12-Year Anniversary

Christmas time is never complete without trying to squeeze in a good wedding anniversary celebration. Could someone please remind me why Ben and I decided to get married in December and make all our friends and family come to our wedding 4 days before Christmas?!? Good thing love isn't expected to be logical :) Thanks for not hating us!


This year marked 12 years of being married to my best friend. I could go off and get all sappy about the topic, but given the forum, I'll refrain.

It was my year to plan so I arranged for our babysitter to come, then we took off for an efficient, one-stop, reliable Christmas present source. Don't let Ben's expression fool you, he's lovin' it! 

Next we had the most posh movie-watching experience ever!  

The theater is called "Gold Class." It's located on the 7th floor of Tiger City department store (show times can be found at www.chinapost.com.tw). For the equivalent of US$25 per person, you get quite the movie-watching experience!

Upon arrival, we were seated at a little cafe table and given a menu to order anything from a multiple course meal to popcorn and a soda. The admission price included a NT$400 stipend for food (about US$13). Since this was our dinner time, we ordered the following meal for two:

It turned out to actually be really tasty food!

After ordering, we were given the chance to win a cool prize by picking a number from a bingo-type spinner. My lucky number got me a sample package of lotion and face wash. Ben's was the same. I wonder if they all were the same? Regardless, it makes you feel quite special :) 

Then at show time, we were led to this incredibly schnazzy theater with duos of full reclining seats, a provided blanket and (for this movie in particular) 3D glasses.

Throughout the movie we were served our meal and fully enjoyed it!

Felt a lot like Christmas!

Ironically, in a country with less than 5% of its population Christian and who doesn't even officially recognize Christmas as a holiday (it's a regular school/work day), it began to feel a lot like Christmas around the same time as it does in the United States: come mid-November, all the big department stores began putting out their fancy Christmas displays and lights:

 

 At Top City department store

 

At Mitsukoshi department store--we could even see this tree all lit up at night from our balcony :) 

 

Taichung City government building put out an enormous tree! 

And I've also never seen so many poinsettias before! They were in pots everywhere outside...

 

...and even in our apartment lobby, which also had a huge Christmas tree with fake presents all around it.  Theo only got to the poinsettias twice and luckily his destruction was minimal. 

Ryley and Julien had to be assured multiple times that, unfortunately, 

there really wasn't anything in the wrapped up boxes.

 With all of the familiar Christmas decorations, there still were a few obvious oddities that would remind me that this was Christmas "Taiwanese style." Here are a few of my favorites:

 A huge advertizement for a sale at Sogo department store

A sign in the Japanese-style burger joint called "Mos Burger"

In a department store window

And here's my all-time favorite: a recycling of Halloween candy, tied up all pretty in a Christmas bag and put back on the shelf at a little candy specialty shop at Tiger City department store! But really, what's wrong with taking two foreign holidays and making the most of it?!
It would be a shame to waste merchandise! 

Inspired by the above shop's recycling efforts, here is Ryley and one of our friends stuffing our remaining Halloween candy in a huge advent Santa calendar that I found at the IKEA here.

We also did our best to make our apartment look like Christmas:

 We hung some snowflakes...

 ...and snagged a little artificial Christmas tree from CostCo where we were given the good advice to buy one early before they were all gone!

And to load on a bit more Christmas tradition, we made gingerbread houses for the first time.
Thanks, IKEA, for selling convenient little kits!

For Christmas activities, we had friends over to make snowmen decorations

And we attended 3 different Christmas parties:

 This is Julien on Santa's lap at party #1

 This is Theo very impressed with the Latin dancers at party #1

 This is Theo gazing into some oddly familiar eyes of the Santa at party #2

 This is the Santa at party #2 terrifying a poor child (it all started off badly when Santa mispronounced the child's Chinese name)

 This is Theo still trying to figure Santa out at party #2

 This is Ryley's smug look of "I know who you are, Santa" at party #2

Party #3 has no good photos to share because Theo was on the loose in a hazardous environment with destruction on his mind. His main target were 8 fully decorated gingerbread houses. For some reason he didn't have much of an appetite come meal time.

Party #3 was a good bonding get-together with the small expat group from Ben's company. Ben's boss put the expat spouses in charge of planning everything and it was a lot of fun to get to know the other ladies better. We were able to reserve the party room at our apartment and they provided an incredible catered meal. I ate a few bites here and there on my breaks from chasing Theo around :)

Flying Cow Ranch

We had a fun-filled day with friends at the Flying Cow Ranch: http://www.flyingcow.com.tw/  It's only about an hour drive north-west of a Taichung...in good traffic. I'm composing this post as we sit on the freeway on our drive home :(

We had eight kids with us ages 9, 9, 8, 6, 6, 6, 2, and nearly 2 and they all highly recommend the place! Our six hour visit included feeding all sorts of animals and multiple visits to their interesting playground.

We finished up with hot chocolate at the cafe. I underestimated the chilly, damp factor if Taiwan's 60 degrees and we were quite cold without hats and mittens and warmer jackets! Lesson learned.

The Official Feast

We did get our Thanksgiving feast a couple of days later.
Some friends invited us to their home along with another Taiwanese family who had never had a Thanksgivign meal before. We did our best to make it as authentic as possible:

Luckily our friends found a seasonal service that offers fullly roasted turkeys (it's a rare thing to have an oven over here--we lucked out with our baby oven in our apartment). As with most poultry over here, this turkey kept his head through the whole ordeal. We didn't invite the head to the table, however. 

The foreign import store provided some familiar fixings for our olive/pickle tray.

And we weren't without deviled eggs, candied yams and greenbean casserol :) 

Our only disappointment was to find out the CostCo failed to supply their normal stock of pumpkin pie around Thanksgiving time this year. But complaining wouldn't be Thanksgiving-y, so I won't :) 

Black Friday

Although our Thanksgiving day wasn't very traditional, Ben and I stuck by the Black Friday shopping tradition and hit the markets. We went to a street that was lined with clothing shop after clothing shop [BeiPing Rd] and picked out a few "English" t-shirt gems for Christmas gifts. 

Here is an example of what English verbiage you can find on some shirts here in Taiwan. Hilarious!

We also finally got to one of the jade markets. There were so many beautiful carved pieces of jade and other works of art. We didn't buy much--things were more expensive than we had hoped--but I now have a wish-list started :)