Christmas In Taiwan

  I hope everyone had a great Christmas this year. Our Christmas in Taiwan was very different from our usual Christmas in many ways but we tried hard to give Noah a normal Christmas. I think he had a good time. Packages started arriving from family in the U.S. and Noah started to get excited! On Christmas eve we brought our little tree in and decorated it.

 

On Christmas day, Noah and I, had to wait all day for Justin to come home to open gifts. Those nine hours were very hard for Noah :)  Finally at 5:30 it was time to dig into all of these gifts.

Noah is so ready to tear open the boxes. But first we need some pictures.

Justin received gifts from his students and fellow teachers from the school. They brought him cheese and coffee!!!! For us this is a huge deal because to go buy these things we would have an hour trip to the Costco. So we just do without cheese and Starbucks most of the time.

The only thing Noah asked for, besides a plane ticket home, was Gundam's. There are three in this box and he was so excited.

After gifts we headed to our favorite restaurant  The food is good but it is the company that makes this a wonderful Christmas.

Many yummy things to eat! In the front are two bowls of Wanton Soup. Behind the soup are seaweed and eggs on the left and rice with gravy on the right. Behind those dishes are beef tenderloin on the left and tofu on the right. So Yummy. This is the kind of food we eat most days.

Above is Noah's favorite Taiwan dish... Pineapple fried rice! He would eat this every day if we let him.

Below is my favorite dish. It is a green vegetable, not sure which one, with a little sauce on top!

Group picture! Great memories made this Christmas!

This is how most of Taiwan gets around. 

Playing in the dirt

This weekend we were invited by several teachers to attend an event that is held almost every year. Many people get together and play in the dirt! OK maybe that is not the goal but that is most definitely one of the many things going on here. We arrived around 8am to set up our tent area and pick out our clay area. When Justin found out he was going to be playing in the dirt and building something he became very excited. It has only been 5 or 6 months since he last built something but he is missing it very much. 

 This is what it looked like when we arrived! No smoke yet and very few people.

 Noah is a little hesitant about what is going on today.

 Justin is ready to dig in! See that silly grin on his face :)

 Noah is making clay blocks for Justin.

 Starting to take shape... It even has a nice little door on the front (just below Justin's hands)

 Adrian, Noah's classmate, and Noah. This is Adrian's earth stove.  Adrian is one of our great friends.

 Justin and Jeff inspecting the oven. Not quite done it still needs a top. Jeff is another of our good friends...

 I am sorry I can't remember his name but he is the Boy Scout teacher at Noah's school. He is a great guy and that is his wife next to him. They are always so friendly to us.

 These two little angels are strangers. They were so curious about us that they just had to come say hi. They don't speak a bit of English but that didn't stop us from communicating with each other. Later in the day they would be big helpers for Noah's build project. Such sweethearts.

 Finally! It is finished and ready to start a fire! Once the fire is very hot you put in your food. Such as potatoes, Chicken, Corn on the cob, Eggs then knock it down so it will cook under the clay.  When it is done, hours later, you dig out the food.

 These pretty ladies wanted to take their picture with Noah.... Such a stud!

 This is not part of our group but it was picture worthy!

 Justin wanted to build the biggest structure and when he was almost done it collapsed :(

 This is what it looked like while everyone was cooking. The smoke was so bad I had to leave the cooking area.

 Erin and Apple playing games. Justin and I tried this game and we spent an hour playing but still didn't figure it out. When we get home we are going to play with our families.

 Noah found a piece of scrap wood that looked kind of like Arkansas! He put it outside of his building project. The girls are helping him out with out using any words.

 I feel very blessed to spend our weekend with all of  our friends from Taiwan. Everyone we meet is so friendly and willing to help us or bring us along so that we aren't lonely. I didn't show you but at one point the crowd around our family was huge. Everyone wanted to have their pictures taken with us. Any tent you walked by was offering us food or drink. The people we meet in Taiwan will stay in our hearts forever. Although we still have seven months until we leave I am already a little sad about leaving our new friends behind. 

It is days like this that I am so thankful to be in Taiwan! 

Digging for clams

Sorry everyone that it has been a couple of weeks since my last update. Two weekends ago we were invited to go to the ocean to collect barnacles for a school project. It was lots of fun, a little cold and a little rainy. The first part of our adventure was to climb into the back of a tractor/truck bed and then we went down to the beach. We had to take that tractor because it won't get stuck on the sand.

 This is where we are going. Somewhere out there is a place to dig for clams and we will be able to find some barnacles as well.

 This is the tractor/truck vehicle that brought us down to the beach.

 Time to get to work.

 Noah found one!

 They are pretty easy to find! We had to get a bag for all of them.

 Justin found a cute little crab.

 Now we are at the oysters fields.

 Noah found this one on the ground. It has green clams on it. They are so pretty.

 Noah found a very tiny crab. It is smaller than his fingernail!

  Justin learning how to open the oysters correctly.

 This is our bounty for the day!

An evening with friends

When we thought about moving to Taiwan I wondered what they did for fun. It never occurred to me that we would go bowling while in Taiwan. On this past Sunday our friend, Adrian, brought us and a few students from Yingpei to go bowling. They even had shoes that fit although finding a light weight ball with finger holes big enough for our fingers was harder to find. We had a blast!

 After bowling we decided to go shopping. We went to a place called "Taiwan Times Village". It is a huge building that is filled with many smaller stores and restaurants. Many are themed and there is also an entertainment area where they preformed a Christmas skit. There were lots of workers dressed up in costume and many historical things to see.

 This was a wooden statue or so we thought. Then he moved! He was very good. I have seen these kind of performers before but they were always silver or gold, never wood.

 Noah wanted to give him some money so he dumped all of the change from his pocket into the box. The guy pretended to want more so Noah pulled his pockets inside out to show him there was no more.

 This statue is supposed to be of an aboriginal witch. She sure is scary.

 An interesting piece of artwork hanging in one of the stores.

 Oh no!! Noah found a candy shack... Gummy bears for him.

Justin and Adrian posing with a god. Justin wishes he could grow facial hair like that!

 Later they preformed a Christmas skit. It was very interesting and we enjoyed it. You can see the video on youtube @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDG1KvUu8tQ&feature=g-upl

 They even brought out the big guns... Winnie the Pooh!

 After the shopping and the Christmas skit we decided to eat dinner. The food was so good that we took pictures of it for you.  Great good and good friends, that is how we are going to make it through this year.

 Good times!

 Spicy fried pork chop with rice, soup and a steamed egg.

 Fried pork wrapped around cheese bacon and veggies, rice and a steamed egg

 Fried pork chop with rice and curry

 Hot fruit tea with orange custard yogurt for me.

 Sesame ice-cream and hot milk tea for Justin.

 Fruit tea with an orange custard yogurt for Noah.

 The restaurants really wanted everyone to fill out a survey on your experience. Of course it was in Chinese which we still can't read so Adrian filled his out and we copied it!