Christmas Travel 2012 – Day 0 in Taiwan

The day for us to go back to Taiwan finally came. Ashley and I boarded our flight to Taiwan via JFK and NRT on Tuesday’s red eye and after twenty four hours in the air, arrived in Taipei late Thursday night. Thank goodness for sky club showers and food that kept us freshened up on the entire journey. I am sure that the final 14 hour JFK-NRT leg would have been much more difficult otherwise.

Our baggage at the airport rolled right out onto the claim belt when we walked over. No fuss or funny business this time; 4/4 checked bags were present. (I always have at least one missing when arriving in Taiwan and/or on the way home). Perhaps having priority tags is even more useful on international multi-segment flights than I had realized before.

On the way to my grandmother’s home, my aunt and uncle stopped in YongHe’s 世界豆漿大王 to pick up some breakfast food (at 11pm!). YongHe in Taiwan is famous for their soy milk. 世界豆漿大王 is also currently 50 years old now and known for being one of the top places to go. In the entire order, we had soy milk, ShaoBing with egg inside, rice balls and little meat pies (which I’ve forgotten the actual name of). We took it home to eat and I pretty much went straight into a food coma afterward.

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Lego Space Shuttle Expedition

Spent yesterday and this evening building the Lego Space Shuttle Expedition with Ashley.  Quite a lot of fun.  We’d go back and forth with helping to find pieces and actually assembling the blocks.  Can’t wait to do more; we have a couple Star Wars sets waiting to be opened.  I’m particularly excited about the Super Star Destroyer that should be arriving in the mail soon!

First four photos are our first night’s work through all of book 1.  The rest were taken after book 2.

Baileys for Seasonal Times…

… or for any time, really.

We love Baileys, especially in our coffee.  This morning we were experimenting with grind coarseness and amount for use in our new Ekobrew cups; the experimenting led to our Baileys running out.  Later in the afternoon, we were at the liquor store and a bunch of top shelf specials caught my attention — all of them were seasonal boxes of bottles with free glasses.  The Baileys special came with two glasses.  We went around the store looking for what other glasses we liked, but didn’t buy anything since no other box had glasses as cool.  Attached is a photo I took so you can see =)