Overdue

Time for a bit of catch-up, I suppose.

As usual, that time between January and April has flown by in the blink of an eye....

January brought a snow day,

the afore-mentioned trip to see the some pretty lights,

intermission, where the 6th graders participated in Japanese cultural activities and an exchange with a local school.

and a cold but refreshing hike or two...

February was a whirlwind of both fun social events and the usual craziness of teaching, plus the added bonus of the Google Apps Summit hosted by ASIJ, which was a fairly intense two days of all things Google and how we can use them to enrich the educational experiences of our students.

The month was capped off with a welcome 4-day weekend, during which my friend and colleague Karena and I headed to Taipei, Taiwan!

The bottom line: we had fun, despite the rain.

And it did, in fact, rain quite a bit.

We arrived at our hotel after a bus ride from the airport, and quickly headed out for a walk under cloudy skies.

Sidewalk arcades kept us under cover, past stores and lines of parked mopeds.

We wandered a fascinating market area with all sorts of food products (dried scallops, mushrooms in all forms, cartilage….).  A random dinner stop turned out to be delicious bargain, and some temples looming mysterious in the dark as the rain started to fall made for some great exploring. 

The walk home yielded a park full of glowing, larger-than-life figures placed around a park for the annual lantern festival. 

We made an effort to get out the door the next morning, riding the metro north towards Damshui, checking out the neighborhoods as we cruised above ground. We stopped at Guandu temple, busy with tour buses full of people there to do their offering thing, flowers and fruit and ‘god money’ and packaged snacks, lighting incense and leaving sticks at various altars.

We follwed the tunnel to the many-armed Guanyin, with a thousand arms and eyes (yes, I had to look that up) and explored the hillside park, with great views of the vibrant orange roof and assorted decorations.

By the time we arrived in Damshui, the spitting sky had turned to a light but persistent drizzle, and we wandered a market for as long as we could before getting sick of it and taking cover for coffee.  The market was interesting in that stalls were randomly placed along the sides – freshly butchered meat next to shoes next to piles of fruit.

Starving and cold, we found a place to have lunch on the water – closed-off against the rain, we were left to imagine how peaceful it would be during a balmy summer sunset… but we had delicious seafood chowder!

After a recovery nap we ventured to the Taipei Eye for some Chinese opera/acrobatics… which was… interesting. Rather screechy during the opera, quite entertaining during the acrobatics. 

Still cloudy the next day, so we slept in and sought out a proper American brunch (hashbrowns!) before heading to Taipei 101 for a lickety-split elevator ride, cloudy views of the city, and a close-up of the Damper that helps keep the thing stable in earthquakes and wind.

By the time we headed down, it was raining again, so we waited it out in (of all places) a TGI Friday’s, before heading to the night market in Shilin. 

A great wander – crowded, mind you, but we joined the throngs winding past brightly-lit shops pumping out pop music, food vendors adding steam and delcicious smells to the mix. One onion-and-pork filled dumpling later, we found the games section, piles of fresh fruit and bean cakes, a temple, and a basement foodcourt full of hiss and steam and stinky-tofu smell… we found a counter to perch at with no stinky tofu in sight,  then watched our veggies and shrimp being cooked right in front of us, and then watched all the eaters and the walkers and the chefs around us… 

Home and cleaned-up, we headed out for a taste of the Taipei nightlife before heading back to Tokyo the next morning, glad for a change of pace and a change of scenery. 

(Here are all the Taipei pics if you're so inclined!)