I would have liked to blog since our arrival in Taipei but it’s been really hard to find a wireless network to connect to. After a 10 hour flight we arrived at the Tokyo airport for a 3 hour layover. We had time to wander around and check out all the cute Japanese stuff. The airport had these rooms called “dayrooms” where you could rent a bed and shower by the hour. The regular restrooms offered lots of options from regular ole western toilets to a ceramic squat toilet to a push button toilet/bidet with sound machine to mask any sounds you may not want others to hear. In the entire airport, there was but one bar and that’s the place where the whiteys were hanging out. We had a couple of Sapporo’s while we waited.

We arrived in Taipei around 11pm on Saturday, the 24th and after going through customs, I was spotted by one of my cousins who unexpectedly came to pick us up.

Our hotel is pretty drab and basic by Western standards. Our room is comprised of a full size bed with a very hard mattress, a small TV (surprisingly we get about 100 channels including HBO and a porn channel), and a bathroom that is a “wet room” where the shower is open to the rest of the bathroom with no curtain. The bathroom is interesting because once you take a shower the whole room is wet. Also, the toilet pressure sucks so if you make a brown you have to flush twice.

It's beginning to look a lot like Arctic Blast '08

Very unusual things have been happening! We got snow. And not just the kind that flutters down and wets the pavement without lasting more than an hour. I mean we got real honest to goodness SNOW. Being in the Northwest, snow is nothing new if you’re up at Mt. Hood or in Central Oregon. However, I live in Portland. It rains here. It rains from about Halloween through Memorial Day nonstop. I love it, rain is nice. However, a white Christmas is nice too! A novelty that you don’t get everyday much less on Christmas!

The snow started coming down a week before Christmas and didn’t stop until we were covered in about a foot of snow. Some snow drifts were up to two feet! For the first time ever in Portland, some friends and I went to a neighborhood park and sledded down the snow covered hills. Okay, we actually don’t even own sleds (after all, it never snows here!) but Patrick had a skim board that worked just fine.

And of course, since it never (very, very, rarely) snows here, the whole city shut down for about 3 days! I mean, the city only has like 2 snow plows! I don’t even own a real snow shovel.

I wish I would have taken more pictures of all the pretty snow but damn, it was cold out.

Ben shoveling our stairs

How cute is Buckley!!!