Hello! My family went back to Taiwan last weekend. My one-month-long vacation with them starting from Taiwan to San Francisco has ended. I don’t remember when was the last time that I spent so much time with them, especially with my brother. The skinny guy wearing a SF Giants sweatshirt in the pictures above is my younger brother. Some people say that we look alike. What do you think?

We went to watch a baseball game at the AT&T park, and toured around the San Francisco Bay Area. The weather certainly didn’t feel like Spring at all, especially by the ocean. My husband also joined us during the weekend for the sightseeing. Most of the time, he didn’t understand what my family and I were talking about in our dialect, Taiwanese. Poor him!

Hello! I arrived in Taiwan last Friday night for a 10-day vacation. Two close friends from university are getting married around the same time, so I planned this trip to attend their weddings and spend time with my family here.

Last Saturday, I took Taiwan High Speed Rail to Taipei for wedding #1. It was a 2-hour ride. I stopped at 7-11 (7-Eleven) convenience store to buy a drink and magazine before boarding the train. Whenever I come back to Taiwan or Japan, 7-11 is always my first visiting spot. I like to try the latest trendy drinks or sweets, and buy a fashion magazine to catch up with the beauty trend!

We went to visit Hakone gardens, a Japanese garden in Saratoga California, to get some landscaping ideas for our backyard. Most parts of our backyard are still covered in dirt only. We like how Japanese style gardens use rocks, wood decks, and plants to create different vignettes in one garden. We have actually started a deck project already last weekend. It’s almost done (our bodies are aching so much right now after all the dirt-digging and moving heavy woods). I will show you the pictures later once the deck is done. We are very excited about the deck. It’s our first major DIY building project together!