Big Buddha, Big Belly

If there is one thing I'll remember from our Taiwan adventures, it is the people we were blessed to associate with.

Every step of the way we were the receivers of SO much goodness.

After a day in Taipei, we headed to Taichung. Lucky for us, so did the Bowens! It was SO fun to be with them.

Mister would start off every day like this if he could. Mmm. 

We took a walk to find the Big Buddha. When we entered the courtyard, this is what we found. I was expecting something a little bigger...

That's more like it!

Family pic in the courtyard.

For lunch we went to the famous Japanese BBQ!

All-you-can-eat meat that you cook on your own=fantastic. We probably didn't eat this much beef combined while in China.

These wonderful people drove us around, took care of our babies, and made sure we had a place to sleep at night! 

                        Octopus salad

What a sweet way to start out our day. :)

The End of the Beginning

We avoided the millions of travelers during the holiday, but we still had a few adventures of our own.

We went bowling with friends, lit off fireworks, took Miss A to a way cool play place, lit off fireworks, tried to send off some floating lanterns from the top of our building, and lit off fireworks.

We went all out for the last day of New Year celebrations.

The entrance to a neat "Thai" restaurant that was really mostly food from Southeast Asia.

The Valentine Special started off with these lovely shrimp--legs and heads included! Definitely the first (and hopefully last) time I try to eat something with it's head still attached. 

Some of the food was pretty good, like the vegetables in the front. The soup toward the back, on the other hand, tasted like a latrine. mmm.

Miss A could tell this was a fish since it still had its eyes and everything. When this was brought out, they poured sauce on top and lit a fire underneath. Only Mister was brave enough to try it. Even at a nicer restaurant like this the fish is most likely caught from the lovely (green/polluted) Yangtze River.

Fun markets lined streets and shopping areas. We saw traditional cut paper, toy animals, beautiful dolls, and so much more. This woman was sitting at her booth making glass beads. 

We ended our day with a "Year of the Rabbit" treat for Miss A.

A Not-So-Oriental Thanksgiving

The literal translation of turkey in Chinese is "big chicken." This holiday--was a "big Thanksgiving"!

We didn't have turkey on Thanksgiving day, but we sure did celebrate. Football video games (since the actual games weren't on in our time zone), KFC chicken, homemade sides, dessert, and friends. We left without a single bit of homesickness.

I made homemade green bean casserole (seriously!) and my mom's sweet potato casserole. 

Some of the boys and the babies. Miss A loves playing with her favorite friend.

On Saturday we had turkey.

and more turkey.

Our branch ordered turkeys from the wonderful US. They were too big for Chinese ovens, so the cooks had to cut them in half to cook them. They were de-li-cious.

100+ members and friends came to celebrate Thanksgiving with our branch. We were stuffed and entertained with a branch talent show.

It looks like a real Thanksgiving dinner, right?

On a day like that, I can see why some Chinese think we are a fat people. 

But it is so worth it.

Hope you had a great holiday! 

Fresh as Can Be

A lot of the time, grocery shopping makes me anxious. It all started when I found out Walmart price matched...

I tried to make things easier on myself and not be too annoying to the employee who had to ring everything up. I put all of the price matched items together. I had a list ready in case the cashier had questions. I even put little sticky notes with the new price on every single item. No matter what I did, when I got to the front of that checkout line it was the same.

I don't know what it was. Worry about the overworked and underpaid cashier? Maybe guilt for getting two generous weeks of produce for $15? Whatever it is, China hasn't made it go away. It just has given me new reasons.

Would you like to see my "grocery store"?

Welcome to the entrance! Those various bins you see on the ground to the left? Those contain live fish, water snake things, and other creatures of the sea.

There are five different vegetable booths inside with most of the same things. We know one lady always has red bell peppers and another special orders beets for us (needed thanks to my Venezuelan doctor's order to drink a carrot-orange-beet smoothie every day)

We made the mistake of getting meat from these guys our first time. They grabbed the meat with their bare hands, threw it on the scale, put it in a bag, and gave us our change--all with those same meat-juiced hands. mmm. We now order from a booth next to this one with a "refrigerated" section and a much more sanitary girl (who speaks English!).

The Chinese love to have meat that is fresh--needless to say, I do not buy our chicken meat here.

What a clean little place, hmm? Looking at this picture, I told mister I would have never imagined myself actually shopping here. Ever. Thanks to our sanitization system, we have yet to get sick!

I'm a little hesitant to buy beans or rice out here...I don't know if I can be that adventurous.

In addition to markets like the one we shop at, trucks sell produce on the streets. The truck prices are usually better, but the selection is smaller. Can you guess what fruit we bought this week?

I can always walk down the streets to find out what is in season! Cabbage and radishes? Here's to hoping I can find some great recipes...or that our market will still have some variety as it gets colder.

Despite my apprehensions about going to this fresh market and buying produce on the street, I sure do love this place.

I spend way too much some time keeping a mental list of all the things I am excited for when we get back to the US. This little market will be on the other side of that list: the What-I-Miss-About-China side.

I didn't think I'd have anything over there. Here's to change. :)

Roasting Marshmallows

Fall is here in Nanjing. It was hot and humid one day and we woke up shivering under our little sheet the next!

Halloween came up on us a lot like the weather did. It wasn't on our minds as much since no one really celebrates--although there are some Halloween decorations for sale in the bigger grocery stores.

We very much missed the friends, family, food, and atmosphere of the beginning of fall, but we tried our best to feel some of it here. :)

We had TWO cute little pumpkins. This beauty (on the right) was in the produce section at the grocery store and I couldn't resist.

Cooked pumpkin! Have I mentioned that there is literally no canned food here? My cooking with a Chinese crockpot skills have had to get better (or at least my attempts are more frequent)!

Mister and I had this pumpkin bread on our date night in. Since chocolate chips are $6 a bag, we settled for some hot chocolate and played "Halloween Scrabble"--pretty much impossible. :) We also watched Hocus Pocus on Youtube. Can you  believe he had never seen it??

To top our October festivities off, our friends got together for a little Halloween party. Maybe not up to US standards, but I was pretty impressed!

We had food:

mummy cupcakes

finger cookies

no bake spiders

eyeballs

We had fun:

Can you guess what we are??

The babies are something sweet. mmm!

What a great group!

Miss A fell over trying to walk--that's what a big marshmallow she was!