Voting, Pictures and a Science Fair Project

My sister in law recently entered the National Geographic "World in Focus" Photo Contest. It is a great picture and I was wondering if the few people who read our site would be willing to vote for her picture. (Trust me it is worth it) To vote for the picture, go to her picture site. You will have to give an email address and they will then send you a link. You click on the link and you can then finally "actually" vote for the picture. Again, it is a great picture!


Speaking of pictures, here are some random fun pictures around Taiwan.

The next picture is what happens when you want to order something from a restaurant. Usually you look at the menu and you can't decided what wonderful thing to order and this menu is no exception. (On this menu, you can see such amazing selections, such as "Powder Bowel", "Flower Twig", "Shark Smoke", "Very hot green vegetables", "Burn meat" and many items that are absolutely fabulous. We ordered the "very hot green vegetables" and bean curd to get this picture. You may have to double click on the menu to see these items.)


Near Taipei 101, this guy was selling lemon tea by Nestea. I didn't get a picture of him face on, but that would have been wonderful.


I kind of wish it was from the Salt Lick, but it is the closest thing to Texan barbecue sauce I will ever get in Taiwan. (I didn't buy it though.)

Oh, Taiwan.

A closeup.

My students have been working on a science fair project this past semester and, needless to say, I am glad that we are done with it. (excitement does not even come close) This coming Thursday and Friday (next week), they will actually be showing their parents, other teachers and staff their fabulous projects. I will try to post pictures of the projects in the future. Right now, I have to write my last "lecture" for my science class. I think it is ok to say YES!

2 weeks and 1 hour and 40 minutes from now, we will be on a plane. and only 6 more days of school. (not that I am counting or anything)

Free with purchase

Our friends Cory and Holly discovered this little gem. Buy one can of deadly roach and ant killer...
Get a toothbrush free!

A wonderful and useful combination. Just think of all the time you could save brushing your teeth and spraying for pests simultaneously. Ingenious.

High Fashion

We were recently checking out the latest from this spring season at one of the hippest places in Puli - Fashion House. I considered this little number, but in the end decided that it was in everyone's best interest that I refrain.

Quote of the Week

Phil and I are doing our taxes and came across the following on the online DOR for Massachusetts:

"Embezzled or other income from illegal activities is taxable and should be reported."

We will keep this in mind.

Odd Juices

Going along with absolutely disgusting things, here is a video of Phil and another teacher, Cory, drinking, well what else.

Asparagus Juice?!

When in Rome...

Heather also participated, but refused to appear on camera. Here's a closer look at this tasty treat.

KTV

In November, we had a retreat with several different organizations in Taiwan. While there, our director rented a bus to take us to some tourist attractions in the area. The bus had one additional feature. It was a karaoke bus. Yeah! Here is a video of Phil, singing. Enjoy!

More wildlife!

Here is some more wildlife from our trip. At some point we will actually begin posting about some things that we have been doing more recently...

While the orangutan was very exciting to see, we could also see it if we wanted to go to Indonesia. There is another primate that we can only see in Borneo. Because of this, we decided to splurge and headed to the proboscis monkey reserve located in the palm tree plantations surrounding Sandakan in Borneo. It was incredible and I am extremely glad we got to see these rare primates. While there, I got this video of an oriental pied hornbill.



And why we actually went:




There is one dominate male (The largest in the family) and he has a harem of women. This is one of the families.

Here are some pictures so you can see the proboscis monkey more clearly.

After visiting the cute tarsiers, we decided to go on a boat trip. No, I take that back. Our taxi driver decided that we should go on a boat trip. We were unsure if we really wanted to do it. In fact, it seemed really touristy but we decided to go ahead because it might actually surprise us. It turned out that we actually enjoyed it. We got to eat a meal on the boat and go up and down a river in the Philippines. At the end of the river, there was a waterfall. The food was not that good, but there was a guy playing a guitar and it was relaxing. Overall a very good trip. The above picture is us waiting to board the boat and the next 3 pictures are us waiting for our food and the waterfall at the end.



We had specifically told our taxi driver that we wanted to go to a Tarsier Sanctuary and then head to the Chocolate Hills so that we could take some nice pictures of the Chocolate Hills while the sun set. We actually told him multiple times what we wanted. Instead, he again did his own thing and we ended up here, at the Chocolate Hills early in the afternoon. (And we never making it to the Tarsier Sanctuary.) Oh well, the pictures at least turned out.




Our taxi driver, on his own itinerary took us to a beach near the city we were staying at. Again, more his idea then ours, but it was a nice beach, so we weren't complaining.

umm, ok

All I can say is that when I have children, I want this to be one of my top hospitals.

If you thought that was weird, there is a mini-van/car that is also themed in a similar way. We will try to get some pictures soon.

Things that are commonly found in Taiwan

Road construction that sort of makes sense.


(They are setting up for a funeral. This is on a MAIN road, such as Route 9 in Shrewsbury or 290 in Austin, Tx. This was set up for the funeral and it is blocking half the road. This is REALLY common here)

Taiwan is basically mountains.


It wouldn't be a home without a ridiculously big spider in it.

Massive Eggplant

We picked these up at the produce market the other day.
I'm fairly confident they are the largest eggplant I've ever seen. Heather fried these bad boys up into an amazing eggplant parmesan. It was seriously delicious. The deliciousness increased exponentially as we have not had eggplant parmesan since arriving in Taiwan. That's four months without the crispy, savory goodness! It was amazing!

Dream Mall

Phil and I recently went to Kaohsiung in the southern part of Taiwan. Kaohsiung is one of the largest shipping ports in this area. We decided Thursday afternoon that it had been too long from eating Mexican food, so we headed to Kaohsiung and ate Mexican food Friday. After that, we had no plans and because it took us 3 hours to drive there, we decided to stay for the weekend. (BTW the Mexican food was some of the worst I have eaten in my life, but it was the best we have eaten in a long time) Saturday evening, we went to the Dream Mall, the largest mall in Taiwan. (Phil will probably post about what we did Saturday afternoon, so I won't bore you)

Pretty much any mall in Taiwan is full of stores that sell products that cost more than I make in a month, so we just wandered around looking at everything. While there, we stumbled upon the Japanese style floor and there was a store there entitled Hankyu Department Store (I may be wrong on the name). It had a lot of stuff in it that was impressive. I started picking up stuff, like paper lanterns, picture frames and kitchen stuff because we would be moving soon. The problem was that there was no prices on anything. I looked all over the package because sometimes the package will have the price on it, but it wasn't there. It also wasn't above the stuff like some stores do. Because we had no idea what the price was and our numbers are a little iffy in Chinese, we mainly just wandered around looking at stuff but we didn't ask how much stuff cost. Finally we got the nerve up to ask and the guy looked at us strangely and said that the stuff was 39 NTD (about $1.25 or so). We then asked about everything in the store and he said that it was 39 NTD. We realized then that the big signs everywhere with 39 on them and the Taiwan dollar sign next to it meant that we had become that cartoon.

You know the cartoon with the guy holding something asking "How much does this cost?" when there are signs everywhere saying that "Everythings a dollar."

Yes, we are teaching the youth of tomorrow.

Grocery Store Rejects

While wandering around the grocery store yesterday, I came across a few interesting items that I decided NOT to purchase...

This does not sound appetizing.

Now the fried eel is wonderful,
but the roasted, not so much.

If you can figure out what this is,
I'll send you a bag of it. (No not really.)

Who's idea was this?

Fish heads anyone?

I must admit that I have not tried any of these foods, so I probably shouldn't knock them until I try them. I don't think, however, that I'll be trying roasted eel or fish heads any time soon. I'll have to become a lot more open minded before that happens.

Music

Phil and I went to a vegetarian restuarant in Puli last Friday. I had a really good baked curry vegetable rice dish and Phil had a noodle soup dish that he normally gets. There are a lot of Buddhists in the area and because of this, there are a lot of vegetarian restaurants. While we were there, we noticed that they definitely like English music. Here is the list of songs (in order) that they played while we were there.

1. Seal's "Kissed by a Rose"
2. A jazz song
3. Deep Forest
4. A Doors song
5. (I think) Fools Garden "Lemon Garden"
6. Bette Middler "Some say love, it is a river"
7. Engelbert Humperdinck "The Last waltz"

We unfortunately had to leave after that, but just wanted to share.

More unique creatures

I thought this bug was kind of cool.


The snails here are the largest I've ever seen.

Uninvited Guests

There are lots of interesting creatures around here. From time to time some of them make there way inside our apartment.

A snail (or slug?) getting ready for the day with Heather's shower gel.

An assorted bug enjoying Heather's flip-flop.

Not Your Ordinary Flora and Fauna

We went exploring down near Sun Moon Lake on Sabbath afternoon and found some rather unique stuff...


This is no optical illusion or Photoshop manipulation, this grasshopper really is as big as a cell phone. Crazy!

I think this is called a sensitive plant, but I'm not sure. Very cool.

Please let me know if this video loads quickly on your computer or if you have to wait for it. Thanks!