Saturday 6/13/09 - Meet the parents & extended family

On Saturday , we went to Costco! We are big fan's of Costco (as you probably already know) and now we have shopped at Costco internationally. We dined in the food court and had a slice of Peking Duck Pizza, yum!

Next, we drove about 30 minutes south to Shu-Fen's parents' house, the home where she grew up. Her mom owns a general store (the size of a 7-11 but more geared toward groceries and household goods than fast food snack items). Her family lives above the store on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors. Her dad owns an egg sorting and distribution company; he is basically the middle man between the farmers and the grocery stores and bakeries. Shu-Fen explained the sorting process to me in this warehouse across the street. We are told that this is his small warehouse, but the number of eggs in this room is pretty impressive. Again, I'm wondering why we refrigerator our eggs in the U.S.

We left Shu-Fen's parents house and headed about 3 more hours south to Shu-Fen's grandfather's house. We followed Shu-Fen's mother, neice, brother and his girlfriend in their car; we were having a family reunion!

Shu-Fen's grandfather lives in an old ranch style house in a very small town in the middle of the country. The house is well over a hundred years old, I'd guess closer to two hundred. The concrete floor and old wooden doors must have seen many generations walk in and out. In the modest sized kitchen all of Shu-Fen's aunts made dinner for the extended family. The nicely updated bathrooms are located outside the house, presumably because this house was built before indoor plumbing was popular in Taiwan. A raised wooden area in the main room used to provide sleeping accommodations for the family but is now an area mostly for the kids to play. Here Todd, Britton, and Shu-Fen's little cousin try to create spinning tops out of basically round Legos. When they were finished the little boy's top spun the best, ha!

For dinner, we had a huge spread of food. The table contained every type of seafood I've ever seen and several types that were new to me. They also had duck and duck soup and chicken soup and rice and fried noddles and pig knuckles (is that the same as pig's feet?). Britton sat down in front of a feast made for a king and then was told that he was sitting at the kids' table! We moved into the dining room for dinner with the adults and were coached in the art of pretending you've tried everything and keeping your bowl full and your chopsticks poised so that it looks as if you are still eating your food, otherwise you would instantly be given more food! In this pic: Shu-Fen's older brother's girlfriend, Shu-Fen's uncle, and Shu-Fen's older brother.

Our sleeping arrangements at her grandfather's house were family style. Todd, Shu-Fen, Britton and I all slept on these two mattresses. In this picture you can see the old concrete floor.