Photo op

We've posted our entire journey home on a separate blog. It was just taking too long to load up here, since this blog is so big already. So, for a quick photo tour, or a longer story-telling tour, go to

http://HomeByTrain.blogspot.com

Anika has written beautifully about her summer in India. She says she'll post photos soon - Anika snoozing at the Taj, Anika peeking over the border into Pakistan, Anika trekking in the Himalayas... at

VoyageOfChange.blogspot.com

All our gratitude and blessings for a wonderful year -

Joplin, Alison and McKinley

The Grand Journey Home

In our last few weeks, we made a list of friends to thank, and came up with 65. To each, we gave a ticket to the hot springs, and arranged to meet there Saturday afternoon. There is nothing quite like sinking into roasting hot water that is silky with minerals, palm trees above, friends all around, the mountains beyond reaching to the sky. Everything unimportant melts. Everything important comes into focus.

Our departure was Sunday morning. We tried to take a photo of all the friends who left us at the station, but they weren't their usual smiling selves...
The train pulled out from Taitung, the misty mountains on the right, the Pacific's turquoise waves crashing on the left and we studiously avoided touching the heart-area of our souls lest we start crying and not stop. It helped that Alison's father Norman arrived on Friday, to join us on our long journey home.


First stop: Kaoshiung. McKinley's beloved cello teacher met us at the train station, along with the pianist who is the best in all of Taiwan. These two saw us off at the airport.


On the plane, and off we went, across the China Sea to the land of Macau. Further adventures above - we'll sort them so you can read in order.

Peacable Kingdom

Well, perspective is a good thing.
This is the seasons when the cockroaches prowl. It keeps you honest. We have to have the counters cleaned, the food put away, the dishes washed, the floor mopped. We forget for one night, and we have a visitor by morning. A cockroach can live on the oil of a fingerprint for two weeks, they say. But I doubt they are talking about these cockroaches. These guys are ... big. The average is 2". And they fly. But they still have that horrid skitter - you know, the light turns on and zygge-zip, they're running away. It's creepy.
I've figured out that the Buddhists have it good: the horrible part of cockroaches is contemplating killing them. If you just do the pacifist thing and let them live, they're not so bad. Until they get into your stuff. I really don't like cockroaches on the counter. So housekeeping. Such a priority.
And killing.
I'm resorting to dire methods: the broom with the dust cloth that tucks into the top, gathers dirt, then you pop the tissue in the trash - it's a perfect cockroach whacker. One smack, and they're history. Then you don't even have to glance at the corpse. Just pop off the tissue into the trash and say the blessing: "may your next lifetime be one of more grace and beauty."
Nothing, I thought, could get me to like them. But then came...
Rat droppings.
No kidding.
Suddenly, for the first time all year, I wanted to go home. Right now. Because, of course there are no rats in Vermont. Right. No, it was time to look for the invitation. It was only one rat - apparently they can leave 50 droppings a night. Seriously gross. But this one was passing through - only one or two droppings. The second one was upstairs, and bingo, there was the invitation: the hamster cage, with its yummy hamster food lying open.
Now the hamster has elegant refrigerated food, and the door to the drying room outside (which has an open drain) is always closed. No more droppings, no more fear of going pee in the middle of the night. But we also set out these little sticky boards, coated with yummy smelling stuff that hides both poison and glue. The rat, they say, steps on the board, takes a nibble, and is both stuck and dead.
Of course, there's the issue of what do you do with the board... pick it up|!?
Fortunately closing the doors and removing the invitation has worked, and we don't have to deal with a giant rat body.
Funny how that makes the giant cockroaches look small and insignificant.
And the bonus? Those rat boards also smell good to cockroaches. Since we put them in, I haven't had to broom-whack a one.
And if it is their choice to step on the sticky board and commit cockroach suicide, it's only partly my responsibility, right?
May your next lifetime be filled with grace and beauty.

Mother's Day at Feng Li

When you think about the reason for mother's day, it seems like a good idea. This woman puts you first for all the other days of the year, one day should be a good time to think about all she does for you. But usually the sentiment is celebrated in such a tacky fashion, candy-coated commercialism, and only acceptable because it is a child's cherished gift to their mother.
But can I tell you about what the teachers at McKinley's school put together?
All the mothers were invited at 9 in the morning. It was steaming hot, so we showed up in the gym, a little hesitant to do a two hour program of listening to kids sing, no matter how cute they were.
But instead, we were invited up on stage, where comfortable chairs were prepared, and a green tub filled with cold water at our feet. Our children were instructed to wash our feet, cold water and sweet smelling soap. Then they dried us off with a soft pretty towel, and went around to massage our shoulders. Then, the MC said, they were to whisper something sweet in our ears. They gave us all flowers.
The mothers got to express their sentiments with a pass-the-mic session, then the children got the stage. First the kindergarteners did a song and dance, then they put up a curtain painted with a heart. On one side, a 6th grader had a snare drum, the other side, he had cymbals. On a drum roll - crash! a child leaped through the heart, brought the mic to her mouth, and read aloud a letter of thanks to her mother. There were at least twenty children chosen for this portion.
What a heart-centered way to celebrate the holiday. It was wonderful.

natural shower

 

crossing the rapids

 

Hot springs eau natural

Hiking in this country is a trip. The mountains are not gradual. The trails don't wind back and forth like they do in the rockies. There is no gentle warm up as there is in the Adirondacks. You get on the path and whoosh. Straight up, or down, as the case was this time.
We went on the Cross Island highway (see Joplin's earlier post for photos) and drove a couple of hours. We were refreshed en-route by pineapples - it's the season, stop by the road and get a couple pineapples peeled and sprinkled with sour plum powder. Yum. Then on up into the mountains.
The pull-off to the trail head is a steep concrete road that is access to a farmer's terraced land. It's about 8' wide, no room for mistakes, and quite steep down. We found a slightly wider place to park, then continued on foot to the trail head.
Earlier hikers have aided by putting up ropes for much of the trail. In some places, the ropes are nice because the way is steep and slippery with fallen leaves. In other places, the ropes are essential, because the trail is not steep, it's a cliff, and the ropes are there to rappel down. We were hiking with our friends Flora and Martha, with Jeff and his baby Calila in a pack, and with two other friends. Martha, who is McKinley's best friend here, has never been hiking, and this trail was terrifying for her. But she rallied, with step-by-step coaching. McKinley scampered, cheering up the baby, then cheering up Martha.
Three hours later, we were down at the river, a rushing, clear turquoise ice water, with sandy beaches on both sides. We ate lunch, then bouldered upriver to the crossing to the hot springs.
There we could see it, eerie green and white formations, with steam floating up like clouds. We just had to cross the river again to get there. Here a great log lay down in the rapids, with a rope to assist. But the water was icy and so fiercely strong that we nearly had second thoughts. We made it.
Then we sat in rock pools, with showers of sulpher steamy water spraying our backs, with honeycomb stalagtites forming before our eyes, covered with brilliant green algae and powdery soft calcium. If it hadn't been truly natural, it would have seemed horribly fake. As it was, we just starred amazed, and steamed in the pools.
I don't know how anyone can limit the wonders of the world to any number - there are so many places that stun the senses just around the edge of our reasonable experience.

ease-y musing

(photo: taking it easy in the hot springs with our new wonderful friends)

Now that we're down to ten weeks left in this glorious country, I'm trying to sort out what we've learned in a concrete way so that when I'm home, I'll be able to retain a bit of it. Chinese, that's one thing we've learned - some at least, enough that we're excited about a trip to China in July. But bigger things - personal things. It feels as if there's been a great shift, but it's not quite tangible. I wrote about money in the fall, and that certainly is one huge part.

This morning, though, biking back from McKinley's school, I had a modest epiphany - 3.6 on the Richter scale. It's supposed to be easy.
That's it. Do what needs to be done with ease.

For years I've been battling with myself about exercise - need to go to the club, need to get friends together to do yoga, and if they don't come, I don't yog; really should walk more, swim, run, bike... but given the choice, working is always more enticing. Maybe if I hated my work?

Now I'm biking through the back lanes every morning before breakfast. Then every afternoon, I go watch McKinley play soccer (how good it feels to be a Taiwanese Soccer Mom!) and there, all the moms walk around the track while we watch the kids play. I've even been known to run a few laps. On the weekends, we all go play soccer, and twice a week, our family all does an hour and a half of T'ai Chi. All together, I'm not doing much yoga, but I'm getting so much more exercise than I've had in years. And it's easy.

That's what the epiphany was, biking this morning. It takes so much energy to prod this body from stasis to movement. If it requires thought, it's hard. Exercise, like eating, like taking a bath, like reading a good book, like doing housework, like going to work - all these things are supposed to be easy. Not necessarily physically or intellectually easy, but they do not require my busy little mind to go into overload about whether or not it should or shouldn't happen today... how about tomorrow? It just happens. Easy.

So can I take this new thoughtless habit home? I hope so. I hope it's easy. .^_^. Alison

Easter Eggs

We love making Easter eggs. The whole magic of dying eggs and then hiding and finding them is a cultural delight that we wanted to share. When we were in Japan, we invited Anika's friends to get dressed up in easter bonnets and fancy dresses and did a fantastic hunt along the gardens of the canal. But here, McKinley and her friends are a little too old for that.
We invited our friends who invited their friends, and pretty soon we had thirty people here, decorating eggs. We invited the moms to try to blow eggs - that was pretty funny! And then we went out in the drizzling rain to have a hunt. It was fantastic fun.
When it all was over, most of the people went to the home of one of the moms, and we had a mass dumpling making party. The food was -- how do you say? Unbelievable. Oh yeah. All vegetarian, all flavor. How about this - fresh green beans swiftly deep fried, then tossed in salt and white pepper. Simple. Sublime.

on the way to school

Spring Thoughts

Our friends tell us that in Vermont, the Forsythia is bursting out. That means that soon the ground won't be muddy, and birds will come back. Ulli, our cat, will be in cat heaven - those snowy moles all winter are not nearly as much fun as songbirds on the wing.

In Taiwan, Spring means rice fields and trees with heavily scented blossoms. There are Mongolian winds sweeping dust across the land, and rains nearly every afternoon. The mountains, so close, are frequently covered in clouds while the valley here by the sea is bright and hot. The days sweep between cool and blazing. I suppose blazing isn't fair, as there is still summer to come, but in contrast with the cool, it's pretty brilliantly hot. It's the color of the sun that is so sharp - The kind of sunlight that makes a knife-like shadow.

Every day I bike along and think of things to say - about the pet pig who eats up the leftovers from dinner the night before. One morning we saw her refusing the spaghetti looking mess. The next day she had it again. She was eating it. Poor pig. She's a well-fed black-and-pink pig. Her owner is in a wheel-chair, and he sits outside their home on the road, with a 2 year old between his knees, and every morning smiles widely at us and wishes us a good morning. McKinley is fun to watch, zooming by on her bicycle in her uniform.

It's mostly the wind in the rice that I want to share. But I'm not sure how - the smell is both grassy and nutty. The green is sublime. The way the colors shift and shade as the wind blows waves in the fields -- Oh it is so lovely. We are really feeling at home here, and the poignancy of having only 2 1/2 months left is nearly too much to bear.