Pink heater

These days are freezing! Living in a subtropical country, we have winters without snow but our winter is so humid thus awfully cold. Aside from warm comforters, we take comforts on heaters. My friend brought this electric heater home and it's so cute in pink, thus perfect for our pink meme...

The cute pink heater. No, it's not an electric fan lol.

My pinky friend enjoying the warmth from the pinky heater.

Christmas with friends

For almost five years of living as a graduate student in Taiwan, it means I've also been missing having five Christmas with my whole family back in my country. Back home, we have bright and festive Christmas celebrations everywhere, well, crazy it may sound some do as early as September. Homes are highlighted with Christmas decors while streets are filled with mostly DIY stars. On Christmas Eve, the whole family attends a midnight mass followed by Noche Buena, a midnight dinner filled with all sorts of delicious Filipino delicacies shared with joy and laughter by the whole family. The dark skies then will be decorated with colorful fire crackers as fathers showed off to their kids how to create loud colorful magics, the safe way lol.

With my daughter. Hubby and youngest daughter were back in Philippines.

On the other hand, Christmas here in Taiwan is not considered a holiday. Everybody works on December 25th, classes and examinations are held as if nothing happens, which was very frustrating and depressing the first time. I understand they have Chinese New Year which is more important in their culture, however I'm thankful at least Jan 1 is considered a holiday.

Back to our Christmas celebration, I'm very grateful our Filipino community here still continued our tradition by holding midnight masses from December 16th to the 24th, followed by simple merienda. On the 24th, we heard a midnight mass and shared the Christmas spirit with fellow Christians, sharing of gifts and delicious Filipino foods. After the mass, I and my daughter, along with three other Christian friends (2 Filipinos and 1 Indonesian) ran to our Christmas party held with our fellow foreign students (venue: a friend's dormitory). Everybody brought their own country's dish to share with everybody, enjoyed the games and simply caught up with everyone's lives. Indeed, I'm so blessed to have a group of friends here to share the spirit of loving and sharing.  Though we're of different religions and nationalities, we came together to celebrate Christmas as a family.

Christmas with fellow students and friends from our university.

Simple Christmas gathering with friends. No Christmas trees or decor. Just us.

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to all!

Though far and away from our loved ones this special season, still we managed to celebrate Christmas. Thanks to our dear friends who were always there to celebrate with on special occasions as this. Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!!!

Eventful Birthday~

Another milestone of my life. Ever thankful to God for giving me another gift of life. Another age. Another year full of blessings and adventures.

Since hubby and youngest baby (they're back home to our country) are not here with us, I celebrated my big day with my eldest daughter and bestfriend. Other great friends joined us for a birthday trip the next day. Simply Awesome! My daughter had a sportfest/Christmas party at their school that day and we were there to cheer her up and just enjoyed the program.

There was a bazaar at their school too and I bought a lot of stuff at very good prices. I had so much fun rummaging through their treasures.

After a hearty lunch, I bought a birthday cake from 85 degrees and again celebrated my birthday in the lab with my labmates (and bestfriend).

I and best friend then went shopping and this was what we found.

A humongous Christmas tree! Merry Christmas!!!!

In the late afternoon we decided to pamper ourselves in the hair saloon. Bestfriend convinced me to cut my hair short for a change. Heck why not! But throughout the cutting session, I freaked out lol. It's my first time to cut my hair this short from a long beautiful one (wink*), and not even sure if I can pull it through. Anyway, that experience was exciting, thanks to this crazy adorable friend! 

Then I ran for a Christmas dinner that night with the MECO staff (mini Philippine embassy here) and other Filipino students. The dinner was sumptuous! 

Me with my new hair (2nd from right) with other Pinoys, after a hearty dinner!

Delicious hotpot and other  scrumptious Chinese dishes for dinner!

The following early morning as what I mentioned in my earlier post, my friends who organized a surprise birthday trip brought me to a very beautiful mountain in Nantou, about two-hour drive from our place. It is called Aowanda National Park. The view is spectacular. We had a picnic and a long trek in a breathtakingly panoramic mountain. Here are some of the photos... 

Overall, I had a very memorable birthday! Though my family is away, I got a family here by my side in the person of my friends.

Have a great week to you all and advance Merry Christmas!

I'm linking for:

Yellow ballerina

Since my daughter joined us in Taiwan, she studied and danced ballet. The last time they had a presentation in their school, she was a rainbow fish. At first she was sad she was not wearing a tutu unlike last year's. But then of course it would be weird for a fish to wear a tutu, she was convinced. While attending to her make-up backstage, I became an instant make up artist for almost all of her classmates too lol. I guess their number is too much to handle by the volunteer moms and an extra hand was very much appreciated. The  ballet dances, the cute and talented kids, the proud parents, the entertained spectators, overall it was a fun night!

Cute rainbow fishes!

The proud mommy, daddy and little sister!

Baloons for our little star!

With the full support of aunts and uncles!

Friday Fragments

 Another fun with Mrs. 4-4-4-4 and other fragmenters for the juicy bits and pieces of our week.

***So funny, the more I was stressed preparing for my big seminar, the more I procrastinated. Imagine, I ended up blogging last weekend lol. Who can blame me, I love blogging more than burying my head to boring papers. The mass of comments I received made my day! I love the thoughtful ones where we know they really read our post, ahhh the more I spent my time blog hopping and commenting back lol. I enjoyed it better! Much much better!

***My daughter caught colds due to sudden change to freezing temperature so both of us ended up skipping our classes for the day. I dosed her with vitamin C, fruit juices and warm soup. Glad she recovered fast, in two days she's back to normal!

***I lost my house keys and the key/lock man sent to open our door just couldn't open it for an hour. So sad. So I have no choice but to agree with his decision to finally break our door lock open and replace with new one. Ouch! another 27usd wasted down the drain and a moral lesson hardly learned.

***Finally had my seminar presentation yayyy! Two weeks or more of stressful sleepless nights were worth my effort. Professors and colleagues were awed with my presentation lol. At least that's what they told me. The topic I discussed was taken from Nature, one of the highest impact-factored scientific journal, entitled "Adaptive prediction of environmental changes by microorganisms". It's quite interesting actually. Bacteria just like us learn how to cope up with their environment and thus survive the harsh environment. This is kind of scary especially for bacteria that cause deadly diseases, right?

***Again for this week, we infected another sets of chicks with pathogenic E. coli and will treat them on Monday with specified antibiotics. Hope I will get good results.

***I'm back to watching Desperate Housewives. Still on the 3rd episode of Season 8. Love it!

***My birthday is coming!!! It's next week Friday! Told my friends I will not celebrate such old age but they took it as nonsense! They're planning a surprise trip for me on my birthday! They wont divulge where.  Hmm, okay can't wait!

***Another big experiment is scheduled on my birthday but I managed to convince my professors to move it one day ahead lol. Nobody messes with my day! Bahahaha!!!

***No, unfortunately  somebody managed to mess up with my big day. My daughter won. They have a Christmas party at her school exactly on my birthday and she don't wonna miss it. So my birthday party/trip organizers moved the trip one day later, where we really need to wake up really early to avoid traffic jams. Hmmm, now I'm really very curious where in the world they're taking me.

That's it for now. Thanks for dropping by and commenting. Have a great weekend!!!

Birthday Pink

For my nth birthday last year, my friends gave me this beautiful bouquet of fragrant lovely flowers. Ain't they beautiful!

A group of pink roses accompanied by a white stargazer lily and greenies, all wrapped in pink!

Ain't they very pretty and sweet!!!

Friends who invaded me that fun night!

Celebrating with my dear family and friends last year!  

For my oncoming birthday this year (yes, on my fave holiday-filled December, and it's next week!), indeed I have a lot of blessings to be thankful for! My deteriorating physical and mental health (due to stress) improved a lot. I was able to take care of my body of my family's health properly. I was able to reunite my youngest daughter (then 4-year old) with us from across another country. I was beyond blissful to have my whole family together, even for at least 7 months. We bonded together as an expat family, travelling, celebrating all birthdays, going to foreign schools, hanging out with friends and simply enjoying another country's culture together. We passed a lot of trials and so blessed and thankful to God we survived them. Having a handful of genuine friends around helped a lot too. Overall, though as my birthday is coming, age is undeniably increasing, wrinkles start appearing but I don't care, I enjoyed my 2011 a lot and looking forward for a more glamorous blissful 2012. Cheers!

The Pagoda

Located up high on a mountain (Mt. Sha Ba Lan) and around the picturesque Sun Moon Lake (the only natural big lake in the country), the Cih-en Pagoda stands mightily at 46 meters high. It's an octagonal building with a total of 12 floors. The first three stories were neatly painted in snowy white while the upper 9 stories with golden red. This lovely tower was built  by Taiwan's former president Chiang Kai-Shek in 1971 in honor of his mother. Cih-en Pagoda overlooks the spectacular scenery of Sun Moon lake and the panoramic Lalu Island.

Three years ago, I and my friends rented two vans and traveled around central Taiwan. We invaded one of its  famous landmarks, the Cih-en Pagoda.

Hail the beautiful pagoda in a glorious weather! base is blindingly white!

More from the escapade...

Friends having fun! 

Two beautiful ladies and both my good friends on the topmost floor of the tower (left: Ms. Bolivia & right: Ms. Romania), enjoying the gorgeous mountains. 

On top of the world. Running out of breath after climbing the steep staircases, we were then greeted by the breathtaking views of the lake and the mountains. The gushing strong chilly wind further gave us the taste of an amazing top-of-the-world adventure lol.

The  group on our way to trek the 700 meter track towards the Pagoda and enjoying the refreshing sights of trees and flowers along the way.

Most of our friends on this photo already graduated and left Taiwan for their home countries. Those fun-filled days and good memories shared together are truly cherished! The beautiful Cih-en Pagoda (postcard perfect) will surely be missed too.