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Today was another really good day! I “went” to the online service for my church, House of Blessing. The whole thing was really good, but the most meaningful part to me was the song “Here Again”. (This link is to a different but also excellent version, in case you just want to listen to the song without searching through the whole church service for it.) I’d heard and sung it many times, but the lyrics were never so meaningful as they were to me today, shut in a room away from everyone and everything as I am:

I’m not enough/Unless you come./Will you meet me here again?/’Cause all I want Is all you are./Will you meet me here again?/Not for a minute/Was I forsaken./The Lord is in this place./The Lord is in this place./Come, Holy Spirit,/Dry bones awaken./The Lord is in this place./The Lord is in this place.

Later I finished up some other tasks on my to-do list and finally had time for something I’d wanted to do since I arrived: working on my new series (working title: The Wolves of Cedar Crossing – yes, it’s about werewolves!). That is, I didn’t actually start drafting the series yet, but I read back through some of the many ideas about characters and plot that I’d brainstormed a while back and organized them more logically. Now I have a better idea of what needs to happen in book one. I hope to work on it a little every day for the rest of my quarantine and hopefully actually start drafting some scenes before I leave.

Here are today’s meals:

Breakfast: the usual hard-boiled egg and greens, plus chicken nuggets and a couple of rolls. One of the rolls had a sweet red bean filling. And don’t forget the “mixed fruits and vegetables juice drink” (I could taste the veggies as well as the fruits)!
Lunch (clockwise from top left): bitter melon (I think – it was bitter and in the plant family, anyway), greens (surprise, surprise), scrambled eggs with raw green onions, pork, a seasoned chicken leg on rice, and a piece of steamed pumpkin in the middle. I think the pumpkin was my favorite, if only because it was the first time it had shown up in any of my quarantine meals. Let’s just say that barley tea never makes my list of favorites.
Dinner (clockwise from top left): greens (bet you’re surprised!), stewed pork with carrots and broccoli, some sort of spring rolls on rice, green beans, and I have no idea what that was in the middle. It was soft and ginger-flavored. The spring rolls were really good, and so was the broccoli – tender and very flavorful. I wouldn’t have minded a second helping of that.

I settled down to dinner with my Kindle, but after reading for a few minutes, I decided that God’s art gallery outside was much more interesting than the book. The sky kept changing as clouds drifted across the setting sun, turning gold at the edges as the sky turned orange. The picture doesn’t really show how awesome it was, so you’ll have to take my word for it!

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Today seemed to go by fast (which was nice!). Three separate video calls with family used up pretty much all the morning. Some editing, some work on my Amazon ads, some exercise (Dance Dance Revolution for the win!), and some lesson planning for the after-school classes I’ll be teaching this year used up the afternoon. As usual, working on my blog post is my after-dinner activity. And then I’m off to bed with one more day of quarantine under my belt!

This building, just visible to my far left as I peer out my window, intrigues me. During the day, it usually looks like a normal, solid, white building with a dark gray striped design in the middle. But after dark, it manages to look as though it’s shaped kind of like an arch, with the enter part completely open (you know, like all those buildings in Hong Kong designed with the big holes so that dragons from the mountains can fly through them at night on their way to drink from the harbor … never mind). A few irregular little lights in the gray part somehow look as though they’re on buildings behind this one, adding to the night-time illusion that the center section is empty. (Or is it an illusion? I’m not completely convinced!) And on a foggy day, the white part fades into the mist, making it look as though a tall, narrow, dark gray structure stands there instead. I’m beginning to wonder if someone purposely designed this building to provide hours of perplexity for stir-crazy inmates peering out at the city from their solitary cells and trying to keep reality and their imagination separate. Then again, is it worth even trying to keep them separate? Some days I’m not so sure …

Ok, time for the obligatory meal photos. Today I actually really enjoyed parts of both lunch and dinner! A couple of the items were actually my favorites out of everything we’ve been served so far.

Breakfast: the usual green leafy veggies and hard-boiled egg (but this time I actually had salt to put on it, thanks to yesterday’s delivery from my friends!). The thin meaty thing pretending to be bacon wasn’t bad, and I always like the almost-hashbrown patties with ketchup. I would like to also draw your attention to the large glutinous blob at the bottom right. I have no idea what it was this morning, but I’m pretty sure that in a past life it was part of the landscape on an alien planet, or perhaps a prop in a low-budget sci-fi movie that took place on said alien planet.
Lunch. Those breaded shrimp things were delicious! I wouldn’t mind a couple of those every day! Spare me the lecture about how fattening they are, please. I’m pretty sure we’ve had at least one deep-fried item in every meal so far, so it’s not like they’re much worse than anything else. The greens were tastier than usual, too – good and garlicky, just the way I like them, not bitter like most greens here have been so far. The mushrooms in the center section were pretty good, too. The dark little strips at the top right I’m pretty sure were ni the fungus family too, but I didn’t care for them much. One bite was plenty. I didn’t eat the chicken wing with the green pepper pork, either, but the shrimp made up for the rest of it. Oh, and the white gourd tea? Just look at the squash in the picture, imagine it turned to liquid with sugar added, and that’s exactly how it tasted.
Dinner: chicken curry with potatoes and carrots over rice. What a delightful change from the norm! This was definitely my favorite hotel dinner yet. I mixed the greens in with the curry and couldn’t even taste their bitterness. I wasn’t going to eat the deep-fried breaded pork slab, because deep-fried, but I took one bite and decided it was too good to let it go to waste. (I couldn’t say the same about the slab of tofu.) Even the soup was pretty tasty. It had some kind of vegetable blossom (squash?) in it, which I know sounds weird, but it worked. The broth had a pleasant flavor. I had promised my Kindle we would have a dinner date this evening, so all in all, the meal was quite delightful.

Anyway, here are some pictures from tonight’s sunset. The sun itself stayed hidden behind a cloud bank most of the way down, but the evening sky was still pretty. I’m so thankful for a room with nice big windows and a sunset view!

See later posts in the series here (once they’re live):

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Today was a good day! One of the first things I did was chat online with a colleague of mine who just started her quarantine on a different floor of the HiOne Hotel. Her wonderful attitude encouraged me, and so did the song she sent me a link to. “As the Deer” instantly became my quarantine theme song. I’ve heard it dozens, if not hundreds of times before, but it had never brought me to tears before. Of course, I’d never before listened to it when locked in a room alone for two weeks … and yet not alone. The phrase “you alone” takes on a whole new meaning when the Lord is all you have – and you realize he is really all you need after all. I can’t remember the last time a song touched me that deeply.

Stormy Morning in Taichung

The picture above is what I saw when I opened my curtains. Typhoon In-Fa is hanging out off the east coast at the moment. Rain splattered my window, “falling” almost horizontally at the time. All day, there have been intermittent heavy winds, sometimes making my windowpanes rattle, and it’s rained on and off.

This morning when I opened my door to pick up my breakfast, I stuck my phone out and took a couple of quick pictures. Below is the view from my doorway. For some reason I always feel a little sad when I see all those other chairs with meals on them. I’ve never glimpsed any of the other guests/inmates here (though this afternoon I heard someone sneeze on the other side of the wall), but every chair represents a person sitting in a room by themselves. There are at least eight of us spending our two weeks in solitary confinement in this hallway, so close together and yet each completely alone. I hope the others have found meaningful ways to fill their time and connect with friends and family in the outside world, as I’ve been able to.

This chair just to the right of my door is where my meals magically show up. You can see from the stains that a lot of previous guests’ meals must have leaked! None of mine have, as far as I’ve noticed.

Here’s what I see to the left of my room. Floyd’s room is the one where you see that distant chair on the left side of the hall. The elevator we came up in is just beyond it.

A highlight of my day was receiving a delivery in the late afternoon!

Part of it involved items from my apartment (like extra clothes, so I won’t have to do as much laundry in the sink) that a friend who has the key had been willing to get for me. She also bought me some fresh fruit, yogurt, and a few other goodies. The rest of it was the delicious dinner that you see below, a gift from another friend. Yum! It was definitely the best meal (and the healthiest – nothing was deep fried!!) that I’ve had since I’ve been here.

This delicious dinner consisted of a blueberry-filled bagel, fresh cut veggies and dip, and chicken over rice (with half a hard-boiled egg and a few other ingredients mixed in).

Meanwhile, here are the meals the hotel served today:

Breakfast: French fries, some sort of glutinous pastry (the spiral pattern went all the way through), barley tea, a hard-boiled egg, those sausages I’d been hoping wouldn’t return to haunt me, and greens.
Lunch: the ubiquitous greens, shrimp with bean sprouts, a chicken leg on rice, soft squishy squash with rice noodles, and eggplant. The eggplant was a tasty change!
This is the dinner the hotel provided. I didn’t eat most of it, since I had the other one. I did try one of those little things in the round center section, just out of curiosity. It turned out to be chewy tofu sprinkled with sesame seeds. Oh, and I had the pieces of pork at the bottom left – they were tender, flavorful, delicious, and very fatty. (Have you noticed that fatty pork in various forms, tofu, and greens have been a recurring theme in these meals?)

One last picture before I close for the night. I didn’t actually see the sunset this evening because of all the clouds over the horizon, but it did make its presence known very briefly in this gorgeous display. Just a few seconds after I took this picture, the clouds shifted and the colors vanished.

God’s artwork at dusk.

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The highlight of my day today was being able to do a fun new form of exercise! I had bought a very basic version of Dance Dance Revolution long ago but hadn’t seen or thought of it for years. Then this summer I rediscovered it up in the closet in my grandparents’ house. Since the dance pad plugs directly into a TV, with no other equipment required, I thought it would be a perfect quarantine activity that I could do in my hotel room. So we brought it along, along with spare batteries, even though it’s a little on the heavy side and we had limited space and weight to spare in our luggage. When we first arrived in the hotel, however, it looked as though it wasn’t going to work right with the TV in my room. So Floyd went online and ordered something from PCHome that would help it connect. The something arrived and got delivered to my room today, and after a lot of fiddling and some tech support from Floyd over a video call, we discovered to my disappointment that it didn’t work. And THEN we discovered that the dance pad could connect to the TV the way it needed to after all, with no external help required! I was delighted, and spent the next hour dancing away! I’m really excited to know that I have DDR to look forward to every day now for the rest of my quarantine! (Hey, when you’re locked in a room alone for two weeks, you have to find excitement where you can!)

Here are today’s meals:

Breakfast: slightly sweet rolls with a red bean filling, hard-boiled egg, chicken nuggets with ketchup, and green salad, plus strawberry milk tea.
Lunch, clockwise from top left: greens, a chicken leg sitting on little pork strips mixed with something that looked like bits of onion but wasn’t, breaded pork slab on rice, something very moist and squishy that I’m pretty sure was in the vegetable family (only because it didn’t taste meaty and was definitely not mineral). The item in the middle involved a different kind of greens and something else unidentifiable but spicy. I stuck the boxed drink in the fridge without opening it. Maybe I’ll try it at some point if I’m desperate for a change from water.
Dinner: a deep-fried, breaded something-or-other that I thought at first was pork but wasn’t. It involved a slightly sweet paste that I believe may have been some sort of seafood in a past life. Also squash, an egg (not sure why it was that color – that’s the white you see, not the shell) and fried noodles. And clear soup with what I assumed were fishballs but weren’t. Perhaps some distant relative of the dumpling? (That is, Western dumplings, not the Chinese kind.)

There’s a typhoon moving in at the moment. It’s been raining on and off all day, interspersed with blue skies overhead but fast-moving dark clouds traveling south just above the horizon. My window panes have occasionally rattled in the wind, and when I stand near the door, I hear the wind whistling through some window that must have been left ajar somewhere down the hall. I wonder what it will be like in the next couple of days to watch a typhoon hit the city from the 22nd floor.

I’ll close with this photo I took out my window this evening of the storm closing in on the city at dusk.

See later posts in the series here (once they’re live):

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I woke up this morning feeling joyful and grateful, thinking of how much I have to be thankful for. Yes, I’m going to be stuck in this room for the next fortnight, but at least it’s a pretty nice room! Want to see for yourself? Come take the tour!

I’ve wanted to learn to line dance for years. What better time than quarantine? This morning I learned the Cowboy Hustle! I have just enough space between the beds and desk in my hotel room to do it, as long as I skip the part where they keep turning around to face another direction. I plan to learn a new line dance each day I’m here. I’m so thankful for enough room to exercise, and for a fun variety of exercise options on Youtube!

Alas, the person in the room below mine apparently doesn’t feel quite the same way. Midway through my second exercise session of the day, the room phone rang. It was a lady from the front desk, asking if I could please exercise more quietly. Whoops.

A doorbell I didn’t know I had rang this morning. When I put on my mask and peeked out, lo and behold, a care package was waiting for me! What a delightful surprise to find these treats from some of my colleagues at Morrison Academy! (They had to leave the bag at the front desk, and a worker in a mask, gloves, and hospital gown brought it up and left it outside my room, then hurried away to safety as soon as he rang my bell.)

Opening the package brought tears to my eyes. It’s so nice to be loved and cared for, especially when you’re alone!
A closeup of the cookies in the care package!

In the late morning, I got a call on the room phone here in my hotel. “Hello, this is the front desk. The police are on the phone and would like to talk to you.” Fortunately, I knew what it was about, otherwise I might have been quite alarmed! It was just Olivia, my friendly neighborhood quarantine officer, trying to get ahold of me since we’d gotten cut off on our previous call on my new cellphone. She reminded me to keep track of my health and be ready to fill in the details when I get a text message tomorrow (and every day from then on, I think?), and that she would call me every two or three days to check in.

This evening there was a gorgeous sunset. My pictures don’t really do it justice, but they’ll give you a little hint of God’s artwork outside my window.

I thought this looked pretty awesome …
… until it got a little darker and more clouds rolled in, and the view turned to this!

It’s almost time for bed now. First, pictures of today’s meals:

Breakfast: a turnip cake with sauce, hashbrowns with ketchup, greens, sausages remarkable for their total absence of any sort of flavor, a hard-boiled egg, and mixed fruit and veggie juice.
Lunch: greens, cabbage, tofu, fatty but flavorful porky things on rice, a chicken wing, more of that soft squash, fishballs (I think), and barley tea.
Dinner: greens, tofu, asparagus stems with a piece of chicken, bitter melon, a different kind of fatty porky thing on rice, and clear soup with no discernable ingredients or taste.

As I end my day, my sports watch tells me I’ve walked (well, and it’s probably including my line dancing) a total of 10,016 steps today. I feel accomplished! Don’t be too impressed, though – today was about three days long!

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My husband Floyd and I have just returned home to Taiwan after a summer in California visiting relatives. Taiwan is taking the current COVID situation very seriously, and all incoming travelers are now required to quarantine in a hotel for two weeks upon arrival. I decided to record my quarantine experiences for anyone who might be interested (and to give myself one more thing to do in what I’m calling my luxury incarceration)! Today is day 0, because the 14 days don’t technically start until tomorrow. (They have to be 14 full days.)

Both our flights (LA to Hong Kong; Hong Kong to Taipei) were fairly empty. Getting through the Taipei airport was an interesting adventure, very different from any of our previous arrivals. First I had to buy a Taiwan SIM card for my new phone (required for all incoming quarantinees), which was pretty simple since they had a table selling them right after we got off the plane. There was a short line for that – the only line we had to stand in the whole time. Then there was a huge hassle about how to access and take screenshots of certain messages and quarantine-related documents on both Floyd’s and my phones, but some helpful airport personnel who sort of spoke English were finally able to help us.

Next we had to walk all over the place, always with uniformed personnel standing ready to point out the way, and always being followed by a masked and gowned cleaning crew spraying disinfectant and wiping the floors down behind us. After getting through customs and immigration as usual, we picked up our boxes and duffel bag from the baggage claim, where a sign informed us what had been done to them.

I did indeed open my duffel bag later to find that some items were damp, but since there was no smell of disinfectant, I think that had more to do with the rain in Hong Kong on our layover.

Along with showing our phone screenshots and other extra info at extra places, we had to take rapid COVID tests (these were in addition to the PCR tests we took a few days ago that actually let us fly). For these ones, we were escorted to private booths where we had to spit in jars, wipe down the outsides of the jars, double-bag them, and hand them to more masked and gowned personnel, who stuck big “quarantine Taiwan” stickers on our shoulders to prove we had completed that step.

Finally we were funneled outside to the quarantine taxi waiting area, where we had to submit documentation about our quarantine hotel arrangements and then get sprayed down with sanitizer, along with our bags. (All of that took almost two hours, even though, as I said, there were pretty much no lines. Actually, the whole airport was almost deserted.) To our disappointment, they had run out of the van-sized taxis, and the regular ones couldn’t fit all our luggage (three large boxes and a duffel bag, plus carryons and a few other small items). So we had to pay for two taxis, which dropped us and our things off at the HiOne Gallery quarantine hotel in Taichung.

checking in at the HiOne Gallery Hotel
Floyd checking in at the HiOne Gallery Hotel. Not all our luggage would fit on that cart.

Checking into the hotel was complicated. It didn’t help that neither of us speaks much Chinese, and the man trying to check us in didn’t speak English. There were all sorts of COVID- and quarantine-related things to deal with as part of the check-in process, too. We would never have managed without calling a couple bilingual friends of ours and asking them to translate over the phone! All this happened outside and in the entryway, with the expansive lobby standing empty, tape on the floor showing potentially contaminated guests like us which way to walk to the elevator so we wouldn’t contaminate anything else.

A sign on the front door.
The HiOne Gallery Hotel lobby, with no other guests in sight. (Since it's a quarantine hotel, "regular" guests aren't allowed, and none of the quarantinees are allowed to leave their rooms.)
The HiOne Gallery Hotel lobby, with no other guests in sight. (Since it’s a quarantine hotel, “regular” guests aren’t allowed, and none of the quarantinees are allowed to leave their rooms.)

Though it will be hard to spend the next two weeks alone (no, husbands and wives aren’t even allowed to quarantine together!), I’m grateful for how nice my room is. I had very little idea of what to expect, but it’s better than I dared hope for. Tomorrow I’ll post a little video of my room.

A lot has been said (and wondered) by various people about the meals that are included in the cost of most quarantine hotels here. I decided to take pictures of each meal to include in my blog, for anyone who might be curious.

This lunch was waiting for me on a chair outside my door when I arrived in mid-afternoon. Rice, pork in sauce, a slab of breaded pork, anise-flavored tofu, and scrambled eggs with green onions.
Tonight’s dinner. Clockwise from top right: breaded chicken (basically chicken nuggets), ham-like pork strips on rice, pork with celery, bok choi, and in the middle we have that soft kind of squash that often gets put in soups here (not sure what it’s called) with rice noodles. Oh, and clear broth on the side, with tomato pieces.

That’s all for now. It’s time for bed. Here’s hoping jetlag will let me sleep!

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Well, Floyd and I just enjoyed three days’ vacation on Green Island in a hotel we were not planning on staying at.
We got lost a couple of times getting from Kaohsiung (southern Taiwan) to the harbor in Taitung (eastern Taiwan), but that’s another story.  Finally we found the right place to catch the boat to Green Island, and we managed to buy our round-trip tickets with no problem.




The 50-minute boat ride was really fun for me – lots of big billows, and my stomach quite frequently did that going-down-a-drop-on-a-roller-coaster plunge.  Wheee!  Floyd didn’t find it quite as fun as I did, but he had Dramamine, and he and his stomach somehow hung in there.
Well, we disembarked on Green Island with our duffel bag, two backpacks, the laptop in its case, my purse, Floyd’s satchel, a second duffel bag with two foam pads in case the hotel mattress was hard (as many of them tend to be here), and the address of our hotel written in Chinese.  (We didn’t know the name of the hotel in either language.)  I should mention here that a friend had recommended the hotel to us as one that she had stayed in, and she’d emailed us its Chinese address and the phone number.  A different friend had helped us call the number and make a reservation (in Chinese) for the two nights we planned to stay.
So we lugged all our luggage (I guess that’s why they call it that, huh?) away from the busy port area to a quieter street to figure out what to do next and where to go.  Several enthusiastic locals came over to see if we wanted help (I assume they work for tour companies or hotels and were trying to get our business, though we couldn’t understand them).  One little old lady on a scooter was very persistent, so finally we showed her the hotel address to see if she could help us get there (and to show her that we didn’t need her help figuring out where to stay on the island).  She read the characters and looked perplexed, and I understood her when she pointed at the first two characters and told us the address was in Taitung.  Actually, I could read those particular characters too, though it hadn’t occurred to me to look closely or think about them before.  Wait – could our reservation actually be for a hotel back in Taitung and not on Green Island?  Surely not!
We didn’t have the phone numbers of either of our helpful friends, but we did have our other friend Clive’s number.  Floyd called him and explained the situation – and long story short, after about ten minutes and several separate calls and the little old lady hanging around and trying to talk to us and ask us what was going on, we determined that our reservation was indeed in Taitung.  Oh no!  Here we were in Green Island with tickets to return the day after tomorrow, and no hotel reservation.  Thankfully we hadn’t actually paid in advance for our other hotel! 


Well, Clive is bilingual, so we passed the phone to our kind old lady, and the two of them had quite a conversation.  A couple of times she passed it back to Floyd so Clive could update him what they’d been saying, and then it went back to the lady again.  (But we still didn’t really have a very clear picture of what they were figuring out for us.)  Finally the lady hung up, passed the phone back to Floyd, and gestured for me to get on the back of her scooter.  What else could I do?  I grabbed my purse and the laptop case, waved goodbye to Floyd, and got on behind her.



We drove a little way down the street and stopped where – thank goodness – another lady was waiting who spoke some English.  (I should mention that the little old lady had made a few phone calls on her own phone a little earlier too.)  The new lady asked me if my husband and I wanted to rent a scooter for one, two, or three days; and I told her I wasn’t sure we wanted to rent one at all.  Maybe a bike?  She spoke to someone who might have been her daughter, who disappeared down the street and came back riding a bike.  They insisted I try it out, and I mentioned we had heard there were electric bikes for rent here.  Back went the daughter and brought me an electric bike to test ride.  They wanted an answer right then, but Floyd and I hadn’t really decided anything, and I didn’t want to sign anything without him there, and where was he anyway?
About that time some man drove up on a scooter with Floyd riding on the back.  Most of our luggage was nowhere in sight.  After a quick discussion and two test rides, we decided to rent a scooter.  Neither of us has a scooter license, and I don’t even have a Taiwan driver’s license, but they assured us that was no problem and we could both legally drive this 50 cc one and be covered by their insurance in case of accident.  I had never actually driven a scooter before, but the lady gave me a quick lesson then and there and I discovered it wasn’t too hard.  We had to pay in advance and leave Floyd’s license with her, which we’re still a little nervous about, but she seemed very friendly ….

 So Floyd got on the scooter, I hopped on behind him (still clutching the purse and laptop), and our little old lady friend got on her own scooter and gestured for us to follow.  We had no idea where we were going, but she led the way back toward the dock, where we found the rest of our luggage sitting quietly off to one side, waiting for us unattended.  A man who had come with us on a third scooter picked up the pieces we weren’t already carrying and somehow balanced them on his scooter (the little old lady helped). 
On we drove, and eventually ended up at a humble little hotel.  It was run by the same company (Chung Hwa Telecom – the phone company) as the one we were supposed to stay in, so maybe they were able to somehow transfer our reservation.
Our little old lady friend waved goodbye and drove away before we could think of some culturally appropriate way to express our deep gratitude for her help.  I shudder to think how we would have coped with the situation without such a Good Samaritan there to assist!  All I can say is, I hope she got paid some sort of commission from the hotel or the scooter company, because she didn’t ask for or seem to expect anything from us.
Well, the hotel lady welcomed us in and helped us get our luggage to our room, and we proceeded to have an interesting conversation with the help of her iPhone.  She gave us a brochure with a map of the island and touristy spots labeled in both English and Chinese, and  recommended certain sites and answered our questions.  But she spoke almost no English, and our Chinese certainly doesn’t take us very far.  So she would type something into her phone, pull up the English translation, and let us read it on the screen.  It worked!





Anyway, we were glad to be able to relax in our room and sort through and unpack our luggage.  From the first moment I sat down on the bed, I could tell we would most definitely be thankful for those foam pads (and sure enough, we were)!








  But “thankful” really is the theme of  the afternoon.  We’re thankful there was good phone reception here, thankful we could get ahold of Clive, thankful he was willing to help us, thankful for the little old Taiwanese lady who may just have been an angel in disguise, thankful that it worked out to rent a scooter that we can both legally drive, thankful we didn’t lose any money with the hotel problem, thankful all our luggage rejoined us intact, thankful there was a room available here for us for two nights at a very reasonable rate, and thankful for the technology that helped us work everything out!  Thank you, Lord!


Tomorrow we hope to drive our rented scooter around the island, following the map we were given, and stop to see and do various things along the way.  Stay tuned for another update – but hopefully this one will be much tamer!


Floyd and I celebrated Valentine’s Day at a very unusual restaurant here in Taichung, Taiwan.  


It’s called The Modern Toilet, and the decor and some of the food are bathroom-themed.


This is what greeted us when we walked in.  Only in Taiwan!

The container by the front counter where the chopsticks are kept:

The glass tabletops were supported from underneath by these washbasins.

This was the table across from ours.  For some reason, our seats were regular chairs instead of the padded toilet lids that they got.

The booths came with these comfortable seat cushions.

Note the washbasin sticking out from the flower design on the wall.  And do you see the shape of the light fixtures?

Some menu items were relatively “normal”.  Others called attention to themselves by their shape or the dish they were served in.

I ended up ordering the toilet curry chicken mentioned below.  I just couldn’t see myself going to a restaurant like this and not ordering something in a toilet-shaped dish!

Here it is: my dinner!  And yes, it was delicious.
 Who wants dessert?  This is what they serve their ice cream in.
Extra seating near the exit:
What a fun experience!  I’m not sure I’d go back, but it was definitely worth it to go once.  You can’t live in Taiwan and not try things like this!


I love travel, and so far in my life I’ve been to eighteen different countries.  Yes, this number is tiny compared to what most of my family members can boast of, but I’m not done yet!  I finally decided to post a picture from each country I’ve been to.  Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures from some, but here’s what I’ve got, in order of when I visited/lived there (more or less).

Country #1: the United States of America

I was born in the States and lived there for the first three and a half years of my life.  I went back for college and spent the first five years of my married life there as well.  Now Floyd and I sometimes return there to spend time with our families over Christmas vacations or summers.

Click here to read my blog post Impressions upon Returning to America from Taiwan.

Country #2: Kenya

This was home to me for my entire childhood.  I lived in Kenya for fourteen years, and it will always be a part of who I am.  Growing up, I felt more Kenyan than American.  My family traveled to the States for 5-month furloughs every three years or so, but when we were there I always longed to return to Kenya.

Country #3: the Netherlands

https://www.cia.gov/

I was only there for a brief layover on the way to one of our furloughs.  I remember it, but barely.

Country #4: Spain

http://0.tqn.com/d

Ditto.  Overnight layover, and my clearest memory is the complimentary wine at the restaurant that Daddy let Jimmy and me taste.  Yuck!  (I believe I was all of six years old.)

Country #5: Switzerland

We’ve had a number of separate layovers there, along with one actual vacation that my parents worked into our travel schedule.  For some reason I don’t have any pictures with me in them, but I have lots of memories of mountains and trains, chocolate and cable cars, picnics and high prices.

Country #6: Israel

This was a wonderful vacation.  We visited several different cities, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and toured many sites where important Biblical events took place.  I have lots of pictures and special memories from the week or so my family spent in Israel.

Country #7: Great Britain

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Unfortunately, my stay in Great Britain was limited to a few hours each in the Heathrow and Gatwick airports and an all-too-short predawn bus ride between them, with the same experience repeated in reverse on the way back from my real destination.

Country #8: Mexico

I’ve been to Mexico three times, all short day trips while I was in college.  The first couple of times were mini-mission trips with a group from my church and with Biola University’s puppet ministry team.  The third time was a fun little excursion with my family.

Country #9: Indonesia

I dreamed of traveling to Indonesia for six years before I finally had the chance to go.  Right after finishing my senior year of high school, I spent a summer serving on Java with Teen Missions International.  It was an unforgettable and life-changing experience and made me long to go back.  I returned for a month-long visit a few years later, and eventually (after college) had the opportunity to spend a year there teaching in a one-room schoolhouse on the island of Papua.  Also a life-changing experience, but that’s another story!

Country #10: the Philippines

http://www.worldstatesmen.org/

After my summer mission trip to Indonesia, my team traveled to the Philippines for a week-long debrief, along with teams from various other nearby countries.  There wasn’t much time for sightseeing, but I enjoyed what I saw of this beautiful country (mostly Manila).

Country #11: Singapore

http://www.mapsofworld.com/

I’ve had several layovers in Singapore, though I’ve never had the chance to leave the airport.  (Yes, that DOES still count as being in the country!)  It’s my favorite airport in the world; I’m always impressed at the wide variety of interesting things to do and see there.  I’ve never been bored, even when spending eight hours alone there late at night.

Country #12: Canada

Since I don’t remember my visit to Canada with my parents when I was three months old, I’m counting my first visit as the cruise Floyd surprised me with on our honeymoon.  Our time there was short – we only had one day to explore Ketchikan – but we were able to make some fun memories.  Five years later we had the chance to visit Niagara Falls from New York, and we crossed over to spend a few hours on the Canadian side.

Click here to read my blog post A Day at Niagara Falls.

Country #13: Taiwan

Floyd and I have lived in Taiwan for the last ten years (not counting summers), and we love it here!  It has truly become home for both of us.

I don’t think I could ever spend “too long” in Taiwan, but click here to read my blog post You Know You’ve Lived in Taiwan Too Long When…

Country #14: South Korea

I spent about three days in Seoul several years ago while attending a teaching conference.  There wasn’t much time for sightseeing, but I used every spare moment in the evenings to walk around with friends and see as much of the city as possible.

Click here to read my blog post It’s All About Seoul.

Country #15: China

Another teaching conference brought me to Hong Kong, which immediately became one of my favorite cities.  I especially loved the efficient subway system and the waterfront at night, and I hope I have the chance to go back sometime.  More recently Floyd and I had layovers in the Shanghai and Beijing airports, though unfortunately we couldn’t leave the airports since we didn’t have visas.

Click here to read my blog post Four Days in Hong Kong!

Country #16: Malaysia

I’ve actually been to Malaysia twice, once to Kuala Lumpur (peninsular Malaysia) and once to Kota Kinabalu (on the island of Borneo).  Both times were for conferences, and both times I was able to squeeze in some brief but memorable sightseeing experiences.  Kuala Lumpur is another of my favorite cities – I love the blending of cultures I saw there, as evidenced by the food, clothing styles, etc.

Click here to read my blog posts My Trip to Malaysia and The Wilds of Borneo.

Country #17: Japan

Floyd and I have had a couple of brief layovers in Narita on our travels between California and Taiwan.  On one occasion we were there just long enough to leave the airport and take a walk down some quiet streets to a large temple complex with beautiful gardens out back.  The last time we were in Narita, our connecting flight was delayed due to a typhoon, and we were forced to make last-minute arrangements to stay overnight in a very expensive hotel at some distance from the airport (since all the close and reasonably-priced ones were already booked solid by other stranded travelers).  Not the best memory – but still, I like Japan!

Click here to read my blog post Lost in Narita.

Country #18: Thailand

One November I had the opportunity to teach a workshop (about indie publishing) at a teachers’ conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  It was an awesome experience: the conference was great, my workshop was well received, and I loved what I saw of Thailand.  Besides making the most of all my evening time, I had half a day free at the end, so I paid for a little tour package.  It included visits to an orchid farm, an elephant camp, and Tiger Kingdom.  The highlight of the trip for me was petting and lying down with three large female tigers!

Click here to read my blog post A Trip to Thailand.

Country #19: Vietnam

A friend and I spent several days in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon), Vietnam, on a brief vacation.  (Later I visited a different part of the country with Floyd.) It was wonderful!  One of the most interesting things for me was experiencing the blend of Asian and European cultures (Vietnam is a former French colony).  That blend manifested itself in the food, clothing styles, art, and architecture.  One of the highlights of the trip was watching a “water puppet” show.  Another was taking a boat ride down the Mekong Delta, with lots of stops along the way to watch various traditional snacks being made in little local shops.

Click here to read my blog post Seeing the Sights in Saigon.

Country #20: Myanmar

This one of the most fascinating countries I’ve ever been to. Floyd and I enjoyed an amazing vacation there over Christmas one year. Highlights included delicious traditional foods and drinks (including inexpensive smoothies and lassis at every restaurant), a traditional marionette show, gorgeous temples and pagodas everywhere (and some very old ones), and a town whose buildings all stood on stilts in the middle of a lake.

Click here to read my blog post A Day on the Lake.

What’s Next?
Who knows?  I can’t wait for my next opportunity to travel internationally!  What’s your favorite city, country, or memory from an international trip?  I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Floyd and I just got back from an overnight getaway in Ali Shan, one of Taiwan’s beautiful mountain areas.  It’s famous for its spectacular sunrise, which is the main reason most people visit.  (However, I must confess that in the picture below, we’re standing in front of a mural!)

We stayed in a nice little bed and breakfast called Tea Garden (their “Mountain Hometown” location).  It was small but cute and easy to get to.  Click here to read Floyd’s review of it on AAA.  Below is the room we stayed in.   
We arrived Monday late afternoon, and they let us check in early.  Then we got back in the car and drove up to Ali Shan National Scenic Area to make sure we knew how to get there for the sunrise the next morning.  It was about an hour’s drive from Mountain Hometown along steep, winding mountain roads.  The park entrance fee was pretty reasonable (450 NT – about US$14 – for the two of us and our car, with Floyd’s student discount).  We found ourselves in a little shopping area with a visitors’ center, restaurants, gift shops, and even a 7-Eleven, all surrounded by scenic forest criss-crossed with hiking trails.  There was a train station there too, where we bought tickets for the next day’s 5:10 a.m. departure to Chushan, the famous sunrise spot.

Ali Shan’s Forest Railway is quite famous in Taiwan.  We saw lots of tourists taking pictures of each other in and in front of the little red train, on the tracks, and by the various railway signs.

Back at Mountain Hometown, we enjoyed a tasty dinner (ordered in advance on their website when we made our reservation) and hit the sack early.  The alarm rang at 3:30 a.m., which I think is probably the earliest I’ve ever purposely woken up to start my day!  We packed up, loaded our car, and drove back up the mountain in some of the thickest fog I’ve ever seen.  It was a little scary, but we made it safely back up to Ali Shan Scenic Area with time to spare.  We boarded the train (standing room only) and enjoyed a 40-minute ride up to Chushan.
There was an observation area at the top with a viewing platform, souvenir shops, restrooms, and stands selling savory-smelling hot foods and drinks.  Yep, that’s how people enjoy the beauty of natural wilderness here in Taiwan!

When we first got there (a little before 6 a.m.) it was still pitch black, but as the sky gradually lightened, we saw that the mountainscape below us was covered in clouds.  Gradually the clouds began to clear, and everyone waited breathlessly, hoping hard that there would indeed be a spectacular sunrise worthy of the tales we’d all heard.  


The sun was supposed to rise at 6:15, and as the moment approached, more and more of the mountains became visible.  But at exactly 6:14, a massive bank of fog came surging in from the south and settled heavily over everything, reducing visibility to a few yards.  And that was our Ali Shan sunrise.

We took the train back down through the fog to where we’d started and then enjoyed a long hike along one of the trails through the forest.
Of course, bear in mind that a “hiking trail” in Taiwan is usually a wide, smoothly paved route with handrails when it gets steep and frequent warning signs in the “dangerous” sections.  Ali Shan’s trails were no exception!

You can also expect lots of strict signs about what is not allowed in that particular corner of nature.

I guess they didn’t want us to leave the path?

The warning sign above was on a suspended bridge over a stream.

I like the parts that prohibit “frolicking” and instruct visitors not to “make annoying sounds” or “engrave text and graphics” on “panels”!

The trees in Ali Shan’s forest are mostly Taiwan red cypress.  They were all covered with moss and were quite beautiful.  Through a combination of the growth process and the effects of rot, many of the trees and stumps had twisted themselves into all sorts of unusual shapes. 

Various animals supposedly live in the forest, but besides the occasional bird, the warty little guy below was the only wildlife we spotted in Ali Shan.

Below: trees have the right of way on Ali Shan trails!

Partway through our hike we came to a little museum with displays about Ali Shan’s historic railroad, lumber industry, and aboriginal people.  It would have been more meaningful if we could read Chinese, but the exhibits were still interesting.  I wouldn’t recommend a trip to the area just to see the museum (it only took us about ten minutes to see everything), but if you’re there anyway, it’s worth taking a look.

At one point we came to an open area by a temple where people were selling trinkets and snacks.  We bought pork sausages on sticks from this lady; they came with a saucer of seasoned powder for dipping.  (The powder was tangy and complemented the salty sausage flavor nicely – but be careful not to inhale as you’re about to take a bite!)  We asked what other kinds of sausages she had, and turns out there were several different meats represented.  The black ones are cuttlefish!

After several hours of hiking, we returned to the visitors’ center area for lunch.  It felt as though we had stayed all day, but of course that was because our day had started so early.  We drove back to Taichung tired but satisfied that we had done (as far as we could tell) nearly all there was to do in Ali Shan.  Too late, we discovered that the sunset is apparently pretty impressive there too, but for now we’ll have to content ourselves with the pictures we took by a mural.