Heath arrived home safely and on time on Friday night. No, he never put together a blog post for me...so, I'm taking some some snipets from his emails while he was away to share his experiences.
12/4/11
Safe and sound. We arrived about 15 minutes earlier than scheduled. We had lots of turbulence on the way so I had a hard time sleeping. I was able to watch quite a few movies and complete a lot of crossword puzzles. We arrived at very early this morning (5:20am) Taiwan time today 12/4 and came straight the hotel and checked in. We all showered unpacked and had time to eat a little breakfast before our van was her to take us to downtown Taipei. We went downtown and visited Taipei 101 which was the worlds tallest building until Dubai built theirs a few years ago. There is about 4-5 stories worth of mall and retail stores at the very bottom and not sure what the other floors are (probably offices of some sorts) It took exactly 37 seconds for us to take an elevator from the 1st floor to the 90th floor (observation deck). You could barely feel the elevator moving, but your ears sure did pop.After that we stopped at a restaurant Din Tai Fung which is well know for their dumplings. We ate lunch and then hopped on a bus to go to an old fishery tour on the far coast. It was about an hour bus ride and it made a few stops along the way. The last stop was a village fairly high up in the mountains (safe from tsunamis). I don't know how those tour buses make it up there, but they did.
12/6/11
Hello Everyone,It is now Hump Day (Wednesday) Taiwan time. We are at our T2 office today getting ready to start the day. The trip has gone very well so far, it has been very busy but overall good. Monday at the office, I tried corn soup (not a big fan) as well as ate pork and cabbage (yes cabbage) roll-ups which were similar to the dumplings we ate of Sunday. On Monday night we went out to a Japanese BBQ restaurant, visited the Temple and went to the night Market. It was a very late night, we were didn’t get back to the hotel until 11:30 pm or midnight. Which apparently that is normal for the culture, but with our jetlag – a very bad idea! The Japanese BBQ place was very good, you grilled your own food on little grills on your table. I tried just about everything other than Chicken Heart and Pork intestine. I just couldn’t get past the mental aspect of that one :) The Temple was amazing, very historic sight to see here in Taiwan. The night market was neat to walk through, lots of foot massage places – NO I did not visit any of them. It was nice to have Garmin Taiwan members with us as the stores located there negotiate everything so we got some good deals on a few things we did buy. Tuesday at the office, we have beef noodle soup for lunch which was very good. Tuesday night we went to a Thai restaurant and then back to the hotel. The highlight here is a tried and ate frog, I really did!!! It was OK, a little chewy but tasted similar to chicken. For desert they had a coconut and fruit soup dish. I tried, but wasn’t a big fan. We got back to the hotel a little after nine and I was able to catch Jessie and the kiddos before they left for daycare and work. I heard it snowed Tuesday and the kiddos were ready to go in their boots. We had 3 tour buses show up at our hotel last night filled with Chinese tourists. The hotel doesn’t allow you to change the thermostat settings in your room and it gets rather warm over night. Today I’m not sure what is on the agenda. We have another fun-filled day of meetings. I’ll keep ya posted on the new things I get to try today.
12/7/11
So I have survived another day! Last night we went to a Taiwanese restaurant for dinner. Didn’t try anything out of the ordinary. Except our desert was an edible tree fungus (mushroom) soup. It was very clear and looked like pear juice. I tried it, but was not a fan. There apparently was a small earthquake in Taiwan about 100km (60 miles) from our hotel/office. We couldn’t feel it, but on our way to the office we were told that they had one and asked if we could feel it. Anyways, I’m safe and sound and getting ready to start the day (Thursday).
One more thing – I just found out in the office this morning that one of the dishes last night was pigs knuckle (they still call it pigs feet, but it is not the hoof). Little did I know this last night it was the dish that I thought was a type of pork. Many of the meat pieces are rather small. You can eat in one bite or nibble if you wish. If I don’t know what it is, I usually nibble first. I did so with this dish and it was very different, I didn’t like the texture what so ever. It felt like I bit into a big piece of fat. Now it makes sense why I didn’t like it – IT WAS PIGS FEET……really. I now feel sick to my stomach that I even attempted that. Oh well, life goes on right.
12/8/11
It is now our final day here. We leave the office at 3:00pm today and our flight leaves at 6:00pm (Friday night Taiwan time). We should arrive Los Angeles at 2:00pm (Friday US time) and then finally make it back to Kansas at 10:20pm. Well, I think all my efforts in trying new stuff caught up to me yesterday afternoon. I ended up getting sick and having to go back to the hotel. Something must not have settled well with me, but by 9:00pm last night I was feeling much better and appear to be back to normal today with just a small headache. I think I will take it very easy with the food today before our flight. It is very different being sick here than in the states. Everybody is worried for your well being, everyone wanted me to go to see a dr. I was back in my hotel room for 5 minutes and the front desk asked if I needed anything and if I felt I needed to see a dr just call. It was very comforting.
Here is a link to his photos. Enjoy!
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| December 10, 2011 |
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