Chick Night

I hosted a chick night the other night and decided to make cream puffs for dessert. I just about always work on dessert first before entrees and appetizers. I find that if you've got a dessert ready and everything else sucks, well at least you can end on success. It's a bit of an Amelia Bedelia safety net. The first time I made cream puffs was for our Greenlake housewarming party with Theresa and Julie. They were surprisingly easy to make and tasty, too. So I gave another go of it.

My camera ran out of batteries and after recharging I forgot to snap a picture. But they were OK looking. Just trust me.

Cream Puffs
Custard Filling

• 1/2 c sugar
• 5 T all-purpose flour
• pinch of salt
• 2 c milk
• 2 egg yolks, beaten
• 1 t vanilla extract

Pastry

• 1/2 c butter
• 1 c water
• 1 c all-purpose flour
• 1/4 t salt
• 4 eggs

Chocolate Topping

• 1/2 c semisweet chocolate chips

For the custard
You can make this a day ahead to chill in the refrigerator.

1. In a small saucepan, combine sugar, flour and a pinch of salt.
   
2. Stir in milk, a little at a time, until smooth.
   
3. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil 60 seconds, then pour a small amount of hot liquid into the 2 egg yolks, and stir.
   
4. Return now heated egg yolks to saucepan and stir, over heat, until mixture starts to bubble again.
   
5. Remove from heat, add vanilla. Cover and chill in refrigerator.

Pastry
How do you get the space in the center? The dough rises by itself! At a high temperature, the pastry rises, and then the rest of the time is drying it out so it holds its shape. Easy peazy!

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C)
2. In a medium saucepan, combine butter and water and bring to a boil.
   
3. Sift together 1 cup flour and a pinch of salt and pour all at once into boiling mixture.
   
4. Stir vigorously until mixture forms a ball. Remove from heat, let sit 5 minutse.
   
5. Add eggs, one at a time, stirring vigorously after each addition.
   
6. Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto baking sheet, or pipe into desired shape.
7. Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven, then reduce heat to 400F/200C and bake 20 minutes more, or until golden.
   
8. Cool completely.
   

Chocolate Topping
This step is optional, but seriously, who wouldn't want their puff with chocolate?

1. Melt chocolate chips in microwave or slowly over low heat.

Cream Puff Assembly

1. Use a chopstick to poke a hole in the pastry.
   
2. Pipe the custard in. You can use a ziplock bag and cut off a tiny bit of the corner.
   
3. Optionally, you can cut off the top of the pastry, use a spoon to fill it with custard and replace the top.
   
4. Cover with melted chocolate.
   
5. Serve immediately or refrigerate.
   

I also made homemade burger buns (see below), burger patties (ground beef, chopped onions, worcestershire sauce, dried chili powder, fresh ground black pepper, salt), sesame noodles, and a fresh mozzarella salad.


Burger Buns

• 2 1/4 t yeast
• 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon dried onion flakes or 1 tsp.onion powder -- optional
• 2 tablespoons butter -- melted
• 1 egg
• 1 cup warm water (100-105 deg.)

1. Place ingredients into bread machine in the order required by the manufacturer. Run the Dough cycle.
   
2. Turn out onto floured surface and knead by hand 1-2 minutes. Add more flour if too sticky.
3. Divide the dough into 10 pieces. Slap the dough into bun shape -- flattened balls, 4-7" in diameter. Put buns on a lightly oiled cookie sheet and let rise about 30-40 minutes.
4. Optional: Glaze the buns with the egg yolk and 1 t water mixture, then sprinkle with sesame seeds.
5. Bake in 375F/190C oven 12-15 minutes or until golden.

Last Week of Shida

This was my last week at Shida for the quarter. Our class finished up Chapter 9 in Book 3, 2nd edition and got started on 10. During the week I ran into 3 out of my 4 previous teachers. One of them just got a job at Mt Holyoke. She'll be gone for 3 years...which is good for them, but bad for us. She was an excellent teacher for the time I had her as a substitute.

Today we watched a strange movie in class. The morning class had leftover fruit and Pringles. One of the Jimmy's brought in peanut treats from Jinmen, and another brought in bags of popcorn and tea. Since I woke up late and missed breakfast I pigged out quite a bit. Just before class ended my left eye started getting a blind spot in the middle. Sign of an oncoming migraine. I was pissed because, well, migraines pretty much always suck. But also b/c I was going to meet my language exchange partner and have lunch at one of my favorite beef noodle shops. Instead I went to bed and tried to sleep it off. I woke up at 5 feeling better. My head still has the leftover pounding feeling, but nothing like the intense part during the peak of the migraine. It should be gone in 24 hours.

Earlier in the week I went in with a friend to inquire about signing up for classes. Jenny, the English speaking office worker, told us that they were no longer accepting new students and were even having trouble finding enough teachers to fulfill all the private tutoring requests.

YangMingShan

Last weekend, I went to YangMingShan to celebrate Dan's birthday. We had a beautiful guest house to ourselves overlooking the mountain. We spent the night soaking in the hot springs (diverted into a small tub in the house), eating burgers and cake, and even playing one of my favorite games - Twister. In the morning, we enjoyed the clean air, fresh fruit and yummy bagels. We did a short hike to a waterfall and cooled off in the water. It was quite chilly but in a nice refreshing way.

Note: Catch Bus 260 from across Jiantan MRT station to the terminal station.

Blabberings

Mangos
Mangoes are back in season! Geoff got me some from Costco that were monstrous in size.


I took these pictures to show my dad. From the first pictures you can see one part cut off from the seed...it's definitely bigger than my hand. And in the third, look how thin the seed is! I love mangoes that are all meat.

There are "regular" type mangoes in the fruit markets - these are hit or miss in terms of sweetness but always juicy. And by regular I mean what's normal for Taiwan but nothing you'd ever find in America.

MRT
On my way home from Xiaonanmen tonight, I was waiting for the train to come back from Ximen. A young woman asked me something in Chinese and I couldn't understand. I asked her to repeat and still didn't understand. I told her that my Chinese wasn't that good. Usually at this point, a questioner will move on to find someone else to ask. But to my surprise, and delight, she stuck with me. It turns out she was new to taking the MRT and was trying to get to Chang Kai Shek (whose Chinese name I can never remember or recognize which is why I didn't understand her in the first place). And then I found out she was actually trying to get to Nanshijiao and had gotten on at CKS and realized she was going the wrong way and got off where I was. I've made the same mistake before, getting on going in the wrong direction, so I tried my best in Chinese to make her feel better about her mistake. It's always nice to practice speaking with complete strangers. Turns out she is a junior in high school and planning on studying physics in college.

ShiDa
It's the last week of class and we are slightly behind the school's new schedule. They want us to get through chapter 10 but we're only just finishing 9. Most of my class opted to keep the same teacher and so 6 of them will be together again next quarter along with some other kids they found for the 8 person minimum. My plan is to review and forge ahead while I'm on vacation in June (Grr, maybe you can hold me to this by checking up on me like last time) and then come back and start classes again.

However nothing ever really seems to go to plan, so we'll see what happens.

Taiwanese Haircut

I normally don't pay for haircuts, but I'd heard about the special Taiwanese style of haircutting so decided to give it a try today. I went in to ShowLin on Shida Lu right next to the Watson's, by recommendation of my friend Sabrina. She said to ask for stylist number 8, but with my poor mandarin and confusion about the process I'm not sure if I actually got number 8 (I was seated at #6).

The whole thing started with a shoulder/neck massage for about 5-10 minutes. Oh, and I was offered some magazines to look at as well - but they were all Chinese and didn't look very interesting. Then she shampooed my hair right while I was sitting without dripping on me at all. For about 20 minutes she worked the shampoo-water mixture through my hair and massaged my scalp the whole time, occasionally working my neck and behind the ears as well. She said something in Chinese I didn't understand, but in after thought I think she was asking me if it was enough. I've heard that you can ask them to continue massaging/shampooing if you don't think it's enough. We moved on to the next step which was the hot water rinse. This one was reclining as you would in the US. This included a little massage as well. Afterwards, I was sent back to my seat.

The stylist came over then and asked me what kind of cut I wanted. I just wanted a trim to get rid of the split ends and even things out a bit - nothing fancy, and certainly nothing like the typical Taiwanese hairstyle (dyed, crimped, and/or permed). This part took another 20-30 minutes as she blow dried my hair, cut it, and dried it some more.

In the end the damage was $399 NT which is about $13 USD. It's the equivalent of a Supercuts/Great Cuts price, but with the 30 minutes of massage, is of much higher value.

Identity

In America, I'm Chinese.
In Taiwan, I'm American.
I identify as an Asian American.

When people in Taiwan ask me where I'm from, I say I'm American. Because of my looks they always want to know what my parents are. I reply that my mom is Taiwanese and that my dad is from Mainland Chinese (and sometimes throw in that he grew up in Taipei). This satisfies Taiwanese quite well, as they can now understand my accent (terrible American) with my looks (Chinese).

However, when I went to China and was asked the same and gave the same response, I would get some funny looks. Distinguishing the fact that my mom is Taiwanese, to them, was redundant - being Taiwanese is being Chinese after all! To them, Taiwan is just another province. So I should just say that my parents are Chinese, instead of one is this and one is that.

Hmmm. This ignores the fact that my mom can speak Taiwanese and my dad doesn't, that my mom's family came from the mainland many generations ago, whereas my dad was the first, that my dad's side speaks Mandarin with something closer to a Beijing accent and my mom sounds Taiwanese.

It's like saying "I'm American" ignores the fact that I'm also of Asian decent (and all that brings with it, growing up in a mostly white American suburb). And saying "I'm Chinese" doesn't make it clear whether you're FOB (Fresh Off the Boat) or an ABC (American Born Chinese). Even people technically within a category may not have the culture associated with it (I grew up on the low end for Chinese culture of an ABC).

* * *
My teacher has mentioned something similar - that in America she is Chinese, in China she is Taiwanese, and in Taiwan she is Taipei-ese. Like my dad, she was born in the mainland and then came to Taiwan as a young child. She also bore children in the US and lived there for quite a while. She is quite liberal and has a mixed identity, not easily labeled.

Flurry

A flurry of posts and I haven't even gotten to May yet! Well, blogging is sometimes tiring so here's a quick summary of the month so far.

Hsinchu visit
I went to Hsinchu for an interview and to see family. It was interesting to see Science Park, the Silicon Valley of Taiwan. My cousin's family is also a lot of fun. It's much like my cousin's family in Malaysia - multiple generations convening together regularly. My cousin's parents, kids, sister, sister's kids were all there. I had a lovely home cooked meal with them and then played Wii for the first time. My arms got instantly sore just from boxing -- in air!

Spring Tourney
This past weekend was the quarterly Taiwan tournament, held in Taipei this time. Renegade submitted two teams - one competitive and one for training. Spank, the former, got 1st place with the help of NA Steve visiting from Korea and our MVP Fei Fei (who had loads of layout D's). The training team Thatch had a good time teaching a whole bunch of beginners that we hope have been enticed enough to keep on with it and come to our regular practices.

Wedding Reception
Morris and Angel had a Mr & Mrs Smith theme (Mr & Mrs Lin) that was beautiful, touching, hilarious and fun. The reception was at the Grand Hyatt, just by Taipei 101 with the 12-14 course meal that is typical for Chinese weddings. What was atypical was the rejection of all hong baos (traditional wedding gift of money), an entertainment video about pre-wedding events a la Mr & Mrs Smith, and the overall high class feeling of everything. They really did a good job of making it feel like a true celebration.

Tomb Sweeping Day

Today is a national holiday so I don't have school and most people don't have to work (only hundreds of thousands who have to go to work at 7-11 and OK Mart don't get the time off). The Chinese name is Qing Ming Jie which literally translates to Clear and Bright Festival. This is a prettier name than Tomb Sweeping, but the latter is more accurate about describing the activity that goes on this day.

My mother's side of the family still has a large presence in Taiwan. Her great grandfather came over from China oh so many years ago, and the descendants down the male line all meet every year at this time. Instead of cleaning the graves on Tomb Sweeping Day when it tends to be too crowded, my family organizes it a week earlier. So last Sunday I went with my uncle, aunt, cousin, and grandma down to Hsinchu. This was my first experience taking part in honoring my ancestors, including burning paper money as an offering.

After visiting the graves (including one of my great great great grandfather), we all went to a restaurant for lunch. Some relatives only go to this family reunion portion of the event. There are 13 along the generation at my grandfather's level. So including their kids, grandkids and great grandkids it added up to over 200 people there! The youngest man in my grandfather's generation was there as well as some wives in that same line. It was overwhelming to realize I had so much family all in one place.

Women in the direct family are allowed to go as kids, but once they're married, they become part of their husband's family. So my aunt didn't go even though she lives right in town. (But we did stop by to see her after lunch.) Every year, the responsibility of organizing rotates among the branches. Next year is my family's turn, so then I think it'll be ok for my mom and her sisters to come.

My mom has recently told me more stories about the family and it was nice to match faces to names. One of her cousins I'd heard about was particularly friendly and said as soon as he saw me he knew I was my mom's daughter. I usually think I look more like my dad so it was a surprise to hear that my face resembles my mom's so much.

Apples

This week everyone in class has to do a bao gao on where they're from. Since most everyone already knows the major stuff about America, I decided to do mine on where I've lived in Seattle. In researching information about Washington, I found that they are the number one producers of apples in the US. Since I always like to bake and share with the class, I found a recipe that could be easily split among 11 people using apples. WA actually produces an even greater percentage of the nation's red raspberries, but they're not in season here, so apples were the next best choice.

Anywho, I got all the ingredients EXCEPT I forgot the cream cheese! By the time I got it in the morning, it was too late to make, since the dough needs an hour to chill and I was still putting together the pictures for my presentation (as well as what I was going to talk about). So I made them last night after class and brought them in this morning.

Mini Apple Turnovers
These were really delicious fresh out of the oven. However, if you can't have them warm, they are also nice cooled off. The dough comes out flaky as if you've gone through the pain of layering it without any of the work. I found the original recipe's sugar to be too much for the kind of apples available in Taipei now (Gala and Fuji), so I've cut back in the version below. I also lengthened the baking time as the small ovens common in Taiwan aren't as efficient.

• 1 pkg (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
• 3/4 c butter, softened
• 1 egg, separated
• 3 T cold water, divided
• 2 c all-purpose flour
• 7 c thinly sliced peeled tart apples (about 6 medium)
• 1 t grated lemon peel
  
• 1/2 c sugar (*reduced from 3/4 c)
  
• 2 t cinnamon
• dashes of ginger, allspice, nutmeg
  

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix cream cheese and butter until smooth. Refrigerate the egg white. Mix egg yolk and 2 T water into mixture. Gradually add flour until well blended. Shape pastry into a ball. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
2. In a large skillet, combine the apples, lemon peel, sugar and spices. Cook over low heat for 8-10 min or until apples are tender.
3. Turn the pastry onto a lightly floured surface and press to 1/8" thickness. Cut into 24 four inch circles or squares. Top each piece with apple mixture. Brush edges with cold water; fold pastry over and seal edges well. (If you are working with a mini oven as I did, divide the dough in half and keep the other half in the fridge while the first half is prepared and baked.)
   
4. In a small bowl, whisk egg white and 1 T cold water; brush over pastry.
   
5. Place on greased baking sheets. Bake at 190°C for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.
   

Election Weekend

I'm too tired to write up, so here's a slideshow of the weekend.



John and Geoff organized a getaway weekend to LongDong for rock climbing and swimming and then to Daxi for eating, sleeping and surfing. They tend to overdo it on the food, but with 10 people there this time, we did alright. Geoff prepared a spit fire lamb roast, including the spit. It was quite impressive and even more tasty. John provided home baked brownies and Rob brought a costco bag of marshmallows.

It was great weather until night time when the wind picked up. I woke up with sand embedded in my hair.

One Big Difference

I was thinking this morning that taking care of Bodgy is akin to taking care of a baby. He has a feeding schedule, cries/barks at night (if there are fireworks), likes to play with toys... When you go out, you have to remember to bring all the gear - instead of diapers, you gotta bring the poopy bags. Instead of a bottle of breast milk, you need to bring some water and a dish. And best to bring a chew toy or ball to chase. When you go to school/work, he doesn't want to be left behind, and when you come home he's delighted to see you.

But there is one big difference. When you bring your kid to the park, I'm pretty sure your child doesn't make a bee line for the river side and roll himself in the grass coming back smelling like rotten eggs mixed with fish sauce.

Spending 7 seconds in an elevator trapped with that smell is horrendous. I'd rather change a diaper any day.

Cinnamon Buns

...or as I like to call them in Chinese, 肉桂屁股 rou4 gui4 pi4gu3. Haha, just kidding. 肉櫃捲 rou4 gui4 juan3 is a better name, literally Cinnamon Rolls. I made them this morning for class. Chapter 2 is about food so our assignment for the week is to bring in some food and present it (describe the ingredients, how to make it, etc). I made a couple batches over Chinese New Year break as well but forgot to take pictures.

I like to use the Sweet Dough recipe from the Good Housekeeping Illustrated cookbook (which is handily not in my possession, but in storage at Angie's house). It's a large batch of dough (8 cups of flour, I think) that you end up splitting to make multiple recipes. Since I don't have it with me, I found the dough recipe on the internet, cut it in half and then just winged the rest of it.

Cinnamon Buns
Lots of people like a glazed bun, but I find the extra sugar makes it too sweet. The filling is to taste - I put a healthy dose of cinnamon, a sprinkling of sugar, and lots of raisins. If my consumers aren't against walnuts I put them in. I think they're better with but some people are allergic or just aren't a fan.

Dough

• 2 1/4 t yeast - 酵母 xiao4mu3
  
• <4 c flour - 麵粉 mian4fen3
  
• 1 t salt - 鹽 yan2
  
• 1/4 c sugar - 糖 tang2
  
• 1 egg - 蛋 dan4
  
• 1/8 c butter, melted - 奶油 nai3you2
  
• 1/4 c water - 水 shui3
  
• 3/4 c milk - 牛奶 niu2nai3
  

Filling

• butter - 奶油 nai3you2
  
• cinnamon - 肉桂粉 rou4gui4 fen3
• optional: pinch of cloves (to enhance cinnamon), nutmeg (to complement), cardamom (for different flavor)
• brown sugar - 黑糖 hei1 tang2
  
• raisins - 葡萄乾 pu2tao2gan1
  
• optional: chopped walnuts - 核桃 he2tao2
  

1. Place dough ingredients in bread machine and set to dough cycle.
   Note: The following steps take up to 2 hours, depending on your rising time.
   
2. Punch dough down. Flatten/roll out to rectangular shape. 12"x20" or 16"x21" would do.
3. Spread melted butter on surface followed by the rest of the ingredients. A healthy spread of raisins will do.
4. Start rolling the dough (from the long side). Be sure to roll tightly so as not to have any air pockets.
5. Cut the log into 9-12 pieces (depending on the size of your baking dish).
   
6. Place in greased pan. Cover and let rise in warm, moist environment until nearly doubled (30 min - 1 hour).
7. Bake at 180C for 20-25 min or until golden brown.
8. Serve warm for breakfast or cooled down for a snack!

I brought the dish into class, still warm from the oven. With only 9 pieces in the square dish I used, we had to cut them in half to have enough for everyone (11 people incl the teacher). I think I could have eaten half the dish but held back and ended up with half a roll.

My class continues to be wildly entertaining and I am so grateful for having this teacher and these classmates. Class change period is over, and my class has settled its roster. There was an older American man from Los Angeles trying to get in, but in the end, the school said 10 was the limit for a class. A few others also just peeked their heads in to see if there was room. It's quite a popular class. I feel some concern about the next quarter when I plan to take a month off. The school has changed their policy...instead of letting teachers go at their own pace (with a guideline of 5 days per chapter, 3 days for intensive), they are required to reach and not surpass a certain chapter. I think this will make it more difficult for students in the end and possibly limit our class. So far, I've always been in a class that has gone faster than others -- it's a shame the school is slowing us down.

Q3: 1st Day of Class

I just started my 3rd quarter at Shida and had a great first day of class. The teacher is older, speaks quickly (in a natural way), and jokes a lot, making for a very entertaining class. There were 8 of us there today (Ting Zhou was missing b/c he's still in Japan). The others included:

• Canadian who has a degree in history
• Guatemalan who is pursuing his master's in TW
• Japanese woman from north of Tokyo
• French woman who studied Chinese art history (or something like that)
• American from Minnesota who studied economics and government, and likes the British accent
• Indonesian hua qiao (Chinese descent) whose parents also did not speak to him in Chinese when he was growing up
• Spaniard - hmmm, can't remember any details about him

The teacher joked around about us finding a partner in Taiwan. Since the population growth has slowed down a lot, she was encouraging us to marry locally and start having babies. We are also using the second edition of the book, which has the bopomofo and now two types of pinyin. One is the type commonly used in Taipei and the rest of the world. The other was mandated by the Green party, who will likely only be around for 3 months longer. They've instated a lot of expensive changes that don't seem to have a lot of reason.

The teacher talked a lot about the history as we went through looking at some of the new photographs in the new edition. She was saying in Ch 9, of the beauty pageant picture, that there is no longer a national competition, but just smaller county ones. There was something about the national winner going off to Las Vegas and taking off her clothes and how the TW didn't think that was so great. Also, they no longer wear the "Chinese" style dress - Taiwan is promoting Taiwan culture - except no one knows what that means. For the competition, they started using aboriginal clothing colors (bright blue and red) but it's not characteristic enough of Taiwan.

Another interesting difference between China and Taiwan is married life. Our teacher was saying that in China it's common for the husband to do the cooking and child rearing nowadays and the woman to come home from work and just relax by reading the paper. Since the one child policy created a higher percentage of males, women can be choosier. "Not you, not you, can you cook? ok, you." haha

She ended the class talking about all the slang in Taiwan. When she was a kid, one of the vocab words was new - "bang". When she used it, her mom didn't understand her. This book has a lot of informal type language since the premise is of an American campus. She also talked about current day slang, especially on the computer. 520 (wu3 er4 ling2) means I love you. 3Q (san1 Q) sounds like Thank You. 81 (ba1 yi1) sounds like Bye, so they also use 881 (Bye bye). Orz is a pictograph. The 0 is the head, the r is the arms and the z is the legs. So it's someone bai-bai-ing, ie praying, on the ground.

I've switched back to the 2 hour class and what with all the laughing and interesting tidbits, class just flew by. It also helps that the weather is beautiful again - going to class when it's sunny and coming out it's still sunny.

Birthday Recap

I borrowed my friend Craig's bike. It's a Dahon - which means it folds up so you can take it on the train. If you have a non-folding kind, you either aren't allowed to bring it on the train or are forced to pay an extra full fare - lame! Dahon bikes fold up and come with a traveling case. They fit nicely in the luggage compartment on the trains and the train officials won't give you any hassle. Unfortunately, I forgot to borrow Craig's bag so had to do with some large garbage bags instead.

Tainan
We took the high speed train from Taipei Main to Tainan. From there, we caught the free shuttle into town and got off near the university and started biking around town. I enjoyed seeing a new city - the fourth largest in Taiwan. Once we got to the water, we enjoyed the sun setting. Afterwards we happened upon a street market where I got to buy a variety of eggs - I think they were salted duck eggs, but maybe they were century eggs. Anyways, they were really good - with that yolk consistency that I can gobble up - sort of creamy instead of thick and choking as in a plain boiled egg.

We also made a stop based on the line outside a store. The sit in line was all the way to the road and then some. The take out line was much shorter. So we hopped in there before even knowing what they sold. That's the Taiwan way - follow the line. It turned out to be a good choice - they specialized in jelly dou hua, which is a tofu pudding with small tapioca balls. 安平豆花 An Ping Dou Hua on Anping St.

We wandered around looking for a place to eat dinner. This turned out to be quite tough - there were a lot of mediocre looking places - catering to tourists or chain restaurants. Finally, we went back to an alley near our hostel that had some fresh seafood outside. It turned out to be an excellent choice. Inside were lots of local families and they served us the best squid I've ever had. It was roasted just right so as not to be chewy. We also got a special kind of vegetable (shan cai) that was oh so delicious. (If you want to find it, it's on your way south on Nanmen, near 259, down an alley on the left [east], on the north side of the alley. You can't see the dining room from the street, but it's quite large and has about 10 bottle openers on each wall.)

Tainan City Labour Recreation Centre
261 Nanmen Rd (a full block past 259)
886 6215-0174
They only had a 4 bed room for $1200NT when we arrived. They called another local place that had a room for 2 at $800 NT. We went to look for it but couldn't find it so came back. Then the lady offered us a room with just one large bed for $570. The room was HUGE - big bathroom with tub, TV, refrigerator, extra blankets, couch, desk, etc. It had plenty of room to store our bikes. Hot water is only 6pm-midnight. There's an elevator and Chinese newspapers in the lobby.

Kaohsiung
The next day we rode from Tainan to Kaohsiung. We were mostly on busy roads but eventually got off the highways onto smaller roads and smaller towns which made it more enjoyable. I saw a sign for hand made noodles and we stopped for lunch. I tried a 麻將?麵 ma jiang mian, which was tasty. This was technically brunch, so when we go to the Kaohsiung train station we stopped for lunch. We were biking looking for the tunnel to the other side of the station where the buses are, and happened to hear a lot of noise coming out of a nice, simple looking restaurant. A couple of large round tables were filled with family/friends getting drunk. It looked like just the place to try - filled with locals. They did not disappoint. We asked for their special dishes and got this beef one - oh so tasty, along with a tofu dish and rice. Yum.

The tunnel entrance happened to be hidden by some parked cars just opposite the restaurant, so it was lucky we stopped to eat. We hopped to the other side to get some bus tickets. The first place wanted to charge full fare extra for each bike (even though they fold). So we walked to the next one where they said we could put it in the bus storage for free (as expected).

Kending/Kenting
We got dropped right in the middle of the night market and made our way to the Catholic Church just off the road. Since we had bikes they put us on a first floor room to make it easier for us. $800 for one night. The first room was quite large with 2 double beds and a large bathroom. We decided to stay another night instead of biking with all of our gear - but the second night they moved us across to a smaller room with 4 twin beds and a shower that gave us hot water only once. However, the room suited, as it was right by the night market but without any of the noise.


We spent the next day biking all around the park, including to the southern most tip of Taiwan. There is a park that charges 40 NT entrance fee, but access to the tip is just a bit further up the road down a long bricked path - and free. I went to the park last year with Tuyet when we were on our tour of Kending. You can walk along paved roads lined with grass fields, see an old light house, and then look off cliff edges. However, if you've got a bike, it's better to just bike to the tip and then around the rest of the (free) park. At the top of one particularly grueling hill there was a truck with a load of coconuts. A nice reward for hard work. It wouldn't have been so tough except for the strong winds that Kending is famous for. They come in gusts and nearly blow you off balance unless you're quick to react. Luckily there isn't much traffic, so you don't have to worry about being blown into a car that often.

On the NW side of our ride we stopped at the natural fires. Tuyet and I stopped here last year and had some eggs and di gua. This year there was still a man there selling food illegally, but the stones that had formed a circular pit around the fires were now all in heaps around individual fires. It had quite a different feel, but was still fun to witness. Apparently, there are natural gasses trapped underground that come out bursting into flame.

Reverse
We made our way back to Taipei by doing the whole thing in reverse save the ride between Tainan and Kaohsiung. You just wave down the bus on the main road in Kenting if the ticket sellers haven't opened yet and pay on the bus. We rode from Kaohsiung Main Station to the High Speed Station (even though there is a shuttle) so that we could pick up breakfast/lunch on the way. And we high sped it back to Taipei to make it in time for disc.

Overall a great weekend! I'm ready to get my own Dahon -- except that there's a wait list and even if I order now may not get one til June! Til then, I'll try to keep borrowing other's.

Semester Recap

So the last month of the semester just flew by! It helped to have a week long break in the middle, but even so, the last 2 weeks of class just disappeared. The last month ended up being a lot of fun. My teacher really improved - I don't know what was different but she seemed more relaxed and everyone seemed to participate more.

My classmates and I also hung out a couple times. One day after class we grabbed dinner at a new Mediterranean restaurant just off ShiDa Rd, Baba Kebaba. One of my classmates, Ting Zhou, is from Turkey and craves kebabs. He was ok with the kebabs, and I thought my lamb pita was tasty. However, their hummus was pretty bad - it just tasted like olive oil and didn't have much else going for it. They also didn't give us very much pita to go with it.

Afterwards, a few of us went to go check out Computer Alley - a hodge podge of little computer stores all in one small warehouse type place, and supposedly cheaper than anywhere else in the city. I found a battery for 35 NT and a 2 GB memory card for cheap (gee, I already forget how much it was and didn't get a receipt - maybe 300 NT??).

Our last day of class we all gave our presentations and brought in snacks to eat. I got my favorite mochi, YuZhen brought dan ta (egg custard tarts), Ou Su Ka brought in a Guatemalan snack and Ting Zhou brought in chips. We were pretty full afterwards so instead of getting dinner just hung out at a local bar (Roxy Jr's) to drink and play a little foos. YuZhen heads back to the states on Monday - he was an excellent classmate and I'll miss his jokes. Ting Zhou and I will likely be in the same 2 hour class next year. Oscar is continuing on in the 3 hour class since he will enroll in a local college at the end of the year, where classes will possibly be only in Chinese. Jun Shou is also switching to the 2 hour class but sticking to the afternoon time slot.

My first day of the new quarter is tomorrow. I've switched to a morning class in the hopes of forcing myself to study more and just give myself a little variety to help motivate me again. With the recent news of so many people leaving Taiwan and being thick in the middle of stage 2 of culture shock, I was really struggling last quarter. However, after a wonderful vacation (probably the next blog entry), I feel refreshed and ready to go again.

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).

Strawberry Picking in Maoli

How to Pick Your Own Strawberries in Taiwan

1. From Taipei Main Station catch a local train to Miaoli (about 2 hours).
2. Walk outside the station and to the right in front of a convenience store you can catch a local bus to DaHu on the Hsinchu bus line (about an hour).
3. Once you start seeing some strawberry fields, get off the bus and choose a place.
   
4. Instead of picking at the raised bushes where it's pricier, get yourself on the ground and get at the good stuff - it's cheaper and hasn't been picked over. There are regular and organic farms to choose from. Don't forget to eat as many as you put in your basket to get VALUE.
5. Go back home and eat them as quickly as possible. They will go bad quickly. So eat them fresh, freeze them, or cook with them. Here are some ideas...

Strawberry Cake/Bread


Strawberry Pancakes

Bushwhacking

The only other time I've bushwhacked is while snowshoeing with the Trouts in the Cascades. I particularly remember Helldog, flying over the snow as if he was Legolas from Lord of the Rings. Today I had another bushwhacking adventure with Tommy, Dan and Bargearse.

We met at Linguang MRT station on the Brown Line. From there, we were to get to Taipei 101 via a couple mountains and park paths, by way of two tunnel crossings. This is all hearsay, as we never made it to 101. Instead, we found ourselves walking circles up and down the mountain. Any time we thought we'd made progress we'd land in a clearing we recognized from earlier. At one point, we found ourselves in a cemetery (Dan noticed one of the tombs had been robbed - very sad indeed) and eventually ran into a fence when we tried to get past it. Turning back we realized we'd taken most paths and decided to bushwhack our way down the hill to the street, to get to the next hill.

After so much hiking in 2007 advising to stay on trail to let old growth forest be, it felt terrible to be tromping down the forest like we did. It's been raining nearly non stop for weeks - so the ground was very wet and just gave way underneath us. If it weren't for Bargearse, a bag of poop in my hand, and sneakers clumped with several extra pounds of mud, I might have made my way down faster. Instead, we got held up trying to figure out the best way down. Bodgy got so nervous at one point he turned back around. But by then, it wasn't even an option. Tommy went back to carry him down. How he did it, I'm not sure, as I thought it was just enough to keep myself from tumbling down towards a sprained ankle and limbs pointing at odd angles.

It ended up being quite an adventure. And when we popped out onto the street finally, we realized we'd just made another circle ending up back at Linguang MRT! An hour and a half of circles. Just as well - it was starting to get too wet and ridiculous. We may try once again before the CNY vacation is over.

(This is for you Dan. I'll post the pictures later. I still think you should blog it.)

...Later has come

Thinking of goodbyes

One advantage of being white is that people spot you as a foreigner and engage you - either b/c they're Chinese and want to welcome you/practice their English, or b/c they're foreign and want to speak English with you. I realize this whenever I'm with my friend Dan. The other night we were checking out the new year festivities near his house (a very long street of booths and super crowded - like being a fish in a school and having no choice about which way to go - I almost got sucked in on the wrong side going the opposite direction). Granted they were salespeople, but it seemed Dan always got pinpointed to have an English sales pitch or an English translation for what they were saying in Chinese to everyone else (including me). On the way back to his house, we ran into his new neighbors. They invited us in for tea, but ended up serving us French wine (very good Bordeaux). He is from France, just southwest of Paris, and she works for the French Institute in Taiwan (ie pseudo-embassy). They are tri-lingual like my sister. She is Chinese and when she saw me she just started speaking to me in Chinese - I think I need to learn to handle that situation better - I just sort of blurt out "I don't speak Chinese! I'm a banana!" It's not that bad, but it's never really smooth. Anyways, Dan just got into grad school and will be leaving this summer. Eric already left to go back, and a few others are thinking about leaving as well. It makes me sad to see so many people go when I've only just got here. I hope others continue to come.

Taipei, where it's at.

Kaohsiung Visit

I went to Kaohsiung again this past weekend. This time, instead of watching a tournament, I played in one! There is a quarterly Taiwan tourney for local teams. Last time it was hosted in Taipei. Since it's winter, this time it was down south where the weather is much warmer and sunnier.

High Speed Train Notes

• Buying your ticket near the entrance to the HSR is easier than straight off the MRT (where the lines are long). There is a fast train (2h) and a super fast train (1h36min). Check the schedule to make sure you get the super fast one - sometimes the super fast one leaves after the fast train and still gets there earlier.
• Non-Reserved Seat - cheaper ticket. Get there early so you can get a seat in cars 9-12. (website quotes $1385, but I'm pretty sure I paid $1180)
  
• Reserved Seat - assigned seat but more expensive $1490 NT
  
• If you are with a group you can rotate the row of seats around to face each other.
  
• There is a vending machine with water and coffee. There is a cart lady that brings snacks (crackers, seaweed, more drinks, pocky, etc).
• The HSR stops at Zuoying, not the Kaohsiung Main Station.
  
• There is a free shuttle from the Zuoying station to just in front of Kaohsiung City Hall (within walking distance of the Culture Center). There is one every 20 minutes.
  

15 teams at the tourney, including some middle school teams. There were 3 foreigner teams - Taipei, Taichong and Kaohsiung. We came in 2nd place, losing to a team that only let men on their team (the same team we lost to last time that had women on the team but wouldn't let them play - you can see how they avoided being criticized this time).

I regularly play with some of the Taipei players at Wed/Fri pickup. One of my favorite players is FeiFei (as in FeiPan!) - pictured here with an Old Eagle player, nicknamed Turtle. Unlike some other players, FeiFei has great spirit and awesome layouts. He is a fun person to play with or against.


There were some seriously long byes between games, so I took the opportunity to practice my Chinese. There is an organizer who I always enjoy talking to. He speaks at a level of Chinese that is challenging but comprehensible. I grabbed Phatso so he could practice too. He told us a story about how there are different dialects of Taiwanese. Depending on which part you are from, you might use "di" to say chopsticks or "du". So if you want to ask someone what region they are from, you can do so by asking them how they say 'chopstick'. In Taiwanese that would be, "linggong di a du?" However, if you say it really fast, in Taiwanese, then it sounds like the same way you would say "Your grandfather is a pig!" Haha - a good way to tease someone. He also taught us some other Taiwanese phrases like Thank You (douxia) and Disc (oops, already forgot - I'll have to ask Phatso).

After the games, I got to see my aunt. I call her Jiu-Ma (Jiu-Jiu is my mom's youngest brother, but he was away this weekend). She is one of my favorite relatives - she is so nice and so easy to talk to. She invited over two of my cousins (biao jie - my mom's older sister's 2 oldest daughters), who also live in Kaohsiung. Apparently they met me the first time I came to Taiwan about 20 years ago. However, I don't remember them. One of them is an English teacher, so her English is excellent. But we tried to speak in Chinese the whole time so I could practice. A couple hours talking with them and my vocab already increased. In natural conversation, people tend to use certain phrases over and over - a good way to increase listening power.

I caught the last train back to Taipei (it left at 9:54 pm) and hit the sack!