January 2008 Archives

This is a picture of two of our Chinese teachers (and friends, because we are older than the average exchange student we have to be friends with the teachers!).



On the right is Qian laoshi and on the left is Bai laoshi. One Saturday we were included on a day trip to Bai laoshi's grandmother's house in Puli, a more rural part of Taiwan. I was super excited to go, because Bai laoshi always talks about his grandmother and how she taught him all things about traditional Chinese culture AND how to clean house AND cook. I was even more excited because they grow their own vegetables in their garden. So going to Bai laoshi's house for lunch was a real treat.

Bai laoshi cooked lunch, and it was soooo good. All of the vegetable were indeed from their garden, and of course garden-fresh is so much better than store-fresh. And good Chinese home-cookin' is just good. The bananas (from their OWN banana tree!) were the best bananas we have ever tasted. After lunch we ate some sugarcane. When you eat sugarcane you bite off a piece (it is quite woody) and chew it up get out all the sugary water, then spit out the woody remains. It reminds me of eating honeycomb.

Here I am eating the sugarcane, you can see part of their vegetable garden behind me.



Unfortunately, Ellie was really sick the whole day. She threw up several times (our first experience with this) and slept almost the whole time.



When she wasn't sleeping she stayed like this on my or Jason's shoulder, which is very unlike her. I don't know if she was carsick or had a touch of the flu. Doubly unfortunately, Jason also came down with chills and aches that day. (Triply unfortunately, I woke up the next morning with chills and aches, the start of the worst flu I've ever had.)



We also went to nearby Sun Moon Lake, one of the prettiest places in Taiwan. It was a rainy day, which according to our teachers makes the lake scenery even more beautiful than usual.

Ellie has started including me in her play by handing things to me. When we play together I usually end up with a lap full of toys that she has given me. I am not sure if she is being generous or just getting things she doesn't need out of her way.

On the positive side, she also will hand me things that she "discovers" on the floor and thinks is trash, like sock lint, food from past meals, etc. Previously these things invariably went straight into her mouth, now she seems to be developing some categories for what she should and should not be eating. Of course, a good bit of the riffraff still goes in.

This is just one of Ellie's new tricks, being able to put the rings on her ring stacker.



Ellie has been learning new things at an incredible rate ever since she hit 10 to 11 months. It is like some maturity light switch was flipped. It seems like every day she can do something new. When we are in the kitchen I look down and instead of just scattering my Tupperware around she is fitting the lids on! I say, "Time for your bath," and she crawls toward the bathroom! I am loving this age so much. It is so exciting to watch Ellie learn new things and she is becoming more and more fun to play with because we can really interact now.

Ellie's little world keeps getting larger and larger. She is now tall enough to climb into our furniture.