First Week Collage

From top to bottom: Two pictures of the National Palace Museum (a great place to visit), two pictures of nameless people (except Lynne) who took us to unknown parks, two pictures of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial in Taipei (another great place to visit), kids from the student center playing ball (barefoot) at another unknown park, and finally a student from church and Teresa in front of some unknown building. Chinese people love to take pictures, especially with people in them, and then they give you copies of the pictures you were in. Unfortunately, we did not know enough Chinese to understand where we were or who we were with. So I have lots of pictures of Lynne and me from those early days in Taipei, and all I can do is post them as a collage. The picture added to the header is a formal family portrait from 2004: parents-in-law (seated in front), Liz, Joshua, Teresa, Phoebe, and Joanna standing behind. We have more photos of the descendants from Joshua's parents and their living spouses (34 people in all), and I will change the background of the banner from time to time, so you can see them. The bio pic is of me in my traditional red Chinese cheong-sam wedding dress. I'm sitting up in our bedroom while hordes of women and children file through to get their picture taken with me. Later, I go downstairs to the banquet tables in the living room and under awnings in the street outside the house to toast the guests with Joshua, his father, and his elder sister. We had a small wedding feast of 21 tables; it only took up the block in front of our house. When my younger brother-in-law got married, there were 150 tables of guests and the wedding feast tent went out and around the block. My brother-in-law married a woman from Taiwan, so more of her family and friends were able to come to the wedding.