Fall and falling apple juice

It's fall time, but it doesn't look like it here. Naomi Kallberg absolutely refuses to let that be a reason to not enjoy fall and I find myself being caught up in her enthusiasm for the amazing autumn season.
The first thing she did was procure pumpkins for carving at the school. We were both a little disappointed that all our school could find was little squashes, but she determined to make them work. A second of our schools found real Taiwan pumpkins, but they were green and more round, they couldn't sit on their own..."Oh well, we can still make pumpkin pies with them."
Then we went on a trip to Taipei by train and we took our two little sisters with us. Guess what we found there? We found the most beautiful collection of imported American pumpkins. I have never thought pumpkins were beautiful before that day. So we bought one. Then we went to Costco and bought lots of candy for trick or treating and two gallons of apple juice to make into an apple cider drink. It wasn't until we got back to where we were staying that we realized we didn't have enough arms between us to carry all of our newly acquired items and the stuff we brought with us...We attempted this anyways and in our attempt to make it up to the Chen's house I dropped one of the apple juices in the elevator. It burst open and was spilling all around our feet. There is a camera in the elevator and I can't help but imagine what the man watching the video was thinking. He would have seen four overloaded females waddling onto the elevator, then seen the apple juice crash on the floor, then he would have observed four people attempting to bend over and pick up the apple juice, then he would have seen the elevator close when we got off and then lots of hands mopping up the huge apple juice mess, then the doors closing again and he would be the only one who knew the secret to why the elevator smelled like apples.

We did manage to save half of the gallon and Faith heated it up with some spices and it was amazing. I can't help falling in love with the taste of fall.

We got home and carved our beautiful orange pumpkin. It was my first time carving a pumpkin. Then Naomi cleaned out and sectioned and cooked up and drained and packaged and froze one of the pumpkins. The next day we made pumpkin pies. I made the crust, but had no rolling pin so I emptied a big old Vitamin C bottle and used it. It was a rather novel experience. Naomi made the pumpkin filling. I'm not allowed to say what she put in it, because it's a top secret recipe her brother invented. All I can say is that the pies were incredible, better than any I've ever tasted.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVE FALL! =)

Something really strange happens when Naomi gets ahold of pumpkins...Sometimes she just looks at them other times...










Pumpkins with the classes. =)


The children definitely enjoyed the fall season in English class.

overly protective?

Last weekend Naomi and I visited Taipei with our two younger sisters. We had many a good time and our biggest adventure was coming home, but I refuse to tell that story right now. I'd rather laugh with you (or alone, depending on whether or not you find certain things as strange and suggestive as I do) about certain oddities of Taiwan life.

What you see in this picture is two vending machines one is a gum ball machine and the other vends bouncy balls.




This next picture is not of bouncy balls, but of individually wrapped gumballs. I haven't decided if this is pure genious or a sign of hygenic obsession.
I'm thinking the next time I feel a little overly cared for and controlled over here I will use code phrase "Individually wrapped gumballs" to let Nomes know it's time to go home. Or maybe I can use it for overly protective parents "they are so the wrapped gumball type"

Okay...so maybe I am the only one laughing. WHO CARES?!!!







This last picture isn't anything special or funny. It's just a soda vending machine in Taiwan, just in case you were wondering.




You can't really see if but in this picture Coke and Pepsi are residing peacefully side by side. Let this give us all hope that one day World peace can actually be achieved.




Thank you

varying degrees of sweetness

This week we've been teaching Halloween vocabulary in all of our classes. We've tried to help the kids get as much of the Halloween experience as possible in a 40 minute class. In a few of the classes we carved pumpkins and in the less lucky classes we did other crafts or games, but one thing that's been common to every class is trick or treating. Every class got to go trick or treating to either the teacher's office or amongst themselves. I thought it was a pretty "American" experience for them, until I saw the candy they brought and I realized that they just don't get it. In the course of today's class I've seen some of the most unsweet and strange candy's ever. Salty Plum lolly pops; green tea, sarsaparilla and coke candies; other candies of strange colors and various stages of fluffiness, but the ultimate strange and disturbing candy of the day was MUSHROOM DRY RADISH MOCHI. When the students handed me one of the later I knew the game was up. These children don't understand the point of candy, so how can they understand Halloween? Needless to say I pocketed the candy for later experiments...I'm still debating on whether I should try it or not for the rather novel experience of eating mushroom flavored chewy "candy." What do you think?

So this was another lesson on the cultural difference between Americans and Taiwanese people. This one has concerned what I call the sweet/saltiness factor. Taiwanese people just don't like sweet very much. I don't know why. Just the other day we had Coldstone ice cream with three little kids and they complained about it being too cold and too sweet...Ice cream, too sweet? since when? I don't think I will ever understand these people.