Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Chinese New Year recap

I didn't blog about my CNY for a couple reasons...
  1. I had to do a 報告 bao4 gao4 on it for my Chinese class. It was a 2 part assignment - the first was to hand in a written report. The second was to give an oral presentation on the last day of class. I didn't want to write it in English before writing it in Chinese. Some of my classmates write in English first and then translate it. But I like the idea of just thinking in Chinese. Some things just come out different due to the grammar.
  2. My CNY was relatively unexciting. While my local family went to Beijing, and my local friends went home, and my foreigner friends went to the beach (Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia), I stayed at home with PoPo and watched over Craig's cats (Zion and Amani) and Bodgy. I also started knitting a hat and reread Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I also did a lot of baking. Really, not much to write home about.
Chinese New Year in Taiwan means everyone gets about a week off. And as I found out, everything closes down and people vacate. Taipei becomes a dead city. On New Year's Day, there wasn't anyone else on the street. Usually it's quite crowded so to see the city dead was 很特別 (very special). The funny thing though was that Da Run Fa was incredibly crowded. It's a hypermarket open every day of the year. With nothing much better to do I took a stroll through there to see if I could find a bread pan (nope) - and to my surprise it was more packed than I'd ever seen it.

Once my friends got back we had a little get together and baked pizza one night and had a lamb roast another (I made a soup to go with - a variation on one of my favorite vegetarian soups I used to make back at the Greenlake house with Julie and Theresa).

I also attempted the Tommy's House-Taipei 101 hike again. This time we started from 101 and tried to get to Tommy's. We got there eventually but it definitely wasn't the most direct route, and included quite a bit of walking through a cemetery and then on the street in the end. This checked off one of the things I've been meaning to do since last year - which is to check out some of the hiking trails near 101. There's quite a maze, and I'd be interested in going back to do more of it. It's quite appealing since it's so close to the city - you could make a quick trip out of it if you didn't have time to do an excursion further away.

Baking
Banana Chocolate Yeast Bread
I usually make a Banana Quick bread, but I've been meaning to try a yeast version to taste the difference. So I finally made one - I have to say I like the quick bread version better. As soon as I get my hands on a bread pan, I'll make my favorite versions again.


Carrot Cardamom Bread
I wanted to make a Carrot Ginger bread but didn't have any ginger on hand and the local Wellcome didn't have any either. So I substituted cardamom instead. I don't think I used enough as the flavor wasn't strong enough (though it was very fragrant).

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