So this is old news for many and new news for some, but over Christmas and New Years my family (mom, dad and sister) came to visit!  The trip was planned for a while ever since we figured that none of us could deal too well with a divided Christmas celebration. Since Christmas break is non-existent in Taiwan except for the occasional Catholic school, and I still had to work (side note: working on Christmas day= not fun), the troops decided to have a very Asian Christmas.

Some general highlights:

1. Hello Kitty Bakery. Yes…you read that right.  There is a bakery dedicated to the production of ridiculously lavish Hello Kitty inspired cakes and even hamburgers (!) in a frilly (and entirely pink) environment.  Think life-size doll house.

2. SPORTS DAY!!  My family was invited as special guests at my school’s sports day.  This is basically a full Saturday afternoon of small children running around a track. Not much variety in the ’sports’, I must say.  The games were limited to relay races and a few individual sprints.  The opening ceremony, however, was probably the best thing since sliced bread.  We were asked to sit on stage, in front of the whole school, while people gave speeches and the entire student body marched around the track, class by class.  Each class had a theme…so it was basically like the Macy’s Day Parade…only with small Taiwanese children and no floats…and Sponge Bob Squarepants costumes…

and the ‘cast’ of 300…

Just to name a few.

3. New Year’s Eve EXTRAVAGANZA!!! ok…so we really didn’t do much on New Years Eve.  We actually tried to go to this highly recommended western (read: American owned) restaurant, but when we got there, there were no seats available until 11pm.  Then we walked down to a Taiwanese restaurant, where they told us to wait…and then after waiting for 20 minutes and watching countless other Taiwanese families filter in and just sit down, we figured they were avoiding the Americans.  By that time most other restaurants were closed, even the 3 in our hotel, so my sister and I took a late night scooter ride to Subway while my parents stocked up on drinks and snacks from 7-11 (mom hadn’t learned at that point to be extra observant when picking things out and missed the dried little silver fish on the package of peanuts. One word: gross).  So our Taiwanese New Year’s Eve was spent watching countless episodes of MacGyver Season 4 and eating sandwiches on the beds in the hotel room.  I personally thought it turned into a fantastic night.

4.  Aside from Sport’s Day, my family came into school with me for a few days where we had an ‘American culture’ presentation in my classes.  This consisted of: Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, mini candy canes, Small American flags, and a short home video collage of various holidays (ex. 4-year old Dani in my pretty pretty princess outfit for Halloween…this was also trying to show that Halloween costumes don’t have to be scary, but I don’t think the message got through.)  in addition to these presentations, my classes got to teach my mom, dad and sister some Chinese.  My parents (kinda) got ‘I am Dani’s mom/dad’ = ‘Wo shi Dani de mama/baba’ by the 7th class of the week.  (Hey…it was darn cute seeing them try though.  And my students were so excited to teach them…that alone was worth it.)  My sister was able to graduate from ‘I am Dani’s little sister’= ‘Wo shi Dani de meimei’ to ‘My name is Becca’ = ‘Wo de mingzi jiao Becca’.  She got a little flustered when all the kids burst out laughing whenever she said her name, though.  Apparenty ‘Becca’ sounds like the Chinese word for shell=‘bèi ké’, but by the way the kids were laughing, you would think it meant something more like monkey butt or poo.  It was also rather amusing to see the kids expressions when we described a typical American elementary school (aka. 9-3:30, no nap (!!), kids don’t have to clean the school, etc.)

Parents’ more memorable moments:

1.  Having to give an impromptu speech on stage in front of the entire staff and student body at my sports day.  Dad was even able to squeeze in a few Chinese words! (If you ever meet or see my dad, just ask him how to say hello to a large group of people.)

2. Grinding and mixing his own tea in a traditional stone bowl.  It sounded intriguing on the menu…what little English there was about it, but it turned out to be quite an elaborate process.

4.  Getting kidnapped by my host family until 1am.  A little background: We were invited to New Years Day lunch with my host family at this really nice 5 star restaurant.  Like most Taiwanese outings tend to do, this simple lunch turned into an all-day adventure.  We walked around a large department store where my host family insisted on buying every one of us beautiful art pieces.  Then a trip to a distant fruit farm where we were given a huge box of ‘milky jujubees’ (??I think we decided they were some species of date), a quick stop at a nearby lake and Chiang Kai-Shek’s old summer house or something grandiose like that (at this point I’m starting to feel either extremely carsick, food sick, or just plain sick), a detour at their house where we all got to try the most amazing massage chair known to man, drink tea and eat random Taiwanese snacks.  We also somehow accumulated about 10 oranges and a big bunch of bananas–now keep in mind my parents are leaving in 3 days and there’s no way on earth I could eat that much fruit by myself.  So we end the night at this really famous, really delicious Japanese restaurant where foreign presidents have to eat at before leaving Taiwan.  Well I don’t know if it was actually delicious because my stomach was doing more flips than a trapeze artist, so raw fish and fried…parts…was not looking too appealing at the moment.  So my host uncle, Mr. O, made an off-comment about my dad joining him later in the evening for drinks and ‘man talk’. This was a Taiwanese off-comment, so in otherwords it was a strong suggestion.  Since I was sick and my sister is too young for drinks, my mom was just going to stay at the hotel with us, but we left dinner with the impression that we were all going back to the hotel, and then later Mr. O would pick up my dad, and my mom if she wanted to join, and go get a few drinks.  WRONG IMPRESSION.  Becca and I had been riding in a different car than my parents for the whole day, so we weren’t suspicious of anything, UNTIL we pulled up to the hotel and my host sister said, ‘Ok, well if you need to talk to your parents for anything you can just call my cell phone! Bye!’ and then sped off.  Meanwhile my parents are in a different car that shadily started going in the opposite direction of where we came from and from our hotel and were taken to a bar down the street.  Alone in our hotel room, we figured out that mom and dad had been captured, and were forced to spend the night downing shots and participating in ‘man talk’, which was mostly in Chinese.  They were returned at about 1:30am.  Bec and I got dropped off at 9.  I laughed. A lot.

3.  Walking through a night market that when described sounds more like a massacre covered in soy sauce.  What with all of the innards, organs, feet, necks, brains, hearts, legs, eyes…I think they finally understood a. my need for granola bars and b. my love of Subway and uncharacteristic trips to McDonalds.

4.  People stopping us in Taipei and asking to take a picture.  This was not limited to Taiwanese people either.  2 Indian men came up to me, my mom, and Becca and said ‘Hello.  Can we take a picture for you?’.  We thought that meant, ‘Oh, hello.  You look like a nice family.  If you would like, I can take a picture of the 3 of you for you.’  What that really meant was ‘We will stand next to you while our friends take a picture of us with WHITE PEOPLE!! IN TAIWAN!!’  

Becca’s more memorable moments:

1.  Riding on the back of my scooter.

2. A guy throwing up on the side of the road.

3. Stray dogs gettin’ busy in the middle of the street.

4. Buying boots w/ da fur.

I guess a trip to Taiwan isn’t as entertaining for all ages…but I’m sure she has some stories to tell.