Making rice dumplings in the kitchen for Dragon Boat Festival.  

This lovely plant was growing wild on the wall outside the house. Sort of like crepe paper balls with a kind of edible berry-like fruit inside (according to Kelly). 

A garden with grass - in Taiwan! It's such a rare thing I had to take a picture of it or people wouldn't believe me. The grass was dense, wiry and surprisingly springy. Prof Chi says he sometmes spends NT10,000 a month to hire a gardener. They have several rather large mango trees round the back. We picked some of them to make sweet pickled mangoes. No pics of that I'm afraid. I lifted Jason up to get the ones from the higher branches. With help from the other kids we collected two large plastic bags full of lovely hard green mangoes. 

Shoe sale! I couldn't get a pic of everybody who came so I took a pic of their shoes piled up outside instead!  

We went to Da-kun last Sunday. Professor Chi Lillian's friend, invited us for a barbecue. This is the house from the outside. By Taiwan standards it's a mansion. Cost NT14 million. gulp. Jocelyn Willy and Jason spent a lot of time running about squirint a water pistol at each other. 

Barbecue! Yum..... 

Kids play Chinese chess

A spot of Chinese chess indoors while the old folks fill their faces with bbq outside.  

The land rose up

See that line of houses? Before the Sep21 earthquake they were at the same level as where I took this picture from. There used to be a house opposite where Jason is standing. It was right on the fault and collapsed.  

Arrrgghhh!

Came home the other day and got the fright of my life.  

Our new car - again

Another view. It's van-ish, but it's nice and roomy and drives very nicely - very easy to steer etc. but no airbags or ABS. PAH! Who needs 'em? 

Here it is at last - Toyota Surf

The NEW car! Yeaaahhh.......! 

Hi Visa (Kelly's aunt)!!

Hi, Visa! It was nice talking to you on the phone today.

This picture was taken in April. Click on a picture to make it bigger. If you click on it again at the bottom right corner you can make it even larger. 

Buying in-line skates

All geared up and raring to go. It wasn't cheap for the whole kit but he does get free lessons thrown in on Sunday afternoons so he can go skating with other flailing windmills his own age which should be fun. 

indoor skating

New rollerskates, old underpants.
These were supposed to be a birthday present, but Jason arm-twisted us into getting them early. We had been over to the 'Health Park' nearby to play at the playground and there was a national in-line speed-skating competition underway at the outdoor rink. I was amazed at how fast those guys could go.

Jason was only mildly impressed and wanted to get back to the playground so to divert his attention I took him to the skate shop across the road. By the time we left, J had managed to extract promises from me that we would go back the next day to buy him a pair. Twisted - finger - around - little. Can you make a sentence with these words?!
 

Jason in Kelly's hat

Caption competition..... 

Toyota Surf

The Mondeo sounded funny so we took it in for a look-see and it turned out the gearbox was knackered. It would have cost a fair bundle to replace and we were sick of spending money on it for repairs so we opted to sell it.
We mmediately set about looking for a shiny new car. Here's Jason testing out the Toyota Surf that we are going to buy. We have to wait until the end of the month to lay our hands on it though. It's cheap, but unfortunately no airbags or ABS, and these can't be retro-fitted - oh well.