Babel School in Taiwan

Every now and then an interesting exhibition comes to town. This time it's the Egyptian Mummies From the British Museum - Exploring Ancient Lives. The exhibition has been on since the middle of November and is closing soon, Feb.18. Last Friday I finally took the kids to see the exhibit. The downside of exhibitions from abroad is that they are very crowded, it's hard to believe that so many people would be interested in the ancient Egypt. It was quite obvious that most of the people were learning about mummies for the first time, it was taking them for ever to read all the information on the walls. The whole exhibit is divided into six parts, each one showcasing a different individual who lived in ancient Egypt from about 900 BC to about AD 180. First we saw Nestwedjat, a wealthy married woman from Thebes. Next was Tamut, a Chantress of Amun and a daughter of a priest of the god Amun, king of  gods. Third was Irthorru, a priest from Akhmim who was serving several g

Not many people go to the zoo to observe creepy crawlies, but we do ... Our nature class took us to the less frequented part of the zoo, the wild and overgrown part where many insects and other creepy crawlies hide. The most interesting thing we saw were the two larvae stages of  Asian swallowtail - Papilio xuthus - 柑桔鳳蝶 It's amazing how the caterpillars change and what later becomes of them... Unless you want to get a bad rush keep away from this beautiful, hairy caterpillar. Cocoa tussock moth caterpillar - Orgyia postica - 小白紋毒蛾幼蟲  暗點燈蛾 - Lemyra imparilis Asota heliconia zebrina  - 圓端擬燈蛾 This caterpillar looks like  Asota heliconia zebrina - 圓端擬燈蛾 ,  but I am not sure if it's really that ... A very young  Lebeda nobilis - 大灰枯葉蛾 For pictures of more bugs from the zoo you can go to my post from a year ago .

Everybody (nature class teacher + two Polish moms + Taiwanese dads + kids) met at the exit 2 of the Elephant Mountain MRT Station. While waiting for the class to start, kids got a chance to climb some trees. On the way to the mountain trail entrance kids could try yummy seeds which made their tongues blue. The beginning of the trail that we took is right behind the Taipei City Hospital Songde Branch 臺北市立聯合醫院松德院區. And so the climb started: Here is the trunk of the elephant: Views from the top of Elephant Mountain are breathtaking: On the way down we went through a “Thread of the Sky", a narrow crack between two huge rocks: More stairs, but this time leading us down back to the city below:

Winter in Taiwan is the ... strawberry season! That's right, you read it right ... strawberries. Big. Red. Yummy. Sweet. Strawberries. There are quite a few strawberry gardens right in Taipei and more precisely in Neihu 內湖. Many of them are located in one area, on the Bishan Rd. 碧山路There are also a few in Dahu 大湖. HERE is the list of some of the gardens. For the past few days the weather has been really nice - sunny and 20-25C. Nice weather like that can not last long during winter in Taiwan, so I decided to go strawberry picking as soon as the opportunity arose. Today was a perfect day. Out of all the gardens I chose the Baishi Hu Strawberry Garden 白石湖草莓園 at No.40 Bishan Rd. 碧山路40號. After filling our basket with strawberries we had some nice ice-cream. Close to the gardens there are two other interesting places to visit, the Houhu Wetlands 後湖濕地 and the Baishi Hu Suspension Bridge 白石湖吊橋. The Houhu Wetlands are just a few small p