My Taiwan Adventure

  Peking Duck of course!!!!! It's so amazing! I got to have it both times I visited Beijing and I stuffed myself until my stomach hurt. I literally had a belly for the rest of the trip.   Peking Duck (Peking was the old way to say Beijing) has been around since the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and is considered the national dish of China. That is not to say that people haven't been roasting duck in ovens since before then. Special ducks are bred to be cooked this way. What's special about this dish is that the skin is very thin and crispy and it's often eaten in a pancake with scallions and sauce.   In the restaurants the cooks will cut the duck in front of you as part of a show.   Here's the pancake with scallions and sauce. It looks like a crepe, yes...and my focus was way off.   Thankfully there are no pictures taken of me eating this, because I'm really fanatical about my Peking duck. If you ever get a chance to try it (...

So I've been to Beijing two times...and quite a few years apart as you can tell by my hair. What I think of China is always going to be biased by my intrinsic quality of not being Asian- so a lot of the culture I don't understand quite yet. It's also going to be biased by my time in Taiwan where the culture is similar but manners are completely different. My first impression of Beijing is always the buildings- big, short, stark rectangle shapes (Communist style architecture). The city is so spread out that you HAVE to take a taxi or subway everywhere. Hopefully the only places you want to go are near a subway station because taxis are few and hard to come by. Usually someone's already waiting for a taxi before you...or they take the taxi you're hailing. There's not very many patches of green- maybe the pollution destroyed all the vegetation. That's another big thing- pollution. When I went the second time I especially noticed the smog that seemed to ha...

One of my secret dreams is to be a movie star or something along those lines. Working for an English teaching company in Taiwan sort of made that dream come true... or at least gave me a taste of it! I was asked to help shoot a commercial for Hess a couple weeks back. I had no idea what to expect and was half nervous/half excited. I just knew I wanted to do it! The story is that us English teachers and some students helped a disabled, elderly man's dream come true: playing baseball. Miraculously he hit a home run! ;) Like I said, showed up to the shoot and had no idea what I was going to be doing.. nothing. Turns out I got to be the pitcher. I'm so grateful for having played softball growing up! But it was so terrifying- I had to throw the ball with the old guy next to the plate. I was so afraid I was going to hit him! Okay, luckily he was wearing a helmet because I did lob one onto his head. :'( The ball was really soft okay!!! I felt really bad.... He was fine tho...

So our last day in Tokyo... what do you think we did? DISNEY!!! This was my first time visiting a Disney resort. Yes, I know. My childhood was so deprived! (Just kidding!) Needless to say- I was in heaven!   I'm not one for roller coaster type rides so I think the shops were my favorite. We only had half a day there. NOT ENOUGH TIME!     Albert's thinking: Oh no... Why did I have to get stuck with this 5 year old?!           Look! It's Snow White!!       The Goofy headband is so funny! Holy cow! How iconic is this? A mother daughter, (and a young son which you can't see here) were ALL playing on electronic devices while waiting in line!   This is so cool!   Needless to say...we didn't get in line for that! One of the only rides we did was: The Merry Go Round! Heehee! I remember loving it when I was a kid so I was excited! ...

So I said before that the subway system is easy to use in Tokyo... but that's only after you figure out the map! There's so many lines, as you can see! Today we went back to the Ueno park area to see the famous Buddhist temple called Senso-ji and also see the Tokyo National Museum- best museum of the trip!   Here is Senso-ji. It is Tokyo's oldest temple (645 AD). Yes, I use AD on purpose because I like it better. :P It was bombed during WWII and later rebuilt. A shinto shrine is also located inside.     At either end of the big lantern were the two guardians of the temple. They looked pretty fierce! Also notice that this is a huge tourist trap!  And here's where you get trapped! After the gate is a long walkway with merchant's stalls on either side. I didn't have time for much shopping later so I got most of my souvenirs here. I love the drawing of the rabbit!     I think Japan is where restaur...