May 2008 Archives

A Momentous Occasion

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Not only is it not over-flowing, but the clothes are actually below the rim of the hamper! Woohoo!

Of course by the time I get around to posting this the hamper is back to its over-flowing state. Ah-well. That's why I had to file this post under "celebrations", because it certainly couldn't be put under "daily life".

Yakkity Yak

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Ellie is really starting to talk now in a big way. And it's so fun for me to watch her learning, and see how incredibly fast she is learning, especially from the perspective of being a language student myself.

She started crazy babbling about a month ago. It went a little like this: "Bleckity, glickle, glinkle, nkle." She would go along playing, talking to herself like this. Or sometimes she would include me in the conversation too.

Ellie also developed quite the repertoire of animal sounds over the past month or two, including the sound made by a dog, cow, fish, lion, tiger, bear, elephant, and gorilla. I've been trying to get her to work on horses and chickens but she doesn't seem interested, she's just a jungle animal kind of girl.

And then suddenly Ellie is saying actual words. She loves saying, "Hi!" And my favorite is when she suddenly says "Hi!" to someone we pass on the street and that person lights up with surprise. What Ellie really really loves is saying, "bye bye." She says "bye bye" to Jason or I when one of us leaves, if we are leaving a place to go home she says "bye bye" fifteen times to everyone, she says "bye bye" to the food she drops off her highchair, and tonight after our bath she said "bye bye" to the bath tub, her bath toys, the potty, and the spot on the potty before leaving the bathroom.

And this brings me to what is Ellie's current favorite word: "Spot", although when she says "spot" it sounds more like "pah!" Ellie finds spots everywhere, and shows them to me. She finds them in the pattern on our floor, a piece of dirt on the floor is also a "spot", the little "spot" or mole she has on her arm is of great concern to her, food that gets dropped on her clothes or highchair tray are "spots", any roundish mark, pattern, or raised part on anything is a "spot". I never knew how many spots there are in this world.

Another key feature of Ellie's verbalization is the letter "B", more specifically the sounds "bah" or "boo" (as in book). I think Ellie has decided to go with the rule, 'When in doubt, just say "bah"'. "Bah" can mean ball, umbrella, bag, flower, bug spray, pillow, you name it--it's the sound for every occasion, and the one I am usually guessing about.

When Ellie isn't saying "spot" or "bah" she goes around pointing at things and says "da!" meaning "that". What she wants is for me to tell her the names of things, and what always amazes me is how she can remember what things are called after being told only once. I wish I could do that with Chinese.

Speaking of Chinese, I don't think Ellie is speaking any yet, but then again I might not be tuned in enough to pick up garbled Chinese like I can with English. She can understand some simple Chinese phrases that she hears often, like "Let me hold you!" (I know she understands because whenever someone says this she clings tighter to me.)

Other words in Ellie's vocabulary include Da-da and Ma-ma (but I hear 50 Da-da's to every 1 Ma-ma), "cheese" is "chz", "drink" is "dee". Ellie's "help" is a combination of speaking and sign language, she says "poi" while  putting her palms together, her variation on the sign. The other signs she uses are "eat", "milk", "please" and "diaper".

I still hear the occasional "bleckity, glickle, glinkle, nkle," and it makes me smile every time.

A Real Conversation

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I was outside playing with Ellie when five or six girls run by, they are followed by one of my neighbors, Joey's owner*, carrying a cake.

Joey's owner: Hi! It's my daughter Ruth's 11th birthday, do you want to come in and have cake.

Kristie: (thinking, "Ellie and I like cake, and Ellie loves playing with Joey, so why not?") Sure!

(we all go into their apartment)

Joey's owner: Who wants popsicles?

Girls: (in unison, like peeping birds) I do! I do! I do!

Joey's owner: (to me) Do you want one?

Kristie: (thinking, "okay, an interesting variation on cake and ice cream...") Sure.

Joey's owner: Okay girls! It's time to eat cake!  (puts the two "1" candles on the cake) Oh no! I forgot the lighter in the car! Oh well, forget the candles, Ruth do you want to cut the cake?

Ruth: Nope. (she's too busy writing something)

Joey's owner: (cheerily cuts the cake herself) Who wants a piece?

...silence...

Joey's owner: Does she like chocolate? (puts all of the chocolate curls from the top of the cake on a plate and gives them to Ellie, I swoop in to "help" her eat them and to keep chocolate smears from getting on everything)

Kristie: Oh yes, she likes all sweet things. (and so do I, mmm...)

Joey's owner: Girls, gather around, let's all have birthday cake. (hands me a piece)

Kristie: Thank you.

Little Girl 1: I don't want any cake. (she's too busy playing on the treadmill)

Little Girl 2: Hey! Why does Ruth get to do homework?

Joey's owner: Well, Ruth can do homework whenever she wants.

Little Girl 2: I want to do homework too! (tries to look at Ruth's paper) Ruth, can I see yours?

Ruth: NO! (moves so Little Girl 2 can't see)

Little Girl 3: I want the littlest piece.

Joey's owner: Like this one? (holds up a piece a third the size of mine for inspection)

Little Girl 3: Even smaller!

Joey's owner: (cuts a tiny little sliver, Little Girl 3 ignores it) Okay, I need to go and do *something I didn't understand*, I'll be right back. You can just make yourself at home.

Kristie: (thinking she's probably just running out to the car to get the forgotten lighter) No problem.

(...Forty minutes later...)

Kristie: Ruth, when do you think your mom will be back.

Ruth: Soon.

Kristie: Uh...I think I need to go ahead and go home. Please tell your mom thank you for the cake and everything.

Ruth: Sure. Bye.

Kristie: (feeling slightly conflicted) Ruth, are you allowed to be at home alone without parents?

Ruth: Yeah.

Kristie: (still not sure if 11 year olds can be at home alone, but Ellie has already asked to leave twice) Well, I'm going then. Bye.

No one is phased. I leave Ruth trying to keep Little Girl 2 from copying her homework, Little Girl 2 doesn't care because she and Little Girl 4 are doing their homework together. Little Girl 1 is still on the treadmill, Little Girl 3 is bouncing between the exercise bike and trying to take the dog outside. All the cake, except the piece Ellie and I ate, is left on the table.

*Joey is a little beagle Ellie likes to play with.

What exactly is a Mom-cut?

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Why is it that when your average woman gets her hair cut short she is considered hip and daring, but when a woman who also happens to be the mother of a baby or toddler gets her hair cut short she has gotten a "mom-cut"?

I mean, let's face it, the dirty little secret of short hair styles is that they take more effort, more time, and more energy than just slinging (possibly unwashed) long hair back into a ponytail.

And what's so bad about a "mom-cut" anyways?

A Flower for Sunday

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I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty,
And on Your wondrous works.
Psalm 145:5

If I were a good mom...

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I read a lot of "mom-blogs" (blogs like mine, written by young moms with young kids), and have recently been reading about real live babies who at the age of four or five months started sleeping through the night. This is incredible to me because so far my experience with babies and sleep has been very different--anything but smooth and rocky at best. My Ellie, at the relatively ripe old age of 15 months still doesn't fall asleep on her own and still wakes up frequently during the night.

Ellie has been a champion sleep-fighter from the get go. I remember watching her at only a few weeks of age being so sleepy, yet using all her strength to try and keep her eyes open. Maybe this will give you an idea on just how dismal our sleeping has been over the past 15 months: I recently started trying to wean Ellie from nursing at night, hoping that if she didn't get the goods every time she woke up she would stop waking up so much. I set the initial time limit at 3 hours because this seemed like a doable goal, but would certainly be a stretch. The first night she didn't make it. At 14 months Ellie wasn't sleeping even for 3 hour stretches!! She has before in the past, but I can't remember the last time. As you can imagine, my memory's not the best right now.

In the US, and maybe other Western countries, sleeping through the night is considered something of a benchmark of  successful mothering. A mother who can get her baby to sleep through the night by x-months-old is considered a "good mom". Does this mean that one who CAN'T seem to get their baby to sleep is a "bad mom"? No one says this, but it can certainly feel that way. Oh, can it ever feel that way.

In Taiwan there is a completely different "good mom" requirement: a fat baby! Lucky me, that is what I have always had. Ellie has always pushed the 95th or even 100th percentile for weight, and everywhere we go people exclaim, "Look at all the meat!" or "Look how many rolls!", and "You have really taken good care of her!" Hey, she doesn't sleep, but boy can she eat all night long.

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At 2 weeks she already has a nice chunky arm, and and 9 months she is in all of her roll-ful glory!

Additionally, in Taiwan there is a-whole-nother perspective on babies and how they sleep. For starters, it is the norm here for babies to sleep with their parents well into their toddler years. And when I talk about Ellie still waking at night the response I get is never, "Well, what's wrong [with you]? Have you tried such-and-such method?" Instead, the response is without fail, "Is she still nursing?" Yes. "Well no wonder! Of course she's still waking up at night to nurse, my sister's/cousin's/friend's/etc's baby is over 2 years old and still wakes up at night to nurse." Night waking to nurse, even in older babies is considered unlucky, but quite normal and even expected behavior.

This attitude has most likely helped me more than I can ever know. As a student in school I was very performance driven, and in general am particularly susceptible to connecting my self-worth with my own perception of how well I am doing and how well the rest of the world thinks I am doing. Even without this predisposition I think it can be very easy for moms to get caught up in tying their own worth to their children in some way, seeing as almost all of your physical and mental energies are spent trying to nourish, grow and teach a new human being who will reflect you in the most fundamental sense. Even as I write this I am wrestling over whether or not to defend myself and give my hypotheses for why I think Ellie sleeps so poorly.

But I don't need to. There is good in every bad, right? Well the good in this whole thing (other than feeling like maybe I could hack it as a Navy Seal...sleep deprivation? pshaw, no problem) is that I am learning and re-learning some lessons. One is to be more confident and stand by my parenting decisions, because you're always going to be able to find someone who thinks you're doing things the wrong way. Two (or maybe 1-b) is that I am the expert when it comes to Ellie, not books, not doctors, and not anything on the internet.

Three is yet another reminder that doing a good job at mothering (or anything) doesn't make me Good. Maybe it does in my own eyes, or in the eyes of the world, but the only Judge who matters is God, and by His standard it is only through faith in Jesus Christ that I receive justification and can be considered Good. How many times will I have to learn this lesson? I suppose until it's really learned.

So, thank you! Taiwan, Thank you for helping me to accept the fact that Ellie doesn't yet sleep well without feeling like it is my fault or failure. Not that I am immune to these thoughts by any means, but I think living here has helped allay some of these feelings. And thank you for setting me free from my self-imposed standards, letting me enjoy the grace I have received and praise God all the more because of it.

A Real Conversation

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This conversation happened last Friday after the cockroach incident.

Kristie: (vacuuming, hears what may be a scream, turns off the vacuum to listen) Was that Ellie?

Jason: I didn't hear anything.

Kristie: I thought I heard her scream.

(sounds of furniture scraping across the floor)

Jason: Sounds like she's moving furniture. (goes to check things out)

Ellie: (squeals again and giggles hysterically at herself because she thinks she is so wonderful...more scraping)

Jason: She's moving that little end table across the TV room.

Kristie: Oh..okay...I was worried something else had scared her. (continues vacuuming)
PB1 - 2008-05-08 at 15-21-15.jpgSometimes, thinking about my child growing up in a foreign country is a little scary. How can she grow up not seeing fireworks on 4th of July? Not watching Charlie Brown hunt for a perfect Christmas tree? Will she think pizza is supposed to have corn on it? Will she end up preferring fried rice over hamburgers? Is being able to grow up learning Chinese really more important than hamburgers?

Then again, some of my worries are not really about being in a different country, but being in the city as opposed to the rural surroundings I grew up in. Will she know what cows even look like in real life? (or smell like?) Worse, will she be afraid of the "wilderness"?

Then I realize that Ellie can't possibly have, and probably doesn't need, the exact same childhood I had. Even if I raised her in the same town, the world keeps on changing and her Saturday morning cartoons wouldn't be the same ones I watched growing up.

There is one thing, however, that Jason and I felt was so critical to a happy childhood that it couldn't be overlooked or ignored: a deep-seeded love for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

In the first phase of our plan to indoctrinate Ellie with PB&J love, we introduced her to bread and all things made with flour. Now, I am happy to report, some of her favorite foods include bread, pancakes and noodles.

Then, a few weeks ago we bought a jar of Skippy (really I'm a JIFF fan, but Skippy's the only brand imported to Taiwan) and, all giddy with that parental expectation and excitement over giving your kid something fun and new, gave Ellie some bread with peanut butter on it. She sniffed it suspiciously, stuck her finger in it, took one taste and shoved the whole thing off her high chair tray. We started to get a little concerned.

We diligently continued to give Ellie some peanut butter every couple of days, until finally one day Jason reported that not only had Ellie liked her peanut butter that morning, but she kept licking it off her bread and giving him the bread back so he could smear on another layer. Woohooo! Success was ours! In fact, we were SO successful that we got our first taste of picky eating with Ellie refusing to eat her yogurt in the morning, continually pointing towards the kitchen until she got some bread with peanut butter on it.

Will I one day wonder why my child won't eat anything but peanut butter? Maybe so, but for now she's eating almost everything we give her, including her daily dose of peanut butter.

Here's some more cute pictures of Ellie with her Skippy jar, because I just couldn't choose. (Note: I did somewhat stage these pictures by handing her the jar of peanut butter, but Ellie did all the hamming up on her own.)

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Next up: Jelly.

A Flower for Sunday

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Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth!
    Sing out the honor of his name;
Make His praise glorious.
Say to God,
"How awesome are Your works!"
Psalm 66:1-3
Not the War on Terrorism. Not the War on Drugs.

It's the War on Cockroaches. Slinky. Dirty. Spiny. Sneaky. Germ-infested. Live through anything. Outlast anything. Disgusting. Cockroaches.

This is the story of our latest battle.

I was picking up in our bedroom, getting ready to vacuum. Ellie was sitting very nearby playing with something of interest. I casually picked up the shirt I had slept in the night before and then tossed on the floor that morning as I rushed around trying to get ready for school and inadvertently flushed out a cockroach who was apparently planning on making his nest in my nightshirt (!!!), bleh. He scuttled across the floor, skirted around Ellie's feet (inner cringe) and scurried out the door. It was so big I could hear his feet pattering on the floor.

I raced after, bound and determined to kill it. I don't know if it was because of my gasp and then holler, a desire to be in on the action, or just the intrinsic disgusting-ness of having a  cockroach run across your toes, but Ellie jumped up and followed me. The cockroach settled on a new dark home inside a hat Ellie had left on the hallway floor.

I told Ellie very sternly and in a freaked out voice to, "Stay there! Don't move!" She obeyed me. She didn't budge an inch. She was scared because she could tell I was scared, and looked a little like she was ready to cry.

My heart was going a mile-a-minute. I frantically looked around for a suitable whacking device within reaching distance. I didn't want to let that little bugger out of my sight. I settled on a Nalgene bottle that I had been using as a bookend. I let out my warrior yell, picked up the hat (flinging it a little to make sure the cockroach ended up on the floor, not running up my arm), and desperately started whacking away. I don't think my attempted "warrior yell" did much to mask my fear, because this is when Ellie screamed for real, waving her hands and did start to cry. Poor thing. She was terrified, and it was probably all due to seeing me so afraid and crazy-acting.

The Nalgene turned out to be a poor choice of whacking device. Not enough flexion. I didn't smash the creature, but I did manage to flip it onto its back, incapacitating it long enough to race over to the bathroom (two steps away), grab a wad of toilet paper and--cringing--smash it dead. Using a flimsy little wad of toilet paper to smash cockroaches is the worst because you can feel their bodies crunching. It's not a satisfying crunch.

Despite the fact that his abdomen was completely mush, he was still waving his beady eyes and antennae at me! Yu-uck! In an attempt to reassure Ellie and myself, I told her that we had got him. We threw him away in the toilet and flushed him down. I don't really liked to flush half-alive cockroaches down the toilet because I have a feeling they can survive the flushing and crawl back out. But, I had a terrified Ellie to calm down and really really didn't want to have to crunch it again.

In the end we prevailed over our enemy. Of course that's one down, 5,674 billion to go.

If you are one of those people who like reading about the horrifying things that happen to other people you can read more harrowing cockroach tales at my friend's blog, there are two stories: The Kitchen War and Files from the Roachagrin: The Leg Attack.

Alishan: The Flora

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"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." ~Matthew 6:28, 29

For me, the highlight of our trip to Alishan was seeing all the beautiful flowers in bloom. Alishan is famous for the cherry trees that bloom in early spring. We were too late to enjoy the cherry blossoms, but nature's beauty was certainly still on full display.

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A lacy snowflake and a cluster of bold trumpets.

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Lilac colored bell flowers (supposedly poisonous)....

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...and calla lilies were blooming everywhere we looked.

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We saw stalls selling fresh mountain produce like dragon's whiskers (pictured above) and wasabi. Wasabi requires pristine conditions to grow, and Alishan is one of the few places it can grow in Taiwan. We saw plenty of it for sale and are still kicking ourselves for missing the opportunity to buy some.


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Who takes pictures of dandelions? I do. Because this was the first dandelion I've ever seen in Taiwan and I thought it was special. In the mountains of Taiwan, as the elevation rises the climate changes from tropical to temperate and even alpine. The summit sees the very occasional snowfall in winter. This means that at the top of Alishan we are treated with seeing familiar plants and trees that grow in Vermont and Virginia. This is probably another reason why we have such a great love for Alishan.

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What's even better than dandelions? Clover flowers! They smell oh-so-sweet. What's even better than clover flowers? Clover flowers on steroids! Check out the size of those leaves, and the blossoms were a good inch in diameter.

And now, for a little of the strange and wonderful: tropical flowers we saw on our walk the second day after coming down the mountain.

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Zany red caterpillar flowers.

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Bananas!

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We call this a "parrot flower" because it looks like...well...a parrot.

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White orchids and pink orchids are the commonest of houseplants in Taiwan. I like this one because it is some kind of fun mixture of the two.

Alishan Day 2

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The main event of Day 2 was visiting a tribal village of the Zhou people, one of Taiwan's 14 indigenous tribes. We did more walking through the forest, saw the fish farm they run and where they practice hunting (with arrows!), ate aboriginal foods and watched a performance of traditional dances.

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My favorite part of the day happened before we even officially started, playing in the hotel parking lot with Ellie and Jason while we waited for the other students to pack their bags. Thanks to our little alarm-clock-special, our bags were ready to go before breakfast. After the morning mists cleared the mountain air was just glorious and I had a very sweet time picking clover flowers with my daughter and making them into necklaces for her. I have sweet sweet memories of my mom teaching me and my sister how to make clover flower necklaces when we were young, what a treat to be able to share this simple little pleasure with my own daughter on Mother's Day.

Alas, all good things (often) must come to an end, and down the mountain we went. Next up was more walking, just the scenery changed a bit. We were now looking up at the mountains and the plants were tropical and jungle-y as opposed to the temperate-zone plant life that we saw growing in the cooler temperatures on top of Alishan and in Taiwan's other high altitude regions (more on this tomorrow).

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The view from our trail.

We stopped by the river to look at and feed fish raised by the Zhou people. I was concerned it would be a challenge keeping Ellie out of the water. Turns out I had nothing to worry about, Ellie could have been occupied all day long trying to pick up all the pebbles.

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Ellie is in such a picking up/collecting phase. Everywhere we go she finds something - leaves, seeds, flowers, rocks -  to collect and carry with her.

Notice that Ellie isn't wearing any shoes in the picture above. Just as we were getting ready to head out the door and go on the trip it happened: we couldn't find ONE of Ellie's shoes. One was right were it should be, the other was in shoe Never-never Land. After half an hour of frantic searching (I even checked the freezer!) we had to either forget the shoes or not go on the trip at all. So I grabbed a couple of pairs of socks and Ellie got to be fancy free the whole weekend. (note: The day after we got back I found her other shoe in plain sight sitting on our bedroom floor. Must have been the Shoe Fairy.)

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"Oh thanks honey, you got me a rock for Mother's Day?!"

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Here's a clever way to barbecue: put everything on a hanging grill rack, then keep the rack swinging over a fire. On the grill are sausages and rice steaming inside bamboo sections. This "aboriginal rice" was so good! I had three servings that day.

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On a hanging bridge that spans the gorge and river. Someone was getting pretty sleepy by this time.

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Ellie revives to share some chocolate ice cream.

The last event on our agenda was watching Zhou traditional dances. Ellie had only had one short nap all day and by this time was running on too many cookies and excitement energy. There wasn't a chance she would sit still, so we traded off taking her outside to run around and watching the performance. The dances were very lovely, the harmonized singing was even lovelier.

Finally we all packed into the bus and headed back to the city. Almost four hours later (thanks to a traffic jam) we arrived back home worn out but refreshed.

A Real Conversation

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My sister and Mom talking about the pictures of Ellie jumping off our furniture.
(reproduced without permission from an email)

Amanda:  Ellie looks wild in those pictures.

Mom:  Kristie was wild like that.

Amanda:  It looked like Ellie was sweating!

Mom:  Kristie used to sweat like that.

Amanda: Oh, mom.

Alishan Day 1

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Over Mother's Day Weekend we went on a field trip with the Language Center to Alishan. I just love Alishan. For one, it is in the mountians and I love the mountains: fresh air! trees, trees, trees! cool temperatures! nature! beauty! (did I say fresh air?) Also, after finishing our first semester of Chinese (two years and a lifetime ago) Jason and I went by ourselves on a trip to Alishan. This was a huge stretch for our limited Chinese, and it seems that little adventure has endeared Alishan in my heart forever.

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We took a little train from the welcome center into the park. This may have been Ellie's favorite part of the trip. Notice that the windows are just the right height for her to look out of, plus they were open, letting us be refreshed by the cool mountain breezes.

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A CLC student nicknamed "Mr. Japan"

Everyone loves trains! Trains are one of Alishan's main attractions. (and now for a little history and trivia - sorry to bore you, but I love it!) Japan established rail access to Alishan in 1913 during its occupation of Taiwan in order to harvest cypress and other trees that grow on the mountain. The train going up Alishan is one of only three remaining steep-grade alpine trains in the world (I believe another is the Mt. Washington Cog Railway, for my New England readers).

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Here we go, into the "wilds" of Alishan. Not exactly serious mountain climbing (because we took a bus and a train to the top), more like a very pleasant walk in the woods. The scenic area of Alishan consists of a network of trails like this, letting one walk around and admire the trees, cherry blossoms in spring (planted by the Japanese to replace all the cypress trees they cut down), ponds, shrines and gardens.

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Another of Alishan's attractions are the giant cypress trees. The biggest are considered to be "spirit trees" and this one is supposed to by over 2000 years old. I'm not sure who determines this and how, but it certainly was impressively enormous.

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The picture above depicts, in my opinion, one of the specialties of hiking in Taiwan. To be sure, there is real mountain climbing in Taiwan, but popular mountain destinations look more like this: you take a paved path through the woods and arrive at a large paved area complete with a temple (right side of the picture) and stalls selling amenities such as water, tea, ice cream and the local specialty food (left side of the picture). I can't really complain too much about the disrupted atmosphere, it is nice not to worry about getting hungry or thirsty or needing a bathroom.

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Awww...these trees grew into the shape of a heart. Clearly, I'm not very self-aware because I really thought I was doing a good job a making my half. Even Ellie notices something is not right on my side! Oh well, it just goes to show that our love is not perfect, but a work in progress. (And maybe some of us need more work than others.)

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Jason with Teacher Bai in front of one of the ponds we passed on our walk.

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Three of our classmates (from Japan, Russia and Australia) in front of a thatched pavilion in built in the middle of the pond.

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A prize to whoever notices what is amiss in this picture.

Ellie (and I) was starving by the time our walk was over and we got back on the bus to head to our hotel. During the 15 minute ride she probably ate 20 cookies/crackers. Our language teachers kept giving them to her and she kept cramming them in her mouth. Her dinner was thoroughly spoiled, so as soon as I finished shoveling in mine we both went straight to bed to rest up for another day of mountain adventures.

Alishan Day 2 coming soon...

For my Mother, on Mother's Day

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This weekend we took a trip with the Language Center into the mountains of Alishan National Park; our little Temperate Zone away from home. On Saturday night while we were all sitting outside enjoying the cool evening air, two of our younger teachers taught us the first few verses of a traditional Chinese Mother's day song so that we could sing it to the other two teacher's who are also mothers. The melody is very beautiful. Needless to say it became quite an emotional affair with everyone reaching for their cell phones to wish their mother's a happy Mother's Day.

Here are the first few verses in my own translation:

Mother is like the moonlight,
radiating through my door and windows.
what immaculate benevolence!
sending forth love as brilliant rays.
Oh Mother! I love you.
I love you, you truly are amazing.


* the moon is female, and the sun male, in Chinese thought.

母親像月亮一樣
照耀我家的門窗
聖潔多麼慈祥
發出愛的光芒
母親啊!我愛妳
我愛妳,妳真偉大

Happy Mother's Day!

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Here's to two of the best mothers we know!

Momma T - 2007-06-30 at 05-39-41.jpg

Momma S - 2007-08-12 at 06-47-23.jpg

Thank you! and love from Kristie, Jason and Ellie!

A Real Wild Child

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Daredevil. Wild thing. Thrill-seeker. Adrenaline junkie. Ellie.

Her latest adventure? Base jumping off our furniture. She initiated this game one day by standing up in the chair then flinging her little body at me. Since then we've been trying (with little success) to teach her to wait until we say, "Ready!" before she jumps. (jump=stepping off the edge, she is practicing but hasn't yet mastered the art of jumping)

Base Jumping 2 - 2008-05-03 at 18-43-19.jpg
Mid-flight. Loving it. 

Ellie
likes to spice things up by jumping off to the side or pointing so we look away and jumping when she thinks we aren't ready. I even caught her putting one of our throw pillows (same one that clogged my washer) on the floor to create a landing space for herself. The pillow wasn't really big enough to fully pad her fall and I'm sure it must have hurt her because our marble floors, even with a rug, are very, very hard. She didn't cry though, I think she was too proud. (at least she hasn't tried that one again)


Base Jumping 3 - 2008-05-03 at 18-43-37.jpg
Yes, this is my wild daughter.
Washer - 2008-05-05 at 22-17-33.jpg
This is my cute little washer, filled to near half capacity with only two pairs of Jason's shorts. We give this thing a workout around here, on average I do two loads a day. It really only holds a day's worth of clothes for us, then add in diapers and towels and sheets and etc. and you get the two loads a day.

One of the better side-effects of my small washer is that I can't let laundry pile up--at least not too high. Of course, my hamper is also mini-sized (I think it's even smaller than the washer) so it is still always overflowing.

I have discovered that I actually like washing lots of small loads because it lets me sort my laundry beyond the standard lights and darks: I use "pants only", "undies only", "bright colors", "light colors" and "whites". Plus, I am rarely left trying to find clothes to fill out a load of delicates.

Another of my favorite features is the preset function. I can put in a load of laundry and the soap, then set the washer to go 6, 9, or 12 hours later. I love waking up to find a load of laundry already washed, just waiting to be popped in the dryer. (I've never seen this feature on American washers, but maybe that's just because I've only used older models.)

What don't I like about my petite washer? You may notice a conspicuous lack of agitator in the picture above. The drum still rotates and moves the clothes around, but they end up completely knotted together. Every time. Sometimes every single item is knotted into one big chain. Boo. Plus I suspect that my clothes aren't quite as clean as they could be. Oh well.

My least favorite thing: no water temperature choices. Cold water only. Forget about hot wash-warm rinse, warm-wash, warm-rinse, hot-wash, cold-rinse, and so on. If I really really need to wash with hot water (aforementioned diapers, sheets and towels) I have to fill up buckets of hot water and dump them into the washer myself. Boo again.

So what has prompted me to expound on my little washing wonder?

A very very serious event occurred.

I was washing diapers on a Saturday night (oh boy, my exciting life revealed) and the washer finished its cycle, but it forgot the spinning step. I set it to spin again and it whirled sluggishly, still leaving sopping wet diapers. Grrr. Let me tell you, wringing out 2 days worth of diapers is no party.

Enter: PANIC. "Washer broken. What-am-I-gonna-do. Washer broken. Is it fixable? How long will it take? Can we afford a new one? Okay, just breathe. Worse things could happen. But not many. Broken washer!!!!"

(that probably would have been a good time to reflect on the fact that I am fortunate to have a washer at all)

Before I was a mom, a broken washing machine would have been inconvenient. Now? A viable reason to do some real panicking. The prospect of hauling all our laundry to the laundromat several blocks away, possibly several times a day was, in a word: terrifying.

The very next day we started trying to get a hold of a repairman. Unfortunately it was some big worship day, complete with burning paper money and tables laid out with incense and food offerings. The repairman was at the temple ALL DAY LONG. Tick-tock-tick-tock. The laundry was already piling up. He finally came over to look at the washer at 10pm Sunday night (it couldn't wait until the next day). Started the spin cycle, it worked fine--of course, gave me a look that clearly indicated he thought I was a crazy woman, took our $5 and left.

Whoopee! I put a very small test-load of clothes right in (Ellie's bibs, which we had been out of for a day and a half). Happy washing. That is until the spin cycle, when my little washer starting doing crazy beeping with flashing lights. Egad. Not only was it not fixed, it was worse than before. This time the water hadn't even drained out! After several attempts of different cycle and time combinations, I finally tricked it into spinning. Clearly, this was not going to work on a daily basis. I wanted my $5 back.

I was too embarrassed to call our good-for-nothing repairman back. I tried washing another small load to see if I could figure things out myself. Same results. No draining. No spinning. In a moment of inspiration I pulled the drain hose out of the washer and whad'ya know! all that soapy water rushed out everywhere. Thankfully, my washroom floor hasn't been cleaned in about 10 years.

Turns out, when I had previously washed some of our throw pillows and one of them split open, some of the fuzz clogged up our drain tube. Our washer couldn't understand why the water wasn't draining which resulted in the beeping-flashing fit. Replace the drain tube, problem solved.

We are back in action, folks.

more ellie, more hats

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koolkat 1 - 2008-04-30 at 16-58-03.jpg

Remember the entry about Ellie playing with my hat? Here she is at it again.

koolkat 3 - 2008-04-30 at 16-57-36.jpg koolkat 2 - 2008-04-30 at 16-57-38.jpg
 This is part of what we had tonight for dinner:
long xu - 2008-05-01 at 17-10-45.jpg (in my wok, not yet cooked all the way). It is a type of green called "dragon's whiskers" (龍鬚). It gets its name because of the curly-q shoots it has.

What it reminds me of is the plant that peas grow on. Maybe it is for all I know, "dragon's whiskers" doesn't exactly translate into anything I am used to eating.

I have heard that it is super-nutritious, the evidence being it's bright green color and the fact that the color doesn't dim very much after cooking, indicating a retention of vitamins, anti-oxidants and other good-for-yous.

Maybe we should all be eating pea plants.

Tonight was the first time I have cooked this green. Despite the promise of supernutritionalvalue I was a little wary of the curly-q's, plus I thought it looked tough. What made me decide to buy it? Nothing. I was walking home when I ran into a neighbor clutching a bunch of dragon's whiskers. She asked me if I wanted some, emphasizing that they hadn't been sprayed with pesticides, and I said "sure" . I'm not one to turn down some free, fresh, quasi-organic, healthy food (that I don't even have to go out and get).

As it turned out, my plan to get our vegetable quota from a broccoli chicken casserole wasn't the greatest--we had a lot less leftover broccoli that I thought--so I needed some more vegetables. So dragon's whiskers it was!

The verdict: cooked up with a little garlic and soy sauce it was quite tasty, not bitter and not tough. I think it might become a regular of ours.

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