Our apartment in DC…still a work in progress
It’s been a while since my last post, so here is the latest: We’re now pretty much settled in our new Ballston apartment. We’ll likely be here for a little over one year. SG recently began working at Deloitte and Touche, and I start learning Lao on Tuesday, an eleven-month course, followed by 2-3 weeks of other training. We anticipate arriving in Vientiane sometime in late August 2009.
We paid a three-day visit a couple of weeks ago to my hometown. To say the city remains devastated from Katrina is an understatement. I don’t mean merely cosmetically–many areas appear to have superficially recovered, but some parts of the city are little changed from when I last visited in spring of 2006–they are still more aptly described as a war zone–three years removed now from the storm.
In my final post from Taiwan, I described that much of our farewell activities would center around our favorite eateries in Taipei. That’s indeed pretty much how it played out.
Just arrived in New Orleans for a brief visit. A more substantial update to follow, probably sometime near the end of next week…
Here’s my nephew wishing me well from Chengdu, during SG’s visit there in April 2008. He’s speaking Sichuan dialect, and receives some stage directions from Spicymum in the background–”say ‘Uncle, how are you!’.” Then SG tells him to ‘face this way when you say it.’ Precocious little imp isn’t he?
We became quite the pals during my last visit to Chengdu.
It’s hard to believe, but the time has finally come: my two-year assignment to Taiwan is nearing its end. This will be the last post of this tour, though I may make an update or two before we leave early next week. The movers come tomorrow to crate up all our belongings, and among them will be this computer. So what’s next for us? First, the mystical rite of Home Leave, which will again take place in the Texas Hill Country. In 2006, during Home Leave 1.0, I managed to do quite a bit of traveling, but I doubt that will be the case this time, because the price of gas has risen over 60% since I was last in the US. I’ll definitely be spending some time in my hometown of New Orleans, though.
[I’m really curious to see what SG’s Home Leave experience will be like-she hasn’t been back to the US since we first left for India in April 2004!]
After a month or so, we’ll head to DC, where we’ll spend the next year in preparation for my next assignment. Among other training, I’ll be doing an 11-month intensive Lao course. We’re due to arrive in Laos sometime in late summer, early fall of 2009.
[Sichuan earthquake: SG and I are very grateful to everyone who has emailed or phoned us inquiring after our family and friends in Chengdu. Thankfully, all are safe.]
May 9 marked our tenth anniversary, so SG and I decided to get away from it all for a few days. We considered Bali, Palau and Guam, but in the end, we wanted to spend the time in Taiwan, since we only have a short time remaining here. We had narrowed our choices to Penghu, Kenting or Green Island. Green Island won out, since it was the only place either one of us had never been. And from what we had heard, it sounded almost like a South Pacific island in its own right, one just off the coast of Taiwan. I also knew Green Island from its notorious legacy as the home of “Lüdao Lodge”, aka “Oasis Villa” (綠洲山莊), the jail where Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT locked up over 20,000 political prisoners from 1951 until the end of martial law in 1987.
During the planning stages for our recent trip to Taichung, TC and Daniel asked me if there was anything in particular I wanted to do. I replied I was game for anything as long as the itinerary included a stop at a restaurant I’d been reading about over on one of the Forumosa threads.
Isa Bayardo is from Mexico (not sure exactly where), and he recently opened up a restaurant called Mexico Sabroso out in Chungli of all places. It’s gotten rave reviews, and since Chungli lies right off Highway One, I figured this would be the perfect chance to try it. In fact, one of the main reasons I was willing to drive was just so we’d have the excuse and opportunity to check the place out on our way back to Taipei.
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