A Couple Ha Ha Hilariousness

 Here are a couple things that just cracked my shiznit up that I had to share with ya'll

The first is this Aveda store right by our house (the third one in Taiwan as largely advertised). Well to get people to come to this Aveda they advertise "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" funny I thought we would go to Cheers for that.

Nothing like Made in Taiwan on an American Flag

This is Monday morning on the way to work. Seriously? What's up with all this patriotism?

Sun Moon Lake 日月潭

Apologies for not having been updating on the adventures of the wedded wanderlusts.  As some of you know this half of the wedded wanderlust recently started a new job that has kept me busy, busy, busy. After months of searching and turning down terrible offer after terrible offer I finally found one that I am hoping will work out.


But before I started we went with John's company on a company outing to Sun Moon Lake located right dab in the center of Taiwan near Taichung. We woke at the crack of dawn and took the high speed rail for 50 minutes and then a bus for another hour and a half and we arrived to a beautiful lake. John even upgraded our room to one facing the street to one that faced the lake (good job hubbs).

 We left rainy Taipei and arrived to a beautiful and sunny resort town.  We got a few hours to walk around before we had to have lunch with his company so we took advantage of the first sunny day in weeks since we moved to Taiwan and walked around. One of the first things we noticed was the lack of swimmers on the lake. If it were in the States there would be swimmers, jet skis and such littered throughout the lake. We decided to practice our Mandarin and ask a local why there were no swimmers. After giving us a "WTF" look he said, "it's too dangerous. How would they get out there?" in which we responded, "well they would take the boat out" to which he responded, "too dangerous. the lake is too big." I started laughing, because we had to explain to him that the boats would not actually leave the people once they drop them off but would actually wait there for the swimmers to finish before taking them back.

After walking around for a bit, we met up with the rest of the company to have lunch. We were told it was a local restaurant with all local food so we were super excited until we got there. The presentation was impeccable as shown by the photo of fried fish in a bamboo boat. But the taste left much to be desired.

I saw Don stop and smell the roses

The afternoon was super fun.  We were taking a boat tour to many of the surrounding islands at Sun Moon Lake. While we waited for the boat to arrive I saw many things.

I saw what appeared to be the worst outfit EVER.

That night we had a wonderful dinner and while everyone else went to bed after dinner, John and I ordered a bottle of of Sauvignon Blanc, sat out on the deck and had a great night.

The next morning we took this long walk around the lake until we reached the gondola. The best is John is so scared of heights he ended up hitching a ride with someone else and I ended up riding up the mountain with his co workers.

It ended up being super scary but an awesome view from the top.

This is to prove that I was actually there. We headed to an aboriginal village where we

ate some delicious sticky rice baked in bamboo

Saw some aboriginal skulls

And were offered to purchase a penis ashtray in which we declined

But the best part of the weekend came when I got so excited when I saw this little photo op with a tiny head that I ran up to it...put my head in the hold and got straight up smacked in the face so hard that I cut my lip. For a split second there was no sound from me or John and then he bursted out laughing and took this photo...All in all a great weekend.

A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That

As promised from the last post a cute group shot of us at the Don Dapper night. We all got dressed up and headed out for a super fun night.

I will say that we were the only ones that apparently got the memo about it being a Don Dapper party cuz we dressed to the nines and when we got there and people were wearing jeans and hoodies it was only the slightest bit awkward McGee's.







Also, Carnegie's Crazy Hour. From 7-9 at a little bar in Taipei they have Pint and half pint Stella's for 99NT which equals to about less than $3.00 USD. Therefore as you can imagine John and I spent quite a bit of time there....getting to know the bar...errr I mean city.


















Besides drinking...our second favoritest hobby is eating. We've been trying to try new restaurants and areas rather than going back to the places we love. Sometimes it's a huge success and other times it's terrible. For example this place where John is at. Adorable atmosphere, cutest little bowls of soup, an amazing spread of olive oils for the bread and a wonderful variety of foods to choose from on the menu. We were so stoked when we sat down but after the first couple of bites of appetizer we realized that the description of the food was 10 times better than the taste of the food itself. It was quite a disappointment but at least we tried it out and crossed it off the to do list and probably will not be heading back unless it's to just eat bread and dip it in their yummy olive oils.












And then there is this place. From the outside it looked a bit ghetto superstar and the tables were covered in this gaudy plastic pink tablecloth. For all intent and purpose it would not be the first place I would walk into if passing by.

But once we ordered and took our first bite we were in love. Everything was so delicious, fragrant and amazing. There wasn't a bite that wasn't simply satisfying. It is restaurants like this that cause John and I to go home with a huge gut and super stretched out tummies. This place went down our list as a place that we will definitely go back and bring our peeps for a very traditional Taiwanese meal.






Lastly, as most of you know I have been looking work now for a few months and the offers have
come in but nothing that I wanted to take. So one could say I've had some time on my hands. In that time I've tried to work on some hobbies and art projects for our apartment. So to kill two birds with one stone I handmade a frame and put in photos from our wedding in it so that we had some color on our walls AND I printed out some wedding photos since I have yet to print out any photos from our wedding. It felt great. Now I just need to find a drill to hang it up.

Lastly, for all you readers who have been kind enough to follow up and share in this journey with John and I....I am happy to say that this Friday I was offered two jobs that I am very excited about and after a weekend of sweating, going back and forth and an internal debate I (and John since he's sick of talking about it) have
decided to go with the first offer. I start tomorrow morning bright and early and will update soon!