Dragons everywhere

Day three in Taiwan is sort of a sweaty blur of dragon temples, flaky pastries, and air-conditioned lulls in a van. Mr. Pong (Pahng?) picked us up in the morning and we headed out to visit some of the older temples in Taichung. The first was a quiet Taoist temple, the oldest in Taiwan, that has been restored. It was serene, thick with incense, and heavily decked out in ceramic scaled dragons and phoenixes. This particular temple was dedicated to the goddess of mercy. Mr. Pong showed us how people cast two sort of semi-circle blocks to see if the god is willing to answer a question. If, in three tosses, you get a yes combination, then you draw a stick from a pot and then find the fortune that matches the number on the stick in a cubbyhole. The paper helps give you your answer, though he said that the temple people generally have to explain the meaning as it is written in a very old, poetic Chinese style that even native speakers have some trouble interpreting.

The next temple made the first look almost bare. It was Confucian, bustling, and in the middle of a very busy market area. Dedicated to the god of the sea, which apparently used to come right up to the area though it is no where near now. Again, a riot of guardian dragons, a fish pond where they let J feed ravenous koi and turtles, and what was the reddest room I’ve ever seen, filled with small statues of ornate historical or mythological people (I had no idea, really, who I was looking at) and below them little glass boxes with startling plain wooden carvings of people from all walks of life just going about their days. Despite the shocking red of the boxes, the unpainted wood came as a visual relief and it was interesting to see how people had carried water and played games and gardened in long ago times.

I know I should know a lot of specifics about the names of these temples, when they were built, exactly what the gods did for the people, but it was so hot (high 90s) and humid and we spent a lot of energy just trying to remain upright. I’ll look it up later in the Taichung brochures and add it in. We enjoyed the visits, but it was filtered through a wall of semi-solid air, so we weren’t as focused as we could have been. The umbrella sunshades only accomplished so much.

We had some time to roam after the visit, wandering through the street stalls and trying out all sorts of pastries and candies and woven fans but passing on the smoked oysters heaped in pans in the sun at this point. There are temples everywhere in the city, some the massive and ancient ones that we were driven to, others just little alcoves or single rooms tucked in with all the other businesses in the street. I like the idea of all those dragons and lions watching out for the neighborhood.

We parked Mom in an air-conditioned back room at one point, guzzling grapefruit juice to prevent her brain from pickling, while we sought out woven fans to get the air moving. It cracks me up to watch Roni asking vendors, “What is it?” because it inevitably leads to puzzlement and calling out to the neighbors and someone hunting down a high school aged daughter who speaks a little English and valiantly tries to come up with the name of whatever fruit on a stick has been candied as a flavor treat. I’m more a buy-and-try person, but Roni is the inquiring-minds-want-to-know type.

We also sang happy birthday to a high school student and his friends who asked us to sign his birthday card in English – Roni added some Hebrew as well which mystified them.

We walked next to La Kang street, an ancient byway since restored into a shopping street but with the older architecture and brick/wood doorways restored. It was actually a lot of fun, despite our melting. We bought clever wooden puzzles that we tried to solve all evening, and J turned out to have a natural talent at a pachinko like game and won a little set of wooden pencils with a sharpener that had him ecstatic all afternoon and left pencil shavings across Taiwan. Mom bought some sandals and a scarf and we all added little odds and ends to the shared shopping bag – a seed pod that heats up and is used in massage, a little bowl, a spinning top, etc.

Then, stunned by the length of time without air-conditioning, we fell gasping into a 7-11 as we waited for the van driver to find us. J has proven to be a hit every where we go, and in there was no exception. It was about 60 seconds and again people were handing him candy and wondering how he came to be living with us. They are all delighted with him. Clearly, no one has any idea the true devilishness lurking behind that dimpled grin! If they knew the depths of his stubborn willfulness, they’d back away slooooowly.

To be fair, we’ve dragged J across 15 time zones and a date line, his nap time has been on the seat of a van, we all wake up at 4:00 A.M. every morning, and it hit 98 today. The food is different, he’s stuck in a hotel room with no place to dig, and Phineas and Ferb isn’t playing on the cartoon channel. But no matter how predictable and explainable it is, his charming ways are rather diminished here, and we’re all struggling a little to maintain our calm. He’s rather an emotional rollercoaster at the moment, with no flat parts in the middle of the ride.

Then there are the funny moments. When he’s frustrated with us, he’s been shouting, “Li li!” over and over, a new phenomenon. At a calmer time, I asked him what li li means. “That’s when I was Chinese,” he told me earnestly. Still clueless, but amused. Later on, after telling us 4000 times (counting conservatively) that he was hungry in a sing-song voice, (about 6 minutes after lunch) he finally said, “Mama, my tummy is crying for food!”

Back in Taipei, we wandered the neighborhood a little, noting the changes since we were last here. The bento stand is now a coffee shop, the bakery has spiffed up its façade. The noodle place where we met a nice woman named Jenny who had lived in Texas is still here, and our favorite fruit stand. We had had enough of noodles for a while, so we went to Mos Burger, fast food Taiwan style. My shredded beef burger had rice patties rather than a bun which was really tasty, and they had fabulous thick mango drinks.

One more day before we go to get D, and I’m getting more and more tense. It is going to be such a dramatic jolt for him – he’s lived with his foster mother since the end of September, and we’re just pictures in a book to him. We’ve got a truck and a stuffed tiger to offer, which seems a bad trade on his part. I’m worried about how J is going to react to the change in his life as well, and in the earliest hours of the morning when I’m staring at the ceiling, I wonder how I’m going to cope as well. It is weird to feel so impatient for something to happen and so nervous about it at the same time.

And then we ate again

Quotes of the day:

“Who’s the woman in the box?”
- Roni in the Wenu Temple (The answer was, “That’s Buddha, reclining.”)

“Daddy! Momma made a star! Momma, make the next one look like an elephant.”
- J after I cut him a slice of starfruit

“Maybe I’ll write Al and ask him to buy a couple extra meals-in-a-bag for when I get home.”
- Mom, the adventurous eater

“It might be fish, or it could be potato.”
- Johnna, who liked it, whatever it was

“I was very brave today, trying all those new things.” “You ate a piece of fruit.”
- Roni, protesting all the food criticism he was getting at dinner

***

Today’s focus is really going to be food, though don’t worry, we’ll talk about sleep some too. And I’ll throw in a couple of tourist destinations for variety.

After a buffet breakfast – the Golden China has a great one – J and I headed up to our room while Mom and Roni had another coffee. While we were there, the tour driver called up to tell us he was there earlier. So J and I rushed around gathering up all the luggage. My urgency apparently made J a little nervous because by the time I hauled the last bag to fling it into the very full elevator, he was shouting, “Mama, come, hurry, the van is here!” over and over again. I hurled it all out into the lobby, then we went looking for Mom and Roni. Who, of course, had already gone up to the room, then down to the lobby, while we went up to the breakfast room and then to the room. Eventually we were all on the same floor and into the van.

It turns out that we were the only people on our tour, so we had the van to ourselves. Not a seat belt to be seen, unfortunately. J roamed around like it was a stationary room. Scary, but not the first time in Taiwan that he hasn’t been restrained.

We drove through the hazy hills to central Taiwan, through toll roads and long, long tunnels and through rice, taro & betel nut farms.

Our first stop was brief, in Puli, at a monument to the destruction of the 1999 7.3 earthquake that leveled a third of the city. There was a tourist center next to it, and Mom and Roni bought plum liquor and J and I ate red bean and fermented rice popsicles. The rice one was great – not so crazy about red bean in a frozen desert. Roni and Mom took quite a while tasting the various alcohol options (what could “essence of ostrich” be?) so J and I went to sit in the shade of a pavilion with benches built from pottery wine urn broken in the earthquake and listened to a band play.

We ate a great lunch in a steamy restaurant overlooking Sun Moon Lake, where swarms of dragonflies darted above a floating garden by the tourist boat docks. A giant lazy susan delivered dishes of fish, chicken, deer and mushroom. All very tasty, though we didn’t eat it correctly, dumping our rice out of the bowls and onto our plates.

Sun Moon Lake used to be two lakes, apparently. We weren’t clear on whether it was an earthquake or the newish dam that brought the two together. It is high in the mountains and a huge tourist destination, but having to recover a little from the recent typhoon.

We went next to Wenu/Wunwu Temple, bright red and gold, with dragons swarming all over it. Beautiful gold and red wind-bell blessings were hung on every railing. A man showed J how to put a coin in a machine which sent a little mechanical woman into a door, then out again with a tiny paper tube that contained a fortune. J’s said that he needed to think, as well as be educated. Roni got one too – his said that he should be honest and he would have a good career.

We tried dragon's eye there - a sort of mini-lychee that you peel and eat carefully around the seed. J was thrilled at the idea of eating an eyeball. Which he actually had the option of doing at lunch, but then he chickened out.

Then on to Syuanguang temple dedicated to a Buddhist monk who spent 17 years trekking through out Asia spreading the Buddhist teachings. He walked through the Himalayas and clear down to the southern tip of India. A statue of him with his bamboo backpack as well as small relic of him is displayed, and also the reclining Buddha that led to the Roni quote above. Out in the garden, near the Buddhist nun on a cell phone, was a huge bell that we all took turn ringing. The low chime went on forever! It was beautiful.

The last stop was a brief and rather sad look at an aboriginal village. I’m against people-as-exhibits so I’d have skipped it. There weren’t many people on the street we visited – the guide really wanted us to see the houses made in a traditional style of wood and bamboo. Just looked like run down public housing to me. It is a relocation reservation really, for the ita Thao people, famous for their festivals with Pestle drumming. Maybe, but it didn’t look like a fun place to live. There are only about 250 people, we were told, the smallest of the aboriginal tribes in Taiwan. There was a stop for a serving of tea in a gift shop like place as well, where they talked Roni into a traditional robe and almost talked Mom into a Chinese cypress carving that smelled fabulous. Again, not my favorite part of the tour so far.











Before we reached the hotel, our guide stopped at a huge fruit stand because of a conversation we’d had about the breakfast buffet and how we couldn’t identify all we were eating. The place was like an explosion of color. We bought various types and then came back to the hotel, borrowed a knife, and ate dragonfruit (J’s favorite), star fruit (not favored by any of us), Buddha’s head (looks like a big mutant artichoke but very soft and falls apart in segments, each with its own large seed), passion fruit (seedy and sour but yummy), and mango (not new to us but the favorite of all the grown-ups.) The pictures show the dragon's eye and dragon fruit.

Other things we learned today: Taichung City, where we are staying tonight, means middle city of Taiwan. Taipei means northern city of Taiwan. There is a southern city following the same pattern, but I didn’t catch the name.

Our hotel here in the middle city is quite fancy, though the swimming pool, which we sent Roni to check out, turned out to be the size of the bed and to already have a dozen Taiwanese teenage boys in it, so we passed. Our plan is dim sum for dinner and an early night. Mom is struggling to stay up already and it is only seven. J finally fell asleep in the van about 30 minutes from the hotel, after a day of manic energy and radical mood swings, but we made him wake up so that we’ll have a chance at a quieter night tonight. Yes, ending this entry back on the topic of sleep. J

***

Later: Dinner was very funny, ultimately tasty, and through out a comedy of misunderstandings by the dim Americans. Despite the guide, the front desk manager, and the hotel brochure’s assurances, there is no dim sum restaurant in this building. We settled down instead in a very mauve Chinese restaurant, where Roni and Mom were quite unhappy with the options, then went down one floor to a “western” buffet. We caused the waitress a great deal of trouble before we finally understood what “semi-buffet” meant (the western part is apparently the existence of a buffet rather than the food). Semi means we each ordered a main course and then selected our side dishes. It was an amazing spread – seafood and meats and fruit and veggies of all description. J and I loved the various mussel and shrimp options. But we all sort of forgot that we’d ordered a main dish – there were so many meats and such, and the entrees didn’t arrive for a long time. Mom was just settling down with her dessert plate when a half a chicken arrived for her. Same with Roni’s salmon and my mutton. Really delicious and elegantly prepared and we were all too full to really enjoy it.

My family needs to work past their eating style – poking a dish suspiciously and saying, what is it? in a dubious tone. But it made for a hysterical meal and we certainly got enough to eat and it was very tasty.


Two and a half days to D!

Never too tired to shop

Oops. After our weekend market visit we just laid down for a minute to get that nap we missed this morning, and now it is 9:00 at night! Even J went to sleep this time, after an apple and an Arthur DVD. He is going to be up at 1:00 A.M.

We haven’t bothered to unpack much as we’re heading out again tomorrow. We signed up for an overnight tour to Sun Moon Lake. It’ll be one of those hop-on-hop-off bus tours, but since we don’t know anything much about Taiwan, it will all be new and interesting to us.

The market was bustling. It is under a freeway overpass, next door to huge Da’an Park. Stretches for blocks. There are three sections: misc. crafts, plants, and the jade market. We made it through the first two before needing lunch, beef noodles and dumplings at a tiny store where J bounced off the walls and knocked over stools. Great dumplings though, and the noodle bowls were vast.

My favorite section for looking is the plant area because of all the bamboo, twisted into multitudes of shapes and wrapped with red ribbons. Mei-Ru says that because bamboo are always growing higher and higher in those little sections, they symbolize good fortune in achieving things so people like to give them as gifts. The plant area was also welcome today because there were huge misters in the ceiling, spraying down cool upon us.

My favorite section for buying is the craft area because there is just about every possible souvenir that a person could want to poke at and wonder what they’d do with it when they got it home. Buying little carved zodiac animals is inevitable, though I managed to not do it yet. Did get a picture that I wanted the man paint and two aromatic wooden wall pictures though. Lots of pent up tourist shopping inside me.

Afterwards we were too tired to do more than come back and take what turned into six hour naps. Oops again. Now we’re not sure what to do. Wake J and wander? Would he ever go back to sleep? Leave him asleep and we all get up at 1:00? Either way we’re screwed!

The view from our hotel room window.

Sorry this blog is so sleep obsessed. We'll move on to D news soon, I promise!

***

Added later: We wandered out to walk about a bit, but there isn’t much open or going on in our neighborhood at 10:30 at night. So we came back to order room service. Sort of a mini-fiasco, typical of us. First, we couldn’t get into our room, because both Roni and I forgot to take the room key with us when we left. (We’re a little groggy.) So J and I headed to Mom’s room to wait, while Roni got the key. Since we were there, we called room service from her room, but wanted it delivered to our room. This caused everyone great confusion, with Roni just saying the same thing over and over as I hissed, “Be nice!” in his ear. Eventually they hung up, so we went back to our room to try again, where a very sweet lady showed up at our door to take our order just as Roni was starting again on the phone. This is a very friendly hotel, and I’m sorry that we’re such difficult guests with our padded bed and chocolate sundae demands.

Aside about the beds. The last time we were here the beds were basically plywood on wires, wrapped in a thin layer of quilting. We saw some on the street in the middle of being constructed and really, that is fairly accurate. So I asked Tien if she could request Western style beds when she made our reservation, if they were available. I’d heard that some hotels have rooms with different types of beds. Soon after we got in, during one of our less successful nap times, they arrived with mattress toppers to add 3-4 inches of padding. So much better!

Still sleep obsessive topics . . . tomorrow more tourism posting.

Sleep? I vaguely remember sleep.

It takes this much stuff to get us to Taiwan. Gone are the days of single carry-on travel!

As happy as I am to be in Taipei, all I can think right now is, “Surely he must sleep sometime!?” We’re ensconced in the Golden China Hotel, on the 12th floor, and thanks to the miracle of Tien and Mei-Ru, we even have soft mattresses because the maid and her helper just left after putting extra padding on our beds. All Roni and I wanted was to sink into the softness and sleep a couple hours. But J will have none of it. He has hollered, sung, thrashed, and generally made himself very unpopular. He has also proven more stubborn than his parents. We tried talking gently, ordering, putting him on step, confiscating BowBow, and just generally thinking bad thoughts about him, but he would not lie down, would not be quiet while not lying down, and would not stand for either of us to sleep. So I’m writing this. It’s 9:38 A.M. Taipei time.

It was similar on the plane once he woke up. He couldn’t stand that Roni, early on, or I later in the flight were still sleeping and poked, kicked and shouted until we gave up.

Sure, here it looks like he is sleeping like an angel, but this is at 9:30 at home, while we waited for Tina to pick us up.


Other than that, and right now, headachy and cranky, that seems like a lot, the trip went well. We went out for Mongolian stir-fry because there was no food left in the house, then separately ran last minute shopping errands. Tina got us to the airport in plenty of time, our flight was pleasant – frill-less economy seats, but the attendants were friendly, the plane was clean, and we all had our own seatback screens. Great lavender hand lotion in the bathroom.

J kept fairly busy with pipe cleaners, tinker toys, markers and a spirograph set. Not to mention Shaun the Sheep videos. I had so many toys for him, as well as the paperwork, my knitting, and enough reading in case we were stranded on the tarmac for weeks, not to mention snacks and lotions and potions, that I could barely lift my carry-on bag, much less fit it under the seat. But we went through most of it – except the knitting (I managed 6 rows of scarf) and the reading (I got through one Vanity Fair article). Traveling with a 4 year old is very different than traveling with my friends. My world travel buddy Andrea never required a lot of entertaining. He also turned out to be surprisingly (and newly) modest– he refused to change out of his pajamas unless Roni and Mom would hold up blankets to protect his privacy.

Mom and I tried to be adventurous in our meal choices and regretted it at breakfast – the Chinese option turned out to be bland sweet potatoes in gelatinous rice with optional fish flavoring and what we thought was chocolate frosted cake was tofu. Mom kindly offered to switch with Roni, but he declined to give up his chicken patty and pancakes.

Mei-Ru met us at the airport and whisked us to the Golden China, where we even recognized the front desk staff. There is a new bakery next door, so we found the ATM and after a brief stop at

Starbucks for Roni’s wellbeing, we picked out a variety of mystery pastries, came back to the room, and attempted that doomed naptime.

Mei-Ru is picking us up at 11:00 for lunch and a trip to the weekend craft market, which was one of my favorite tourist parts of our last trip here. Roni and I have promised not to turn on each other out of exhaustion.

We don’t see D until Thursday, which seems very far away at the moment. But we’ll all handle it better with a couple of days to acclimate. And maybe sleep. Have I mentioned sleep?

P.S. added later - 86 degrees at 6:30 A.M. when we walked out of the airport, and the humidity was like breathing semi-solid air. But I almost like it, because it makes it feel like we really are somewhere different. Counteracts the Starbucks a little.

We’re a day ahead here, on the other side of the international date line, so it is Sunday.

I forgot to mention our J scare. The Starbucks is on a corner, with two perpendicular entrances, both with automatic sliding doors. J, unwatched, was standing near one watching the scooters roar by. He stepped close enough that the door opened. One more step to see better and he was out and the door closed behind him. He didn’t know where to stand to get it to open again – must have just seemed like a wall sprang up. So when I turned around he was screaming Mama! and racing around the corner to look for me. We all darted out various doors to chase after him. He’s so good about sticking close that we were all briefly freaked out and he stuck to my hand during the rest of our walk.

The physics of this is complicated

Two suitcases, one duffel bag. Four or five mountains of stuff. I'm not sure the laws of space and time are going to let all of the latter fit into the former. We may have to rethink our money saving plan of putting J in a duffel instead of buying him a plane seat. :-)

But we leave tonight for the airport! More hurrahs!

I keep getting last minute emails from our agency rep that trigger extra trips to the store. They are helpful, but it would have been more helpful if they'd arrived last week. Yesterday's first email told us that D likes "cars, balls and crackers" so I sent my mom out for the first two, in airplane travel sizes. Rice crackers we can get everywhere there. The second one said that we should bring baby clothes to TWCA rather than other gifts listed in the travel guide as that is what they'd like to have. So, out go the nuts and such that I bought, and off to collect some clothing (gently used is fine they said so that helps speed things up as there is a place down the road). The third one said that we'd get our extra foster fees amount soon. Soon? We leave tonight! I think we'll be able to send it through Google PayPal to JOH (our agency) so I'm not running to the bank to withdraw thousands of dollars at least. Though now that I think of it, I need to run to the bank anyway to get dollars to pay our agency facilitator when we arrive in Taiwan.

I'm getting very foggy with all the plans and prep. Yesterday I forgot that I was supposed to stop at my mom's after picking up J to get the things she's been collecting for me. I'm forgetting words and losing track of sentences in the middle. I need a bit more sleep and a little more sitting calmly and thinking about what needs to be done. But I'm just so excited!

A little too excited, because it gave me all sorts of extra energy and ideas, one of which is going to result in another trip today. Somehow I thought it was a good idea to trim J's hair on the back porch last evening. We're going to need a trip to the hair cutters to fix that idea. I tried to convince myself that it looks OK, and it does if you look at only one side of him at a time. Each side looks good - neither side looks like the other. Maybe if I hadn't been talking on the phone at the same time, trying to say good-bye to family? Multi-tasking should only be taken so far.

Yesterday I spent some time at school, planning on getting the library back in order since I won't be there when school starts. Our district is in contract negotiations so no one even knows what the first day of school is going to be - either the 2nd or the 9th. Parents must be going crazy, trying to make plans.

I'm hoping for the 9th because it will 1) give me more time before I have to start using up sick leave days for time off with D and 2) the library is NOT back in order. There was an unexpected math meeting going on so I couldn't pull the bookcases back or arrange the tables, or do any other clean-up after the summer decimation. I had to send Mom & Mr. Al - my volunteer helpers - home. I did get most of the check out/in software reloaded after a couple of hours of cursing technology (every summer they reimage our computers and reinstall all the district software, except my library software because we're the only school with that particular library program - since it isn't standard, they won't help with it, even though the district purchased it - end of mini-rant).

I also got my sub arranged - very luckily the same woman who subbed for me during J's leave is available again. Great to have a competent replacement. My new principal wasn't in, so I had to email her: "Hello, hope you've had a nice summer, I won't be here in September."

Cat care is arranged, plants are deeply watered, knitting project is started so security won't think the pointy metal things are weapons, J has picked his books and stuffed animals, passports are piled on the counter. Just the shoving into cases left to do. If you hear a loud "sproing" noise, it is the sound of failing suitcase zippers.