Fitting In

So, I've been here in Singapore for a little over 4 months already - time really flies!  I think I'm finally starting to settle in and make Singapore my new home.

Andy has been here a month longer, and maybe a little better adjusted than me.  One of the big adjustments for him is switching from working in an office to working at the plant.  Part of working at the plant involves going out to the buildings, for which he's got to wear his nomex suit, which is flame-resistant.  These suits are special ordered, so it takes a bit of time to arrive.  While he's been waiting for his suit to arrive (yes it's been 5 months and it has not arrived yet), he's been wearing this:

Notice something funny? How 'bout a closer look...

Yup, his suit says:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you can just call me Mrs. Leong from now on.  Andy loves Singapore so much that he's taken on a new name to better assimilate.  After all, Sokolik is just too hard to pronounce for most Asians.  I'm not even sure my own father can say it...

Andy actually told me yesterday that his suit arrived, but that it has the name "Andrew Sololik".  So....it's back to the tailor.  Hope it doesn't take another 5 months!

Good Eats

Just when you thought I was done blogging about Taiwan, I felt it deserved one more post - one dedicated solely to the glorious culinary delights I got to consume.  After all, eating is what Chinese people do best!

First, we start at the market - 

The fresh noodle lady at the market - fresh noodles are amazing!  Can't get this in the states.

The fish vendor 

Fruits and Veggies - forgot to get photos of my favorite exotic fruits - guava and rose apples!

Now, on to night market foods:

The grilled corn men - they take corn, grill it and coat it with Chinese BBQ sauce.  The kernels become chewy and are so tasty with the sauce.

Andy ready to chomp into his corn.

The stinky tofu lady - apparently she is one of the more famous stalls at the night market.  The tofu was so good! Very stinky, but crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

Owa Misua - rice noodle soup.  This stuff was amazing - made even better because it was chilly outside so the hot soup warmed me up.

Shaved snow ice - this stuff is way better than the traditional shaved ice.  They shave it in a magical way so that the ice feels soft and creamy in your mouth...almost like ice cream.

We went to the National Palace Museum and grabbed lunch in between browsing.  We had noodles, fried shrimp rolls, and other Taiwanese street snacks (I can't remember the names).

We spent a day in Danshui and ate some local specialties.  Stir fried noodles, some meat dumplings, tofu stuffed with vermicelli, and the famous Danshui fish ball soup.

For New Years Eve, we stayed in and had a big family dinner.  We had some yummy hot pot and my uncle pulled out all the stops and got two lobsters! 

My little cousin, anxiously ready to dip into the goods.

Now I'm finally done posting about my trip to Taiwan....a couple of weeks after the fact! Anyway, better late than never.  One more thing to share - I finally opened up a Flickr account and will be posting my pics in albums there.  I had noticed my pictures were not very clear when I loaded them straight to blogger so I did some testing and found that they look much better when I load them from Flickr.  So now you can go to this album to check out all the pics!

Chinese New Year: Taiwan Version cont'd

Now, for the other part of our trip to Taiwan...

On New Year's Eve, we spent the day wandering around the International Flora Expo.   Apparently, it's the must see event in Taiwan this year.  There are certain exhibitions that you have to wait in line at 5 a.m. to get tickets to enter.  We obviously did not do that, but we checked out the outdoor displays and exhibitions with short lines.

Floral Whales

I thought it was pretty cool that they had water spraying out of the whale.

Cactus land!

This was a poem with a translation....I think the meaning was definitely lost in translation...

It reminds me of those funny sweatshirt/sweatpant outfits from Taiwan that my mom used to make me wear when I was little....They would say things like "Happy bear always fun" or "Lover is in the air" or something to that effect.

I think maybe they should've hired a better translator...

Here are some close ups of the flowers.  Roses and orchids are my favorites!

The chess player bushes...If you notice in the left background, they even have grass bricks!

In the middle of the exhibition, there were some fake mini-mountains we climbed.

There were fields and fields of flowers, smelled so good!

They even had these funny flowers made out of plastic spoons!

After the Flora Expo, we had hot pot dinner with the family and played mahjong all night.

Playing Mahjong was great for Andy learning Chinese - he now knows not only how to say the numbers 1-9, but he can read them in Chinese too!  Not to mention he can read North, East, South, West, (though hasn't quite matched the characters to meanings) and a few other characters...You never know when you might use those words....

Here's the whole family

After dinner, we went downstairs and lit some sparklers and roman candles.

Here I was trying to write "Love", but instead, I got "Lovo"....close enough I suppose.  I kinda like this picture because there's so much going on.  I'm trying to write a message, my cousin is watching while someone else is shooting off some fireworks.  

During the rest of our stay, we visited a couple more places.

Here's Taipei 101 - the world's second tallest building.  I took this picture one night when we walked by, but we visited during the daytime and went to the top.

Here's Andy checking out the view on top of Taipei 101.


My little cousin taking a look with a little help from the binoculars.

Saw this person walking her dog in the Taipei 101 area...I can't believe someone actually put shoes on their dog...or should I say - I can't believe they actually MAKE shoes for dogs...

We also went to Beitou where there are the famous hot springs.  This is the view of the Thermal Valley.  They used to be able to boil eggs in this, but it's fenced off now since it's too hot...the water was actually bubbling it was so hot!

We had a really fun time in Taiwan and enjoyed spending time with friends and family.  I pretty much ate the entire trip and am now having withdrawal from some of my favorite foods.  I'm pretty sure I gained quite a few pounds over the couple of weeks - now I understand why people were warning me about Chinese New Year being a crazy time.  It's pretty much like Thanksgiving and Christmas combined in the states!  Being away from my family in the states is tough, but being able to spend time with my family in Taiwan really made me feel alot better.  For now, I'm fueled up with family love until the next visit!

Chinese New Year: Taiwan Version

So, as you know, I spent Chinese New Year in Taiwan this year with my family.  I'm so glad that we did because it really made up for the lack of Thanksgiving and Christmas last year.  However, I did learn one big lesson, I left my a/c off for two weeks and when I got home...there was mold growing on all of my wicker baskets....ICK!  Guess I have to figure something out next time.

Anyway, on to happier things, here's a recap of my visit to Taiwan.  I went a week earlier than Andy and spent time hanging out with Grandma, my aunts, uncle, and cousins.  I got to relax, go shopping, and eat a ton of food.  Grandma made all the dishes I wanted to eat and my aunts bought me all my favorite breads, pastries, and cakes.

Me and my aunt enjoying some yummy pasta.

It's been awhile since I've been back to Taiwan, 9 years to be exact....I forgot how deliciously good and wonderfully cheap all the food is!  Some of you are probably wondering how I could possibly do that??  I don't know either.  So for for the two weeks, I just ate, ate, and ate some more.

When Andy arrived, I got to show him around all the cool places in Taipei.  Starting with...the local market!  Most people would hate going here, it's crowded, smelly, dirty, and loud.  But, if you know me and my family, we never get tired of browsing the market - every day.  There are always different vendors each day and wonderful deals to be found.  My best deal of the trip?  I picked up a pair of pants, a jersey knit summer dress, and a cardigan for US$5! Score!

Andy in front of the chicken slaughter booth.
We now know more about killing chickens than we ever wanted to.

You can find some really strange items for sale at the market....like a pig's face...

Do people seriously eat this??

I also took Andy to a different kind of market - Taiwan's famous night markets!  We went to the largest and perhaps most famous one called Shilin Night Market.  There we met up with our friends, the Tings who were also visiting Taipei.  It was so much fun catching up with them, meeting some new friends, and eating some great food!

Shilin Night Market

The smelly tofu lady.  Wonder if she's wearing the mask because of the stinky smell...:-) This stuff is smelly, but so tasty!

Owa Misua (or however you spell it) - basically rice noodle soup with some unrecognizable "spare parts". I ate all the noodles, leaving Andy to down the spare parts.  What a great wife I am! (more like what a great husband he is...haha!)

The Tings - the (relatively) newlyweds!

Next up - The National Palace Museum.  This is my first time visiting and we had a fun time browsing the collection.  We got to see the famous jadeite cabbage - which is a cabbage carved out of jade.  It's really popular amongst the Chinese and they sell every souvenir you can think of with a cabbage attached in the gift shop.  For example, cabbage bottle opener, cabbage cell phone charms, cabbage keychains, and even cabbage ear pickers! 

We are ready to take on the museum!  I'm trying to put on an extra peppy face here because undoubtedly a couple hours into the museum, I will because tired, hungry, and grumpy....happens every time.  Luckily the museum had a cafe :-)

Jumping in front of the museum.  This picture was not a great pic since it's kind of blurry and the color is kind of washed out.  So, I decided to make it black and white - it makes a decent picture this way!

Hopefully, people don't think I'm disrespecting the great Chiang Kai Shek.  While I was taking this picture, I half expected a guard to come running out yelling at me.

Self portrait in front of the museum.

Me and one of the decorations on the roof.

On another day, my friend Burch came up from Kaoshiung and we explored Danshui together.  We stopped at a restaurant for lunch and this was their solution to napkin dispensers:

Kinda reminiscent of a cow....

We walked along the streets of Danshui until we came to Fort San Domingo.  It's kind of funny that a fort would have a Spanish name in Taiwan, but I guess at one point, the fort was occupied by the Spanish.  It was also occupied by the Dutch, hence these:

We could probably sail to Holland in these!

Here we are having some fun:

The funniest part of the day was that we randomly ran into someone we knew from NJ in Danshui:

So, BCTC friends - extra points if you recognize this guy!  

It's Da Yie Lang Shu Shu (a.k.a. the Big Bad Wolf Uncle)!  When we were little, this uncle would chase us around church and play with us.  I don't think I've seen him in over 10 years and he still looks exactly the same!  It was so crazy that we just randomly ran into him in Taiwan.

Well, I tried to combine the whole trip into one post, but this is really getting to be another epic post.  It's getting late (for me) and so I'm off to bed.  Sometimes, it just takes me forever to post because I take way too many pictures and have difficulty narrowing them down.  So, that's it for now, I'll finish up later!