Combatting the January Blahs

Hello, dear friends.

It's that lovely time of the year I've always known as the January Blahs, which usually last into February but abate with the promise of spring. Do you know the feeling? Christmas has been packed away for another year and the credit card bills are rolling in. The weather has been generally gross. The cough and cold season is in full swing with everyone pulling out their bottles of hand-sanitizer and their face masks. (From what I've been told, Taiwan even made the international news recently from a stomach virus that turned epidemic. Thankfully, we've only had some minor sniffling around here.) Everyone is looking for something to shake things up, to break up the monotony of work, school, and dreary weather. Right about the time Houston was having its history-making ice storm, I actually got to feel a mild earthquake, so that provided some excitement for a day or so. Then, wouldn't you know it, the Blahs came back and we're all kind of moping around waiting for the sun to come out!

But lest you think we've lapsed into complete depression around here, we have had some fun things to celebrate. We've now passed our first 100 days in Taiwan! This was a mental milestone for me, partly because I have clung to the belief since we moved that if I could make it through the first 100 days, the next 100 would be easier. This seems to be true, in that I do feel much more at home in my surroundings and a lot of the shock has worn off. Secondly, passing the 100 day mark was a perfect excuse for creating our own holiday. We decided to mark day 101 of our new life here with our own Taipei 101 Day celebration, complete with a skyscraper cake meant to be the Taipei 101 building downtown. Yes, it does look more like an Aztec pyramid, but it was the best Barret and I could do! You'll also note that the kids are still in their pajamas at 4pm in the afternoon. Occassional all day pajama fests (Mom and Dad included) seem to be part of our prescription for the Blahs.

Another important family date this month: McLeod and I celebrated our 11th anniversary. In Taiwan, the year is 96 rather than 2007 because the Taiwanese use their founding year, 1911, as year one for their calendar. So that means that our anniversary fell on 13 January 96, which apart from the 19- before the year, is our actual wedding day. We celebrated with an American meal at Dan Ryan's Steakhouse, and I wore some sparkly-new, terribly uncomfortable but very cute shoes. Those of you who know that I live in running shoes will appreciate the effort. I looked very tall and svelte as long as I stood still and didn't try to hobble around too much.

McLeod and I also attended a Taiwanese-style wedding banquet recently. The wedding ceremony was a family-only affair followed by a large feast at one of the hotels downtown. Per custom, we brought along a red envelope containing an even-numbered amount of money (hong bao) for the couple. We had some help from the front desk staff here at the apartment in preparing the right amount (certain numbers are taboo, other numbers are extra lucky) and making sure that our bills looked new. When we arrived at the banquet, we gave this to a wedding attendant who sat at the front door and dutifully recorded the names and amounts of each gift-giver. Once inside we were seated with some of McLeod's colleagues and had a great time learning the meanings behind the different foods that were served. Each of the twelve courses was meant to help ensure good luck, prosperity, etc. for the couple. I was very brave and tried almost everything except for the bamboo fungus. (I have a hard time eating things that look like two-week-old leftovers from the bottom shelf of my refrigerator.) There were a few speeches and the majority of the toasts were made by the bridal party, who walked around to each table to raise glasses with the guests. We were very honored to be included, and I had fun comparing cultural notes with one of my Taiwanese friends.

February is already looking interesting with a visit to a KTV (Taiwanese karoake) coming up, an all-day cross-cultural training class for McLeod and me, and preparations for Chinese New Year. I've started writing some for a magazine that caters to the expat community here, so we're hoping that will spur us to explore the island more in the upcoming months. Hope all of you are making it through the winter doldrums with visions of spring dancing in your heads. It will be here before we know it!

Happy New Year!!

Can you believe it's 2007! We rang in the New Year here in Taipei watching fireworks from our balcony, and we even got to call a few loved ones just after midnight here to let them know 2007 had actually arrived and looked great so far. Now we are slowly getting back into the routine of school and work after a wonderful three weeks off. We are also still reliving memories of our fantastic Christmas trip.

On December 20th over Barret's birthday pancakes, we finally got to spill the beans to the kids about our plans to take them to Hong Kong for a week. We were there from Dec. 24 to Dec. 30th, and it still amazes me that we just saw The Actual Hong Kong! Incidentally, we missed the Taiwan earthquake on Dec 26th, though it virtually destroyed Hong Kong's Internet service for the rest of the week. For us, having a forced break from email wasn't a bad thing, and we were relieved and thankful that the quake wasn't devastating to Taiwan.

While in Hong Kong, we pretty much did EVERYTHING. We rode ferry boats, sky trams, cable cars, subway trains, and scary-fast taxi cabs. We saw the view from Victoria Peak, the giant pandas at Ocean Park, the laser light show on the harbor, and all those crazy vendor stalls at Stanley Market. One lovely afternoon we stopped in at a British pub called the Boathouse for a quick thristquencher then headed for the beach at Repulse Bay just before sunset to capture some pictures (and quite a bit of sand in our clothes).

Did I mention that I also got to go to Hong Kong Disney, ride on stuff with my kids, and see the fireworks show that included real fire shooting off the top of Sleeping Beauty's castle? I'm a bit of a fireworks (and Disney) junkie, so at one point I must have let loose a particularly loud, "WOW!" because the Asian families around me all turned around and started laughing. It was a pretty great Christmas present. We'll be thanking "Santa McLeod" for quite awhile.

As for Christmas in Asia, we were surprised at how much Christmas spirit there was here in Taiwan. Most of the stores and our apartment complex put up trees and strung lights and banners with things like "Hearty Christmas!" and "We are open Christmas and Happy New Year!" For our friends in the computer industry: we found out why there was that global shortage in blue LEDs this year. They used them here in all the decorations. No, not blue Christmas light bulbs but actual computer LEDs that blinked in complex patterns all over town.

Santa is very big here, too. One of our favorite department stores decorated around the roof and sides of the building with several long, skinny Santa's made of parachute material. They kind of looked like they were either escaping over a prison wall or perhaps preparing a ninja assualt on someone inside, but we were happy to see the guys in the red suits nonetheless. McLeod, as honored Meiguoren (Chinese for American) and the only one uh...statuesque enough to pull it off, was drafted to play office Santa at the Christmas party complete with snug red suit and white beard. Poor guy had just gotten off a plane from the States after roughly 24 hours of travelling and had lovely red eyes to match the suit. (By the way, he wants me to mention that seeing his belly in a Santa suit has motivated him to start running again and that he has Nike+iPod shoes that are tracking his progress on nike.com for anyone that wants to compete against his running totals.)

As for the real reason for the season, the references to Christ and his birth were small, but we were very blessed by them - a live nativity scene at the park, free Chinese Bibles placed in a lobby, Christmas carols (the real ones like "O Holy Night") playing at Disney, gatherings of people at the few churches. One of the most moving memories for me was at a small ladies bible study I visited in mid-December. Ten or twelve of us were gathered at a table, women from all over the world. We decided to sing some Christmas carols together and when we got to the German carol "Silent Night," I glanced over at one of the ladies from Germany. Tears began streaming down her face. That combination of being far from home in body yet close in spirit got to me, too, and by the time we were singing one of my favorites, "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," I was fighting back tears. There is also nothing quite like singing the phrase, "Joyful, all the nations rise; Join the triumph of the skies," with friends from across the globe!