The most oft' asked question of me over the past for weeks is,"Do you like Taiwan?" The is always followed closely by ,"Why?" so I have been thinking about what I like about Taiwan. So here goes.

I like that Taiwan is a safe place. The crime rate is low and the Taiwanese like Americans. I can pretty much go where I want without interference. There is a danger of Mainland China invading Taiwan at some point in the future but that possibility doesn't really worry me much.

I really enjoy living in a modern cosmopolitan city. Taipei City doesn't have the name cache of other large cities in Europe and Asia but it should. There are many fine arts venues, clubs, restaurants and shopping. The tallest building in the world is there but also a museum about paper.

I have devoted an inordinate amount of blog space to food because there is truly something there for every taste. Whatever I want to eat, there is a restaurant for that.

Although it hasn't been warm yet, I like that Taipei is a warm country. I don't like cold or snow. I like the heat of Texas and Taipei promises to hold some of that for me. But Taipei is tropical and I love the flowers that we plant in Texas growing as weeds there. In fact some of my favorite annual flowers are just weeds in Taiwan. Oh and I love orchids. Since about 90 % of the world orchid production is in Taiwan, I can enjoy them and not spend much money indulging myself.

So what I don't like is being so far away from my family. But my daughters are adults now and frankly I wouldn't see them as much now anyway. I am very excited though that they will both be visiting soon after we return from the USA.

Our daughter Sarah is getting married in two short weeks to a wonderful young man named Jeff. It is getting exciting around our Plano house. One thing that I have really enjoyed is getting the opportunity to talk about our wedding a scant 30 years ago in October. By telling the stories about our wedding, I have been able to once again appreciate just how much fun I had that day. Of course, many things have changed in 30 years but I think that weddings are more personal and less formulaic than in the past. Plus the clothing choices are better. The late 1970's were kind of a fashion disaster.
But the down side has been that Mark is in Taipei, working and not here with me. I know that many people are separated for much longer periods of time but after 30 years of being together, I miss the guy when we're apart. It is part of the life style that families on ex-pat assignments have to expect. Fortunately, he'll be here on Thursday, in time for all the festivities.