Taiwan - February 6

Yesterday my aunt and uncle took my parents and myself to Changhua and Lugang. There is a famous Buddha in Changhua and Lugang is famous for its oyster omelets.

This morning we went to a morning market - wow was it crowded! We also tried to go to the art museum here, but it's closed today and tomorrow for the New Year holiday.

This afternoon my parents and I went to a bookstore not far from my Grandmother's. I would have liked to buy some children's books so I could improve my reading ability but all the books are in traditional characters (I was learning the simplified format). I did see a peanuts comic anthology that had a Chinese translation that I thought would have been funny. I also found a "How-to-Strip" primer that I thought was hilarious.

Tonight we had dinner in the same restaurant we went to for Grandma's birthday. Afterwards my mom gave out red envelopes (hong bao) and my uncle and cousin Wei-Chien gave me red envelopes too.

Right now my aunt's family is playing a family gambling game with dice. You roll 4 dice into a bowl; only rolls with a "pair" (like two dice that rolled a six) count. You discard the pair and add up the other two die rolls. If you roll two pairs, your score is the higher pair added together (if you rolled a pair of three and a pair of six, your score is 12). Whoever rolls the highest score wins the round. Ties don't count.

I would have liked to see a parade or something, but I think that's going out of style and neither my aunt nor uncle know of a parade we could see. I know last night there were a lot of firecrackers going off.