Goodbye, Year of the Dog and Hello, Year of the Pig! There's nothing quite like celebrating the new year with friends and a foot massage! With schools and offices closed for a week, we've had a chance to try some new things. Yesterday, McLeod (happily) endured his first traditional Chinese reflexology foot massage, and while there were some moments when he nearly yelped with pain, his feet felt fantastic afterwards. 
February 18 marked Day One of the Chinese lunar year and the first day of Spring, and though it is now nearly the end of the month, the celebrations continue, with fireworks and loud, crackling strings of Chinese firecrackers sounding off all day and most of the night. Chinese tradition holds that the fireworks scare away monsters, but I'm pretty sure most folks also think it's a whole lot of fun. We even launched a few fireworks ourselves on New Year's Eve, with a certain group of expat hubbies deciding to sneak down and set off the leftover stockpile at 2am a few nights later. They thought they were blending in with the other Taiwanese revellers. However, American voices shouting "WoooHooo!" and "Fire in the Hole!" pretty much gave away who they were. They were only in the doghouse (pighouse?) a little while, though, because it was awfully funny. Though offices and schools are only shut down this week, the festivities continue for 15 days total, ending with the Latern Festival on March 4th. I'm guessing that March 5th will be the first night I sleep really well! The kids have had a ball, especially since friends have given them red envelopes of money and that people everywhere have candy sitting out. They even agreed to dress up a bit for some CNY pictures. Getting a picture of them both standing still and smiling at the same time is always a bit of a challenge, especially since they make me laugh and so, jiggle the camera. Singing our hearts out at KTV
Leading up to Chinese New Year, I was busy on assignment for Centered on Taipei magazine, writing about KTV, the much-beloved Taiwanese past time of singing with friends in a karaoke studio. I really wasn't sure what to expect as I arranged a Girls' Night Out at PartyWorld KTV. I had been assured by sources (i.e. the COT editor) that we would find PartyWorld to be a fun, safe, classy environment. I still imagined a rather smoke-filled lounge with American Idol Wannabe's stumbling onto stage, propelled by liquid courage. Instead, fellow moms and I were pleasantly surprised to be ushered into our own private party room where we could dine, chat, laugh and of 
course, sing our way through roughly 60 songs over four hours. Since most of the music (at least the songs we knew) was from the 80s and early 90s, we also had a great time talking about albums we'd wanted to buy as kids, laughing about prom themes, and remembering all those late nights at college. It was a nice break from the daily routine of fixing dinner and helping with homework, and it turned out to be a great bit of bonding for a group of strangers in a strange land. Salt and Bread (and only a little frost bite)Last night brought another new experience for us: Russian cuisine plus drinks at sub-zero temperatures. As our final hurrah before returning to work, several couples decided to try out Salt and Bread. This Russian cafe featured good food (lots of saurkraut-and-potato-garnished beef and sausages, caviar appetizers, and tummy-warming soups) and a first-rate bakery and ice cream bar. The highlight was a freezer-turned-vodka-bar where patrons could bundle up in giant parkas and get a feel for those Siberian nights. My Deep South constitution allowed me to last about 5 minutes in the ice bar, even with the parka, before I headed back out to my warm sausage dumpling soup and beef stroganoff, but some of my New England counterparts were braving the cold in their shirt sleeves by night's end. (I'm pretty sure I heard them say something like, "We're from New England. We laugh at the cold.") As an added bonus, one member of our party won the lucky draw for roughly a case of Russian Baltika beer for our group to take home. Perhaps we'll break it out and reminisce about those long, cruel months in the salt mines? 
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! 
Goodbye, Year of the Dog and Hello, Year of the Pig! There's nothing quite like celebrating the new year with friends and a foot massage! With schools and offices closed for a week, we've had a chance to try some new things. Yesterday, McLeod (happily) endured his first traditional Chinese reflexology foot massage, and while there were some moments when he nearly yelped with pain, his feet felt fantastic afterwards. 
February 18 marked Day One of the Chinese lunar year and the first day of Spring, and though it is now nearly the end of the month, the celebrations continue, with fireworks and loud, crackling strings of Chinese firecrackers sounding off all day and most of the night. Chinese tradition holds that the fireworks scare away monsters, but I'm pretty sure most folks also think it's a whole lot of fun. We even launched a few fireworks ourselves on New Year's Eve, with a certain group of expat hubbies deciding to sneak down and set off the leftover stockpile at 2am a few nights later. They thought they were blending in with the other Taiwanese revellers. However, American voices shouting "WoooHooo!" and "Fire in the Hole!" pretty much gave away who they were. They were only in the doghouse (pighouse?) a little while, though, because it was awfully funny. Though offices and schools are only shut down this week, the festivities continue for 15 days total, ending with the Latern Festival on March 4th. I'm guessing that March 5th will be the first night I sleep really well! The kids have had a ball, especially since friends have given them red envelopes of money and that people everywhere have candy sitting out. They even agreed to dress up a bit for some CNY pictures. Getting a picture of them both standing still and smiling at the same time is always a bit of a challenge, especially since they make me laugh and so, jiggle the camera. 
Leading up to Chinese New Year, I was busy on assignment for Centered on Taipei magazine, writing about KTV, the much-beloved Taiwanese past time of singing with friends in a karaoke studio. I really wasn't sure what to expect as I arranged a Girls' Night Out at PartyWorld KTV. I had been assured by sources (i.e. the COT editor) that we would find PartyWorld to be a fun, safe, classy environment. I still imagined a rather smoke-filled lounge with American Idol Wannabe's stumbling onto stage, propelled by liquid courage. Instead, fellow moms and I were pleasantly surprised to be ushered into our own private party room where we could dine, chat, laugh and of 
course, sing our way through roughly 60 songs over four hours. Since most of the music (at least the songs we knew) was from the 80s and early 90s, we also had a great time talking about albums we'd wanted to buy as kids, laughing about prom themes, and remembering all those late nights at college. It was a nice break from the daily routine of fixing dinner and helping with homework, and it turned out to be a great bit of bonding for a group of strangers in a strange land. 
