chance! We didn’t have safety helmets, which we would have had to borrow in another part of the national park (most of the tourists we saw did), but fortunately there weren’t any rockfalls while we were in the area. 🙂
It’s hard to get a clear idea of the scale just by looking at a picture, but some of those boulders in the river bed are the size of buildings!
In many places, the road passed through tunnels, often narrowing down to one lane to squeeze through. This made our journey home much more exciting! Many of the tunnels were too long or curved to see the other end when we went in. We just had to pray there would be no cars coming from the other direction before we made it through!
Sometimes a roof had been built over the road (as you can see on the left) to protect it from rockfalls, which are extremely common in this earthquake-prone destination for typhoons.
The drive home to Taichung took about six hours, and much of the way we were surrounded by beautiful scenery like this. Some of those mountain curves did get a little scary when the thick fog rolled in (especially when oncoming vehicles didn’t always keep to their side of the road), but God answered our prayers for safety and we made it back without incident.
We even saw two monkeys, one crossing the road ahead of us in the gorge, one sitting by the side of the road further on, though unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to take any pictures of them.
The gorge-ous drive was a fitting end to a fun Hualien vacation!
For pictures and descriptions from earlier on in this vacation, take a look at my blog posts on Farglory Ocean Park here and Yehliu Geopark here.
There were some great views from the cable car that we rode from the bottom to the top of the park (and back… several times…).
The log ride (above) was our favorite. The log boats even went down one of the drops backward!
Tell me that cute sea lion (below) doesn’t remind you of a bird in this position!
Now that a new year has begun, I’ve decided to recap some my favorite memories of 2012. Here goes:
April 14
I was asked to be a guest speaker for an English class at Tunghai University here in Taichung. They had been reading my book, Prince of Alasia, so I came as a visiting author. It was really fun to interact with the students and watch the readers’ theaters they had prepared based on some of the chapters. I felt like a celebrity autographing their books at the end!
May 20
My second book, In the Enemy’s Service (sequel to Prince of Alasia), was finally published in Kindle format, and later in paperback. I love the cover art by Jack Lin.
June 12-15
Floyd and I took a brief vacation to Penghu, an archipelago just off the coast of Taiwan. Our boarders Natasha and Isabel (who had lived with us for the last year) and their parents own a bed and breakfast there, and we were able to stay with them and reconnect with “our” girls. They showed us around and we had a great time together!
June 28-29
My grandparents, Frank and Carolyn Jordan, brought the extended family to Solvang for a night to celebrate their 60th anniversary. Since Floyd and I were spending the summer in California, we were able to be there too. We watched the musical Little Women, enjoyed some tasty meals together, and had fun walking around and seeing the sights.
September 14
Floyd and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. In honor of our first decade together, we decided to have some professional “couple pictures” taken. (Missy Sparrow did a great job – check out her photography at http://melissasparrowphotography.blogspot.tw/.)
November 21-25
I had the opportunity to attend a teachers’ conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I presented a workshop about self-publishing. I really enjoyed the experience and hope to do it again sometime. After the conference, I had time for a brief tour involving such unforgettable memories as riding an elephant and petting tigers!
Watch a short video of my tiger encounter
December 14-30
With just a couple of days’ notice, my sister Julie was able to fly to Taiwan for a visit! Adding to our full house, my brother Jimmy, sister-in-law Erin, and adorable 14-month-old niece Sienna (who previously we’d only met over Skype) arrived a few days later. (Their visit had been in the works for months, so Julie was the only surprise.) Floyd and I had a blast celebrating Christmas with them and showing them a little of our life in Taiwan.
Thank you, Lord, for so many blessings in 2012! I can’t wait to see what 2013 will hold!
I had some free time on my last afternoon in Thailand, so I signed up for a half-day tour package that gave me some lifelong memories.
First our tour group went to Mae Sa Elephant Camp, a little ways outside of Chiang Mai.
There we got to watch elephants doing interesting activities. Click on the links below to watch some short videos I took of the elephants:
elephant throwing darts
elephant playing basketball
Above you can see the pictures that were painted that day – yes, I can vouch for the fact that this artwork really was created entirely by elephants!
