Happy Birthday Chunnan

Since we're going to be out of town on Chunnan's actual birthday and since it is easier for the family to get together on Sundays, we celebrated Chunnan's birthday today. And what better way to celbrate than by making the birthday boy go out and buy his own cakes? After several days of deliberation between Chunnan and his sister, Shu-Fen, thery decided to get the cakes from Crown & Fancy, a well known bakery near the Taiwan Main Station (where trasins, subways, and buses all converge). It was a very nice shop but somehow I forgot to get a picture of it. Sorry. I did snap a few pics though on our trip to the bakery.

This is one of Chunnan in a skylighted atrium in one of three underground malls at the station.

And here he is pointing to a map showing where we were in the mall. They build three malls (the shaded pink, yellow, and blue areas on this map) under the subway routes. They stretch an impressive distance on three directions. It was early on a Sunday and most stores were closed. Maybe we can go back later in the week to see them in fll swing.

Back at Cher's house, Chunnan and I and the kids went downstairs to play games. I brought Aquarius and Ogre Castle with me. The picture here is a bit blurry, but this is Danny, Gina, Stanley, and Chunnan playing Aquarius with me and Jeffrey, who would not let his picture be taken. The kids are all in the 10 to 13 range and they all loved both games.

In the first game of Ogre Castle, Danny was the Ogre and he mopped the floor with us. He ended up winning with 7 gems. the kids read English a lot better than they let on by their speaking and they learned the cards very fast. Danny said it was his favorite game so I gave it to him to keep.

Here is the birthday lunch spread. We had about the same people here as we had at the big dinner at the start of our visit and more food kept coming from the kitchen throughout the meal. Mom is a great cook.

Here are Conia and her Mom on the right and her father and brother (Andy) on the left. you can see that the women are more concerned with pictures than food, while the men feel just the opposite.

The big gift of the evening was to both Chunnan and me. Joy & Conia have adopted us as Daddy & David so they're always doing nice things for us. This time they got pictures of us and had caricature sculptures made of us. Chunnan on the bench and a rather buff David in front of several Taiwan tourist attractions. I'm a bobble head but Chunnan is not. Really cool.

Here is one of the cakes's for Chunnan's birthday. Chocolate with both walnut and raspberry filling between the layers.

This is the other cake. It is a Crown & Fancy specialty with a white cake inside, boston cream filling between the layers and taro icing. That's what drew Chunnan to this cake...he wanted to try the taro icing. It was pretty good.

After cake and social time we played more Ogre Castle and Faces. The biggest surprise for me was the Tom, Cher's husband, got into Ogre Castle too. In fact, he won three of the four games he played. I don't think I'd want to play against him for money...I'd be broke fast! It was a great day. Relaxing, and restful and fun to play the games.

Monday we're going to do a tour of the President's Palace today and then go for a hot springs visit with Chunnan's brother.