Taiwantremors - The Hogans in Taiwan: October 2010

Flat Stanley came to our house last month. My cousin's son Dominic sent him here.

Stanley did a lot of things in the two days that we took pictures with him.

He went for a scooter ride.

He went to Josie's An-Ching-Bad (after school class).
Possibly three or four elementary schools are represented in this picture.

He played at Josie and Jevin's school.

(Jevin's kindergarten and Josie's after school care are at the same location.)

It was near moon festival time and one of the teachers was having a barbeque for her students next to the playground, so she let Stanley join in.

Stanley took the bus home.

(It is so hard to have the kids say "van" when they learn it as "bus.")

Royal is the kindergarten. Giraffe is the An-Ching-Ban and Cram school.

He tried on Josie's school bag... with her three different schools' books.

(Elementary, An-Ching-Ban, Cram School)

He played with Jevin.

After four in the afternoon, the combine classes in a general class where kids of all ages can play while they wait for their parents to take them home, so these kids are not his classmates.

This was the waiting area for the doctor.

Doctor Wang was awesome. He played right along, so we got a picture of Stanley going to see the doctor.

The criteria was to introduce the culture to the kids back in Canada.
Well, when I first came to Taiwan, I remember how I avoided 7-elevens here because of the smell.

The smell of the "snacks."

The guy above was also a trooper, letting us take a picture of him with Stanley.

The Salon owner also played along.

She already knows how special her service is after the fabulous four made their trip here.

For about $5, we get a back massage, a hair wash, a neck massage and any style we want

We take all our out of country guests here.

I thought it was fitting to take Stanley to the Wu's shop. We introduce all our foreign friends to them. Not only are they honest and trustworthy, but also they are much like our Taiwanese parents.

This is a local temple in our town. I had actually never gone here before. We got a few looks when we were taking these pictures.

This is a church in our town as well. It is beautiful inside. The first floor is just a gathering area and it doesn't look like much. One year we went to a Christmas service inside and were ushered to the second floor. Well, the second floor is the main area and the third floor looks down onto the second floor. It was so gorgeous.

And I thought Stanley might enjoy seeing some everyday food in the supermarket. Well, actually I might have been a little biased with my picture taking. I took pictures of the things I thought were strange.

FROGS

Fish...

Chicken FEET

SQUID

PEANUT SOUP

Chinese Coke

Almond Fish (hold me back, not!)

Plums of every flavour

Toothpaste

I just thought that Chinese toothpaste was cool.

(And actually this toothpaste has a history. It is called Darlie... changed from the original Darkie. The picture is of an African American with a top hat. They changed the name to be more politically correct... in English.. but the Chinese is still called "Hay Run" which means "Black Person.")

Western Cereal

I thought it would be cool if Stanley bought his own drink. The cashiers did not think it was that funny.

See the ten dollar coin in Stanley's hand?

Moon Festival. We went and bought boxes of Moon Cakes for the Chinese teachers. It's a tradition. These moon cakes are filled with meats and nuts and sometimes fruit. I personally don't really like them. For the foreign teachers that teach our kids, we try our best to get edible cakes or cookies. I did actually try to find these "mice cakes" that a certain bakery had, but everyone was in moon cake mode. Perhaps I will post the 'mice' another time if I can find them again.

The "EyeGlass Store," as we call it, is right around the corner from our house and a part of our life so we included it in Stanley's visit. Eric was great. I explained that Stanley was visiting and perhaps he could try on some glasses... Eric complied.