Giving thanks

The last time my entire family came to Taiwan, it was the summer after I graduated college. A whole eight years ago... I can barely remember anything we did - it was really just a stop before we embarked on our group tour to China. This time it feels like an actual tour of Taiwan. Instead of searching for a last minute guided tour deal for whatever other Asian country we had yet to visit, we stuck to exploring parts of Taiwan that some of us or none of us had ever experienced.

As our time here winds down, I can honestly say that this probably ranks as one of the top family vacations my mom has planned yet. Every day was exciting and a different experience, from visiting and paying tribute to all the lives lost building the road through the natural Taroko National Park in eastern Taiwan to pushing through the crowded streets of olden day Jiufen with its hundreds of dangling red lanterns to ascending the heights via Taipei 101 using the Guinness world record fastest elevator and via the 2 mile long Hello Kitty-themed Maokong cable car.  Every day was a different food experience. My mom found the CNN article for the "must eat foods" for Taiwan and made sure we had hit most if not all of them by the time this trip would end.

The unique thing about Taiwan is that it is the one country where there is the right combination of several factors that have the potential to make a great family vacation. At a time when mobile phones make it very easy for individuals to become lost in their own worlds, the lack of a local sim card and intermittent wifi service forces us to contribute to conversations with each other. Having subpar reading and speaking skills (at least upon first arriving) makes me and my brother very reliant on our parents instead of trying to do our own thing. And having parents who grew up in this city and who visit every year provides us with excellent tour guiding with how to read the bus schedules to get to the Taipei zoo or the Taipei fish market, or how to add money to the metro Easycard. My mom's such a history buff she'll add her tidbits about how the small canal by my grandma's house was installed around the 1940s when the Japanese occupied Taiwan during WWII when the whole area of Xindian was still farmland (it's hard to believe it because housing in this area is now 2-3x more expensive to buy than in DC or Seattle), or my dad will point to another district of Taipei when looking at a map of the city and recall how as an eight year old he used to walk home for 2 hours through rice plantations on a nice day, and see urns filled with ashes of ancestors sitting under trees. But if it had rained for days, the bridge to go home would be submerged and kids had to use ropes to pull themselves to the other shore. Stories like that make you really appreciate how developed Taiwan has become. No other country I ever visit can feel the same way.

Don't get me wrong, we've had our share of little frustrations and 2hr spats but I feel like that's normal after 13 days together almost 24/7. I'm very appreciative of how my entire family is with their little eccentricities, from my mom's very opinionated conversations, to how kind my dad is to us but also easily nervous about our health and well-being, to how easy-going my brother is about things even though he isn't a fan of some next event or doesn't even know what's going on. Here in Taiwan, Thanksgiving is still an uncelebrated holiday nestled between the growing popularity of Halloween and Christmas, but this year I realized how thankful I really am of my mom, dad, and lil brother.