Bubble Tea 珍珠奶茶; zhēnzhū nǎichá

You were wondering what bubble tea was...we know you were. So here is a photo of 'small bubble tea' from our favorite shop.
Bubble tea is sweetened milk tea with tapioca balls, served cold.

Chinese

Did you know that Chinese has no alphabet, but more than 20,000 characters? To read a newspaper, you need to know about 4,000 characters. In Taiwan the traditional form of Chinese characters is still used. In China many characters have been simplified to make them easier to learn.
About 850 million people speak Mandarin Chinese as a first language; many more than the number of people who speak English as a mother tongue. Mandarin Chinese is only one of many Chinese languages. Cantonese is another. Altogether about 1.2 billion people speak Chinese. That's one in every five people.
To learn Chinese most people first learn pinyin, which is a way of writing Chinese sounds with the Roman alphabet.
Chinese is a tonal language, which means that the meaning of a word changes depending on how you say it. Ma, for example, can mean mother, horse, hemp or scold. In Mandarin Chinese there are five tones.
First tone is high and even,
Second tone rises as if you are asking a question.
Third tone dips then rises.
Fourth tone falls sharply.
The fifth or neutral tone is short and unstressed.
The BBC Real Chinese website introduces basic Mandarin. Why not have a go?

Hongshulin Mangroves

Hongshulin means mangroves in Mandarin Chinese. Yesterday we took the MRT train to Hongshulin station. We met our friend Stacy there and together we walked along a wooden path through a mangrove swamp. Mangroves are coastal habitats that form where mud collects along the shore in an area protected from strong waves.
The seeds of many mangrove plants germinate on the tree. When the seed pod has produced roots, it drops from the tree and floats to a place where it can sink its roots into the mud and grow.
We saw mudskippers. Mudskippers are fish that thrive out of water in wet, muddy environments. We saw them flipping about in shallow muddy water.
We also saw fiddler crabs. The males have one large claw and one small one. They wave their claws around to attract female crabs. If they break a big claw, they will grow another one. Fiddler crabs live in burrows. When they are feeding they look like they are playing a fiddle (violin).
The photos of the crab and the mudskipper come from other websites--our photos were not very clear.

UPDATE: Gardening Australia had a segment on mangrove ecosystems on 20/10. You can watch it from the link here.
The mangrove trees at Hongshulin were not as tall as the Australian ones. The Hongshulin mangroves are mangroves of the Kandelia candel species.

Taipei Crafts Center

Today after class on our way to meet our friend Stacy we sat down to drink some bubble tea and realised that we were sitting out the front of the Taipei Crafts Center. The Center was on the 9th floor of a building so when we had finished our tea we went up in the lift to take a look. Inside there were ceramics and jewelery and some work by an artist called I-Shan Tsai. I drew some pictures on her visitor’s book. I hope that she likes them. We liked her teapots and drawings. She was born in 1981. You can see some of her work at her blog from the link.

Yong Kang St Yoghurt Me

Lunch from the 'Yoghurt Me' shop. They have two flavours, original and green tea. I like the original flavour best.

Wheels

Here I am on the back of a scooter last Sunday. We went hiking in the mountains around Taipei.

Offline

Dear Readers
Just to let you know that we have not been able to access our blog or email from home this week. But we are okay. With luck, we will be connected again on Wednesday.
This week has been much cooler than the previous weeks. The daytime tempature has been a comfortable 28 or 29 degrees.

Typhoon Damage

Photos of typhoon damage that we took today. The car is on the hill behind the apartment and the trees from the Daan Forest Park.

Tyhoon has gone

Here are some pictures from today's Taipei Times that show the wind and flooding. It wasn't as bad in the evening as we expected. There was a lot of rain and some places were flooded, and also there have been landslides. But where we are it has stopped raining.

On the edge of the storm

Here is a picture of the view from our 5th floor balcony. Mum is watching the news. 110 cable channels, many of them showing typhoon reports. All feature young female reporters out in the storm.

It's starting to get a bit noisy outside.

The cats are hiding in Sarah's room.

Super Typhoon hui lai

Super typhoon Krosa seems to be heading directly for Taipei. You can follow the typhoon here at tropical storm risk (TSR) and the Central Weather Bureau.
Satellite pictures from here.
Wind gusts to 170 km/h.
We are ready. Mum has filled the bath with water, in case the electricity goes off and the water pump does not work. We bought some bottled water, bread, fruit and eggs. The gas bottle is full. Hanging plants and washing brought in. She bought a lighter in case we need to use candles.
We really have nothing to worry about. We don't have a car or scooter, business, or live in the mountains or the bottom floor in a flood-prone area.

The Answer for Quiz 2

tor: a prominent rock or pile of rocks on a hill

It wasn't a hill, just a pile of rocks in a park. And lots of people were climbing on it.