China trip postponed

It's been nearly three weeks since my last post. Mainly because we haven't been up to a whole lot. We were meant to go on our 6-week China trip on June 8th but ended up having to postpone it because Mike managed to get himself a kind of serious ulcer-inducing colon infection/inflammation type of thing (he's pretty much had a stomach bug on and off since the second week of May)... Good news is he's just about 100% again so our China trip is back on! We are leaving this Friday for Shanghai and I shall be much more active with the blogging while we're on the mainland! 

In the meantime here are some photos of the past little while of us about town: 

That's right, Mike grew a beard to protest having to lay low and not eat and not have much fun over the past month. His beard turned out rather gingery. I called it "Ginger Beard". He has since shaved it off.

We went to check out this cute cafe tucked away in an alley near the Teacher's College. They rescue stray cats and give them a home. They even have a shrine for the cats who have gone to kitty heaven, complete with ashes and canned tuna.

These are pictures of the W Hotel in Taipei which is about 10 minutes from here in the heart of Xinyi district. My sister's friend works there and gave us an awesome tour of the hotel which only opened a year ago. We're gonna try and go back for a dip in that rooftop pool sometime, looks lush, doesn't it?!

Quite a few "creative parks" have popped up all over Taipei city in recent years. They are usually converted distilleries, tobacco plants, cane sugar factories, etc. This one is about a half hour away from my sister's place and houses beautiful boutiques, restaurants, cafes/patios, and the Taiwan Design Museum.

This doesn't include all of the cousins from my dad's side but over half of us. Everyone gathers at my 100-year old grandma's house for lunch every Sunday for some family time.

This is at my aunt & uncle's art studio. Uncle Tony is my dad's youngest brother and the Chief of Research at the National Museum of History in Taipei. He is an expert in the work of Chang Dai-Chien who is arguably the best Chinese artist in the 20th century (last year a painting of his sold for $25 million). My Aunt Shao-Hwei just put on a large exhibition at the Sichuan Museum.