Chinese New Year: Taiwan Version cont'd

Now, for the other part of our trip to Taiwan...

On New Year's Eve, we spent the day wandering around the International Flora Expo.   Apparently, it's the must see event in Taiwan this year.  There are certain exhibitions that you have to wait in line at 5 a.m. to get tickets to enter.  We obviously did not do that, but we checked out the outdoor displays and exhibitions with short lines.

Floral Whales

I thought it was pretty cool that they had water spraying out of the whale.

Cactus land!

This was a poem with a translation....I think the meaning was definitely lost in translation...

It reminds me of those funny sweatshirt/sweatpant outfits from Taiwan that my mom used to make me wear when I was little....They would say things like "Happy bear always fun" or "Lover is in the air" or something to that effect.

I think maybe they should've hired a better translator...

Here are some close ups of the flowers.  Roses and orchids are my favorites!

The chess player bushes...If you notice in the left background, they even have grass bricks!

In the middle of the exhibition, there were some fake mini-mountains we climbed.

There were fields and fields of flowers, smelled so good!

They even had these funny flowers made out of plastic spoons!

After the Flora Expo, we had hot pot dinner with the family and played mahjong all night.

Playing Mahjong was great for Andy learning Chinese - he now knows not only how to say the numbers 1-9, but he can read them in Chinese too!  Not to mention he can read North, East, South, West, (though hasn't quite matched the characters to meanings) and a few other characters...You never know when you might use those words....

Here's the whole family

After dinner, we went downstairs and lit some sparklers and roman candles.

Here I was trying to write "Love", but instead, I got "Lovo"....close enough I suppose.  I kinda like this picture because there's so much going on.  I'm trying to write a message, my cousin is watching while someone else is shooting off some fireworks.  

During the rest of our stay, we visited a couple more places.

Here's Taipei 101 - the world's second tallest building.  I took this picture one night when we walked by, but we visited during the daytime and went to the top.

Here's Andy checking out the view on top of Taipei 101.


My little cousin taking a look with a little help from the binoculars.

Saw this person walking her dog in the Taipei 101 area...I can't believe someone actually put shoes on their dog...or should I say - I can't believe they actually MAKE shoes for dogs...

We also went to Beitou where there are the famous hot springs.  This is the view of the Thermal Valley.  They used to be able to boil eggs in this, but it's fenced off now since it's too hot...the water was actually bubbling it was so hot!

We had a really fun time in Taiwan and enjoyed spending time with friends and family.  I pretty much ate the entire trip and am now having withdrawal from some of my favorite foods.  I'm pretty sure I gained quite a few pounds over the couple of weeks - now I understand why people were warning me about Chinese New Year being a crazy time.  It's pretty much like Thanksgiving and Christmas combined in the states!  Being away from my family in the states is tough, but being able to spend time with my family in Taiwan really made me feel alot better.  For now, I'm fueled up with family love until the next visit!