At Journey's End...

We came back to Toronto on July 27th after spending 24+ hours either on board a flight or waiting for one at an airport. Apparently jet lag affects people more as they get older which means I must be getting old because it hit me like a brick. I felt like I had the flu for two days. We spent a few days unpacking and getting reacquainted with being back in Canada, then we hit the road again, this time to do our rounds of visiting family & friends in Kingston and having some down time at the cottage.

Mike's grandfather and his brothers built a log cabin on the Big Rideau back in the 30s and they called it "Journey's End". This is where Mike and his cousins spent most of their childhood summers, *lounging in the sun, jumping in the lake, napping on the hammock... (repeat from *). We got to have 10 gloriously lazy days here and it was awesome. THIS, is cottage living:

     

Back in the real world time is flying by. We were really glad that we got to see Steve & Tina get married. Steve is the last of Mike's Queen's housemates to tie the knot and they had a lovely ceremony at the chapel on campus followed by dinner at the Portsmouth Olympic Harbour. I managed to snag a couple of really sweet photos of the two of them:

And now we have only three more days in Toronto and a single-spaced, size-10-font list of things to do and I am so overwhelmed I'm not even stressed anymore [for now]. We have to figure out health insurance, book a ton of apartment viewings, rent a car, sort through paperwork, balance our expenses from this year, renew health cards and driver's licences, do a bunch of stuff on the computer, visit some more people, oh, and pack up our lives all in the next 72 hours.

So, I'm just getting on with it, item by item, and not sleeping until I'm done and we'll see how long I last (it's 3:30am now so I'm guessing 6am?). I think the smart thing to do would be to stop blogging after this one, so I will catch you on the flip side (or whatever side the Pacific Ocean is to you) once we get settled in L.A.!!

Last couple of weeks in Taiwan

In the end we cut our China trip short by half and got an early flight back to Taipei after three weeks of touring around China. Mike's ulcerative colitis had started to bother him again quite a bit, and having lost 20lbs over the course of two months, he really didn't have the energy for the kind of high-intensity traveling we were doing.

To be honest I had gone on this trip hoping to correct some of the deep-rooted not-so-positive biases we Taiwanese people tend to have about China and the Mainland Chinese, and sad to say I was not totally successful in doing this so I was actually kind of relieved that we didn't end up doing the full six weeks as we'd originally planned.

But we got to see some pretty cool stuff (like crazy rock mountains and the Great Wall and pandas) and getting back to Taiwan earlier also meant that we got to spend some more time with family which was the whole point of this trip so it all worked out just fine.

Mike & I with my grandparents in Taichung

My sister Daisy & her boyfriend Roger

Mike & Willy shopping for kitten supplies

Me, my dad Alex, my sister Daisy, and my brother Willy

Beijing

Just realized I've left the blog hanging on Chengdu for the past six weeks... Ooops. Here are some of our favourite pictures from Beijing, the capital of China.

The Great Wall of China was definitely a highlight on this trip. The hour or so we spent hiking along the wall probably doesn't even add up to a speck when you're looking at the wall from space, but we were there!

The above two photos were both taken at the Emperor's Summer Palace in Beijing which is just west of the city centre.

Here's an unusually quiet shot within the walls of the Forbidden City, the Emperor's palace.