Baoshan and the last of Daan

Since October, Andrew has been serving his yearlong mandatory military service. Because he lived abroad for a long time, he was eligible to be placed at a school assisting with English education. Most of his work is administrative, but he's gotten to teach some English classes and regularly tutor students in different subjects, including history and violin (his #2 and #3 true loves, after cats).

I was excited to get to visit Baoshan on Friday to see where he'd been living for the past few months, and to meet the students he'd been telling me all about.

Andrew and I met up with my dad at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial to head over the train station. After being unable to find each other for 40 minutes (the pavilion is massive), we finally reunited by the steps of the memorial.

There were massive posters for a Frozen screening on the pavilion.
Chiang Kai-Shek is currently rolling over in his grave.

When you're stuck waiting at a pre-arranged meeting location,
you have nothing to do but take selfies and watch other tourists

Buses from Taipei to Baoshan are very common, and the trip itself was around an hour and a half (although we had pretty good traffic). The bus was freezing.

The bus dropped us off a couple of blocks from the train station in Hsinchu, the closest city to Baoshan. We were getting a ride from the Hsinchu train station to Baoshan (~15 minutes) from the father of some of the kids Andrew was tutoring. In a development that will shock and awe no one, it was raining, so we were soaked by the time we reached the train station.

Hsinchu is like Taipei but with more space

But getting to see the school was so cool that I didn't really mind the rain.

The building where Andrew lives has pictures of different natural disasters
(and their names in English). The staircase also has English phrases on each step
like "Danger!" or "Call for help." I appreciate the Addams-family vibe.

Andrew told me that when he attended middle school in Taipei (at a school mostly comprised of  children from wealthy, well-educated families), he had classes from 7:20am-8:30pm with breaks for meals. That made me feel like a lucky slacker for my American educational experience; having an extra four or five hours of middle school probably would have been my 4th circle of hell. His school in Baoshan is only from 7am-5pm, though students can come back after dinner for optional extra lessons.

The school is in a very pretty area, even when it's raining. It's famous for its archery team, which practices in the hallways after school is over. The captain of the archery team is a very formidable girl who, in a victory for feminism, apparently can cream Andrew at arm wrestling.

learning can be dangerous

There is also a drumming club, which we didn't get to see practice because it was Friday. But one of the students who Andrew tutors did a little demonstration for us and it was incredible. It seems to require a lot of control, coordination, and upper arm strength.

These drums are super loud when even one person hits them

When we first arrived, the students were on a 5-minute cleaning break. In Taiwanese middle schools it's common for students to pitch in with keeping the school clean instead of having janitorial staff. But the town is small enough (and foreigners are rare enough) that a lot of the students seemed more interested in us than cleaning. Andrew kept pestering them to go to class.

Everyone was super nice! The only things I could really say in Chinese were hello, thank you, and nice to meet you (the latter of which I now have forgotten how to say), but all of the students and staff members we met seemed very sweet and appreciated my terrible Mandarin.

This deceptively quiet hallway was photographed before they found out we were there

We also tried to get a picture with some of the students. I say tried, because my dad kept accidentally taking videos and so what we got instead was a six second video that went exactly like this:

My dad: Alright.
Me: I think it's video recording again
My dad: No, it's n--it shouldn't be--okay. 


After spending a couple of hours in Baoshan (and getting bubble tea), we went back to get a late dinner in Daan.

Saturday and Sunday weren't super eventful, which was wonderful. We did go to the underground mall again (and managed to spend less than $1000NT on 3 fate/zero figurines). Store owners sometimes get annoyed when you try to take pictures of their merch, but I sneakily got this one of some of the cats in Neko Atsume

This was absurdly expensive but if it hadn't been, I would own 5 of them by now.

We also saw a cat on a motorcycle when we were going to dinner!

i tried to reprimand it for not wearing a helmet

My camera is really bad at taking nighttime pics, but this is Daan

More food blogging!

Red bean bread, a red bean/sesame bun, and a McFlurry.
Andrew was responsible for the purchase of one of these things.

That's it for Daan, except for the marriage stuff. Right now we're in Hualien. Hopefully I'll catch up with the blogging soon :)

You Can't Take Us Anywhere

I'm sure most of you have seen the wedding pictures on Facebook. I'll probably do a post soon about that (I don't think I will ever forget the hilarious story of how Andrew's mom tried to marry us without us being there) but I wanted to first write a catch-up post for the past few days.

It's Monday night, and I'm in Hualien right now, a town in south-western Taiwan that's close to Taroko Gorge and is famous for its mochi. For the next few days, we're planning on doing a lot of eating and appreciating scenic views.

Let's go back to....  Thursday, the day after we got married. We had lunch with Andrew's mom, grandmother, and one of his cousins at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Andrew warned us that it would be a lot of food, but I should have definitely listened to his mom when she advised us to eat a small breakfast. Instead I had Youtiao, a fried stick of dough, wrapped in an egg pancake. And a vegetable bun. Whoops!

The buffet was... so overwhelming that I forgot to take pictures. Most of it was meat, but they brought out special vegetarian dishes for my mom and me, the majority of which I couldn't finish despite my aversion to wasting food. It also included a dessert buffet (with dozens of pastry options, Haagen-Dazs, and two chocolate fountains). Honestly, I think I'm just not meant for all-you-can-eat buffets. I always get overwhelmed by all the choices and feel vaguely ill.

After the buffet my whole family went back to Andrew's mum's apartment and napped.

My dad and Andrew's mom bond over producing perfect children

It was really nice to spend another afternoon in Zheng Da. One thing I hadn't realized when I stayed in Taipei over the summer is how much cleaner the air is in Zheng Da and the more suburban areas than Daan, which is in the center of the city. It's a lot quieter, too.

Unfortunately it had been raining (...this is the theme of my trip to Taiwan, apparently, along with "Weather.com lied about the rain stopping") so the stray neighborhood cats weren't lazing around like normal.

I don't always make Andrew carry my backpack, but when I do, he makes it his BabyBjorn

This ledge is where our favorite neighborhood cat normally lounges

It's easy to forget how many little differences there are among countries until someone who's never been to Taiwan reminds you that scooters and pink apartment buildings are less common in the U.S.

After our nap, we took the bus to the Taipei Zoo metro station to catch the Maokong Gondola up the mountain. If you don't feel like reading my earlier post, it's basically a ski lift up the mountain. This was one of my favorite sight-seeing outings that we did over the summer, and it was nice to be able to show it to my family.

We also got to see the Maokong Gondola front desk cat again--and we discovered there were now two of them!

Andrew and I noticed that they'd increased their prices from $60NT to $120NT, which was a bummer (but honestly, $4 for a round trip ride up the mountain was almost too good a deal to begin with).

Tara, skeptical about bubble tea (we made them try it--Andrew drank most of it)

The binoculars were fun but it was too foggy to see a lot of things.

We got to the top of the mountain around dinnertime, but all of us were still so stuffed from the buffet that we decided not to get dinner there as originally planned.

So instead we took a cab back to Daan (near the apartment rental), and got dinner at a Japanese restaurant. I don't consider my nuclear family to be super high maintenance in restaurants (despite my vegetarianism and Tara's life-or-death aversion to tomatoes), but after that dinner, I was wondering if I should re-evaluate that assumption.

Each person was supposed to order 400NT worth of food, but even at 8pm, my dad and Andrew were too full from the lunch buffet to eat. So we were already bending the rules a little bit to begin with. Because a lot of the dishes were Japanese, Andrew couldn't easily translate them and had to ask the waiter about many of them. We ended up going back and forth for a solid five minutes with the waiter about the contents of the vegetarian options. It was the least efficient method of ordering ever and we probably should have just asked him to pick a few dishes for us. We also kept asking for carafes of water from the other waitress working, because my dad was very dehydrated. As in, the waitress would bring us two carafes at a time and we would immediately drain them and ask for more.

The waitress seemed to find all of this hilarious, but our poor waiter looked like he had aged five years just serving us. Andrew overheard him ask in Mandarin "what do they want now?" when we asked the waitress to bring us more water for the fourth time.

The food was genuinely very good, though, and we saw another cat when we left.

It climbed onto the roof of the restaurant next door

All of the Maine Coons one could ask for

I have been pretty behind in my blogging but a few days ago I promised you 20 beautiful Maine Coons and I do not disappoint.

All of the cats at Genki Cafe were large, fluffy, and very friendly. There was no admissions charge, but you had to order something off the menu (like waffles or tea). The room had a playlist of calming music box-songs, many from the soundtracks to Miyazaki movies.

This may have been the smallest cat we saw

We think some of the Maine Coons were part Scottish Fold

Many cat perches for many cats

Andrew though I was brave for touching this cat's belly

best lapcat

We were all surprised how little conflict there was among the cats. At the cat cafe in DC, it's pretty common for the cats to clash. Two of the cats here swatted at each other a little bit, but other than that they were very docile and friendly with each other.

bat bat

peekaboo

One of the half-Scottish Folds had the widest eyes ever

snuggle time

This scrunchy-faced cutie sat in a chair and ignored us forever

I got green tea for $220NT (about $7-8 USD), which is an absurd price for green tea but a small price to pay for 20 Beautiful Maine Coons. My mom got ginger tea (pictured left).

thanks a latte!

Andrew has a friend

good lapcat

They know someone is bringing in treats

One of the cats swatted a saucer onto the floor.
Sorry in Mandarin is "duibuqi"

When we left, my mom was able to transfer this cat to the lap of the woman next to us

andrew's shirt got furred

the cats were very large and fluffy

After the cat cafe, we got hot pot. Tara picked out all the vegetables.

I still kind of want to go back.