A Week in Taiwan - Day 2 November 22, 2005
Posted by Martin in : Overseas Travel , trackbackWe woke early Tuesday to say hi to Ella and Claire. Ella has shot up since I last met her and is turning into a very confident attractive young girl, who proudly informs me that her role at school is to discipline the school bullies and to keep order on the school bus.
I’d never met Claire before, her and Ella are in the same class at school and she is truly a lovely girl. It seems that the two girls dominate all the sports competitions and rank first and second in many of them. Claire was perhaps a little quiet when we first met although it did not take her long to be laughing and joking with us.
The girls left for school and we got our formal introduction to the animals.
After breakfast Sue and Wenjing took us to enjoy a hot spa close to their home. Their property is situated in Beitu, a quiet and country-esqe part of Taipei, accessible to the city centre within 30 minutes on the efficient metro line.
The public baths were relaxing, despite encountering an elderly lady who seemed to have had a heart attack just before we entered. The pools varied in temperature from hot, to damn hot, to ridiculously hot - Tik and I got ourselves into the hot pool by the end of our visit.
Sue’s observation about Taiwan is that it is very much a culture based around recreation. It is an affluent country and (heart attack lady aside) a healthy one where elderly people do get themselves out to enjoy natural spas, countryside and mountain walks.
We didn’t have long at the spa as we arrived around closing time.
Our first experience of Taiwanese food soon followed. We went to a well-decorated cozy restaurant and enjoyed bowls of boat noodles. I ultimately plan to eat myself around the world, visiting every country and trying all manner of unusual foods. With Thailand offering much diversity though the Taiwanese noodles were delicious but nothing especially new for me.
That afternoon Tik, Sue and I ventured up the nearby waterfalls. We met up with Ella and Claire as they finished school and we went to enjoy drinks and sweets in a nearby cafe.
It is incredible that Ella has learnt Chinese so quickly, arriving with very little knowledge only 18 months ago; she seems (certainly to me) fluent already. Claire too has only learnt her English in the last two years, on Wenjings insistence that the family suddenly switch languages in preparation for when he and Sue would live together. Both children took care of us in the cafe and I found it so fascinating to hear children who’d assimilated new languages so fast and were so comfortable in using them.
We returned to the house for a home-cooked meal and got a reasonably early night.
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