Wednesday, February 10, 2016

A Little Taste of America; Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas in Taiwan

Living in Taiwan, you really miss the traditional holidays you've come to love. Sure you have new holidays now, but as they are new and don't have that much meaning to you, it can be tough to give up on your own holidays. Lucky for us, we got to celebrate them anyway. ;)

At school the kids celebrate Halloween, but they just dress up and get candy from the teachers, they don't go trick-or-treating. They also have a Halloween type market. So we went to that and it was pretty cool.

My Halloween nails. The kids loved it!

They glow in the dark. YEAH!

I was a mummy haha

And my toes!

At the Halloween fair

This place sold juice in pouches that looked like they held blood.

Picture of some of the parade

Close up of the juice packet. I got my blood type!

And we found these awesome masks at the fair. It was only fitting that I get Sloth and Jon get Chucky...lol (Jon once did a face comparison on me and Sloth, and Sloth was "more attractive"...)

Jon and I also decided we had to have Thanksgiving, even if it had to be a little "Taiwanese Style." We had a lot of fun cooking together and enjoying a Thanksgiving meal.


Happy Thanksgiving! 

Our meal! We had turkey rice, with extra turkey. We had butter rolls and pumpkin seed bread. We also made "cranberry sauce" which turned out pretty good, mashed potatoes, green beans, and sweet potatoes which we tried to put marshmallows and brown sugar butter on them.

The clean up.

Christmas was difficult to be away from home too, but we decorated the house, bought some presents, and enjoyed ourselves even though I had to work. Seriously, who works on Christmas!?

At first, these were the only decorations we had...

Our tree!

Another nail pic!

This sign was up at my school. I thought it hilarious that the words have NOTHING to do with the picture...

Christmas gift from my parents; a fruit basket with chocolates!

More nails

Decorating trees with a student of mine and her brother. We just happened to see them at the same activity. I love these two. I don't have favorite students, but Sue is one of the best. ;)

Jon and Joey playing with the balloons

Jon's decoration he made

Candy bags I made for the boy I tutor and his brother.

My school had a Christmas program

Me and Joe

All the lovely ladies ready for their dance

They did a nutcracker dance which was super cool!

And the rest of the day was really weird. Not Christmasy at all. Just pop songs and kids dancing to them.

Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve dinner. We went to an incredible buffet. I think we will go back next year.

Santa came!!!

Jon and his stocking

Me and my stocking

My new scarf

Jon got Legos! Imagine that!

And cereal bowls! haha

We had an awesome Christmas. The only thing we were really sad about is that every year we get an ornament that commemorates something special about that year. And it has our names on it, too. We didn't get one this year, and that was a bummer. But then, in January, we got a package in the mail.


Thanks mom and dad for sending us this ornament, even if it arrived a little late. We love how Bing is in our hearts. :( Miss my puppy!