The other evening Megan and I were walking out of a restaurant. She locked her arm in mine, pulled close, and began singing "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..." She paused, and said "No, it's not."

Taipei is not the most Christmas-y feeling place. As a matter of fact I'm packing a whole pile of sweaters I brought with me here to send back home. I have yet to put a single one on. It hasn't gotten colder than 17C/63F.

But that's changing. We are going home with our sweaters this afternoon. We will be plunged into a New England Christmas, with its nippy air, Christmas frenzy, and family gatherings. It will be quite nice. It's so odd here. I was buying some gifts the other day from a shopkeeper. I explained in my bad Chinese that one gift was for my mom, one was for my wife's mom. Christmas, I said. She got so excited! She ran into the back room and got for me a little special gift, and said "Merry Christmas!"

So, a Merry Christmas to you all reading this. I know it's the first post in almost twenty days - life has been busy. I'll try to post my Taipei movie on this site - it came out pretty good - a little something I made to show the folks at home a slice of the experience here.

All for now. School, home to finish packing, some banking, then we begin our 28 hours of travel. Hoo boy.

For our Thanksgiving vacation about twenty of us headed about three hours south of here to a huge national park called Taroko Gorge. It is probably the most visited sight in Taiwan, a 37,000 acre park that stretches from the Pacific Ocean inland, encompassing the most beautiful scenery I've yet to experience in my four months here. We boarded a train early Thursday morning and headed out of Taipei, arriving in Hualien about 10:30 AM. A bus from the hotel met us at the station and brought our whole crew into the Gorge. The ride was about 45 minutes, and went from betel nut stands and rock quarrys as we left Hualien to twisting roads and impossibly steep mountains as we entered the Gorge. We spent most of the time craning our necks attempting to see the tops of sheer rock faces, or staring into deep crevasses between mountains.

The hotel was a real surprise - very nice accomodations, on the roof a pool, tennis courts and "gate ball", a kind of cross between miniature golf and croquet. A pub on the third floor, another place for drinks in the lobby, and two restaurants downstairs. There was also a sauna, steam room and hot and cold baths. The rooms were quite nice: small sofa, coffee table, desk, and even nice artwork on the walls - a first! The bathrooms had a large, glassed-in shower/tub area with a big glass window (and curtain) back into your room. Huge mirrors, beautiful stone counters, and a telephone in the toilet for those important calls; the whole bathroom was pretty enormous.

A giant electronic safe in the closet, a fridge, and other amenities - the digs were quite nice. We did again get to experience Chinese mattresses - firm is an understatement. You bang down on them with your fist and you hear the stiff ringing of springs - if you like your mattress hard as a rock, you'll be in heaven here. Most Chinese believe a hard mattress is the best thing for your spine. My spine begs to differ.

I'm intrigued by the lights in the room. When you first walk in, you place your key card into a slot by the door. This is a sort of master switch for all the electronics in the room. By the bed there is a control panel. From here you can operate the desk light, the ceiling lights, even the light over the picture. A/C, etc., is all controlled from this one panel. It's like Captain Kirk's chair on the Starship Enterprise.

The afternoon we arrived we had a free shuttle take us about 3 km to the trailhead of a hot springs. Down the side of a mountain, through a tunnel or two, and across a tiny suspension bridge, we went down another stairway clinging to a rock face as it descended to the springs - two pools, one hot, one hotter, alongside a rushing river. It was quite an experience, perfect to soak in after a day of train and bus rides.

Friday morning we ran around and did various things. Megan was thrilled to have her choice of indoor and outdoor pools, although the outdoor was a bit too chilly water-wise. Around 11:30 AM about ten of us met at "the construction site" to begin a hike. Since the earthquake of 9/21 last year, they have had to do a great deal of repair on tunnels and roadways in the gorge. They let hikers and traffic through only once every hour. Once we passed through, we hiked up a roadway and plunged into the first of a series of six tunnels. Long, dark, and wet, we carried flashlights supplied by the hotel.

The next several hours we experienced incredible water falls, mountains dropping down to river gorges, gigantic boulders strewn along the rivers like so many tumbled dominoes, all punctuated by trips through the pitch-black tunnels. There are links to pictures below that show more than I can possibly describe.

So many times throughout our stay I felt this incredible sense of being cleansed by the clean air, the lack of traffic, the absence of the city hustle and bustle. It was great to be out in nature, away from the stress and pressure of work. I truly felt revived.

One of the most incredible experiences was our late night hike back to the hot springs. We left after dinner, flashlights in hand, and hiked the three kilometers up a very dark, very quiet road to the trailhead for the hot springs. Down the steps we went, flashlight beams guiding our way, calls back and forth to watch your head or watch your step. As we crossed the suspension bridge we could see lights from the other bathers down below, illuminating the water a pale blue whenever a flashlight beam passed over. Surprisingly, it was quite busy, a fair amount of people coming and going. Still, the experience of soaking in the steaming water, looking overhead to see the play of flashlights coming down the side of the mountain as other trekkers made their way down, listening to the rush of water, and the murmur and laughter of voices is something I won't soon forget.

Heading back the clouds had truly parted, and overhead, sparkling amidst the inky black, were stars and more stars. There were times we simply stopped walking, craning our necks, and stared silently upward. This was a gift, a sensory indulgence, as there are no stars visible in Taipei, or maybe two or three on a good night. Now we looked at a blanket of them, even seeing three or four shooting stars as we walked back, tired, our bodies happy with the soak in the soothing waters, conversation between friends making the walk home a comforting pleasure.

My trip up the mountain near the hotel one day while Megan swam was pretty memorable. I visited this Buddhist temple high up over the river. You can see the pictures of it below. They were having some kind of five-day service, and, as I removed my shoes and walked in, I was enveloped in the sound of this ethereal chanting. I stood there for at least fifteen or twenty minutes listening. It was one of those experiences that makes you truly know you are in a very foreign culture. It was absolutely beautiful. I tried to record some of it on my still camera's video function, which only captures 30 seconds of video at a time, but it really doesn't do it justice. Still, you can click here to see and hear a tiny bit of the chanting going on. Wow.

Anyways, there are pictures as promised. I shot a lot, so I broke it up into three pages, about twenty pictures per page. You can click here for the first page; the second page is located here, and the third page is here all in gorgeous color. If you click on the "start slide show" icon, you can view them larger. Again, it's so hard to capture what we saw over our three days there, but I hope this gives you an idea of what it's like. We really had a great time.

OK, this is late, and the events in my life are beginning to pile up. I find that more things are happening than I have time to write about. But one of the really nice things that happened was the party at Lynn and Liz's house Saturday night, November 23. It was a Thanksgiving party! With turkey! Even though I'm a vegetarian, I was still excited they had turkey! And rolls, and salad, and someone even made that casserole with string beans and Durkee fried onions on top - can you get any more American? And amidst all of this, the wine (Beaujolais Nouveau!), the dinner, the desserts, was the discovery, felt by both Megan and me, that we have friends - not just friends of circumstance, but people we really enjoy being with, people we can laugh with, put down our guard and be ourselves. You realize at once how much it means to you, how important friends are when you are so far away from the other friends you have.

I've been waiting to get these pictures posted, so here they are!