The Typhoon blew north

 It rained--a lot. But that was about the extent of our first typhoon experience. Last week at this time I was walking myself to the grocery store late in the evening (still too chicken to try the bus option) so that I could procure some milk and other necessities for my children in case the typhoon came and the city shut down for a few days. I also thought I'd best boil some extra water in case the electricity or water lines had any troubles. Basically, I really didn't know what to expect so my natural, reasonable response was to panic :)

Ben's work gave him a link to a nifty website (in English) that shows the projected path of an impending typhoon as well as a list of cities and counties in Taiwan with any indications of "work cancelled / school cancelled." It turns out that Taichung was not granted its tropical version of a snow day--somewhat to everyone's disappointment. Talking with church members the Sunday afterwards, people apparently often still go out shopping or to the movies or whatever on typhoon days because, by law, only government businesses have to close and many others view it as a prime opportunity for sales. Funny how people are.

This photo is obviously not of the darkened sky with heavy rains. Didn't quite capture that scene this go around. Nor did I manage to capture the pollution-free patches of blue sky that appeared right after the several days of rains. We could actually see the Taiwanese mountains finally revealed in the near distance (from our other window...not this one).

The first 3 weeks we were here turned out to be an anomaly with its complete rain-free status. It was another blessing to add to our ever expanding list because life got a bit trickier with the rains. Namely, getting Julien to and from school all of a sudden presented quite the challenge. The afternoon of the first storm, I dutifully got ready to head out to pick him up at the designated time. I put the stroller's rain cover on and grabbed our umbrellas and rolled my linen pants up a bit. Hesitant but determined, Ryley, Theo and I approached the lobby doors to exit our building when the English-speaking gal at the management desk intercepted us and said "no, too dangerous to walk!" What?!? Rain had never stopped me from doing anything before. And it wasn't about to stop me now from retrieving my son from school at precisely the time I was supposed to, especially when I had left him crying in the arms of his teacher 8.5 hours prior! But seeing as how the rain was bouncing up from the ground and there was some undeniable lightening in the mix, I didn't resist the offer for them to call me a cab. The problem was, however, that times like those make the taxi lines all give out busy signals. Fifteen very long minutes went by and I started chomping at the bit. The desk attendant finally proposed that she call my son's school to let them know I would be late (I still have no phone). Brilliant. Up the elevator, scrounge around for the phone number, and back down to the lobby. I was a bit more willing to wait when the message had been delivered, but I still felt somewhat uncomfortable with the fact that the manager of the management desk himself was out in the rain, on the street trying to hale down a taxi to drive me a mere half a mile! I could have been there and back 3 times over during all that time! I was about to take my leave, insisting that the rain had in fact let up a bit, when a taxi finally pulled up. Guardsman, doorman and management-man all assisted us into the car and I could only hope someone explained to the driver where exactly I wanted to go and that I'd need him to wait for me as I picked up Julien and came back. Long story short (as least shorter than I'm naturally inclined to make it) we got Julien home just fine and the next day in his parent-correspondence notebook Joanne had written a note that she heard we had troubles so on rainy days Julien could take the baby bus home. At a per ride rate, it costs the same as that hassle of a taxi ride. He has taken it several time since :)

The new "Cheerios"

Theo is doing a remarkable job at his cultural adaptation. Without any complaints, he has enthusiastically replaced his snack repertoire of Cheerios and gold fish crackers with roasted squid jerky and crispy seaweed. I think he actually prefers the latter!

Passion Fruit…the source of the lotion scent

 Ben was the one to brave the grocery store on Saturday. Do I always send Ben out to do the hard stuff? (Humm...mow the lawn, shovel the walk, take out that incredibly stinky garbage, go find a whole list of needed items in a foreign store where overzealous sales clerks harass you on every other aisle...still not enough data to prove a solid pattern of behavior.) Besides, I had a critical job to do at home: our shipment arrived on Friday and everything needed to be organized :)

I failed to emphasize to Ben that my grocery list was in fact a wish list and I didn't really except him to find half of it. But being the results-driven, get-it-done kind of man that he is, it turned out to be a stressful trip for him, ending with a sense of failure, which in turn made me feel badly about not having communicated expectations clearly.

Despite not finding mint, cilantro, canned tuna, felt furniture sliders or any baby-proofing door locks, Ben did come home with a lovely supply of exotic fruits and we dined on the best smoothy ever! This middle photo shows the source of what I had only ever known as a lotion scent or candy flavor: passion fruit. And all of us really, really like it :)



This last photo shows another cultural experience: due to the kind insistence of a frozen-foods aisle sales clerk from my previous Saturday's grocery store run, I ended up with a bag of frozen pork parts for us to eat. After a whole week of avoidance, we deemed it time to consume this typical Taiwanese "waste no part of the animal" meal. To be honest, it took a lot of will power and a whole lot of rice to get it down my throat. We threw in a few pot stickers in the mix to distract us from the view, but there was no denying the palette texture of grizzle and tendons and who knows what else that was stuck to those bone pieces (help me out here Mark, my anatomy pro brother-in-law!)

Theo actually liked it. This poor child has lost a bit of weight these past couple of weeks (in part from having a cold, in part from us not finding his normal half-n-half / whole milk mixture diet). So there was something very primal instinctual about digging in for the bone morrow with my chopsticks and feeding it to my hungry baby. It felt good. And he agreed it was.

99.8 degrees

 This past week was a long one with plenty of adjustment struggles (and avoidance). In particular, I managed somehow to avoid going to a grocery store or market the entire week--a big stock of milk from the previous Saturday, Theo's can of formula powder and one trip to 7-Eleven made that feat possible. I think my energy level will up for it this week, however, especially given the fact that I will have no choice. If we plan to eat (our CostCo supply is basically gone and there is no stock of milk this time around), it must be done. And I am the one to do it. Yep, that's my job. Ben braves work, the boys brave school, and I must brave the shopping. I can do this.

The number one energy sapper this past week was Julien's struggles with school…still. My high hopes that we were on a smooth path for his Kindergarten attendance only lasted 2 days. They were dashed this past Tuesday when his little boy panic set in again as we arrived at his school gate. The magic of the incentives had worn off and Julien was crying and bent on not going in. In hindsight, I recognize that it really was my own anxieties that tipped the scale in favor of letting him have another half-day allowance. Was I not making allowances for my own anxiety-laden-situation avoidance?! Indeed. So my heart went out to him and home we trot. I had another (worse actually) tutoring session with all three boys crying/fighting/yelling and otherwise simply interrupting us with whatever noise they could come up with. The positive in it all was that it strengthened my resolve that Julien's school attendance was important--on many levels. Wednesday morning did its best to test that new-found resolve (see below if you want some detailed writing therapy from Wednesday). But to end with a success story, I need to tell you about the magic thermometer and how it is now a key player in our morning go-to-school routine:

To solidify Julien's understanding--and comfort of predictability--in knowing that he will be going to school, the new simple rule is that if he does not have a fever, he goes. Obviously vomiting and diarrhea would be exceptions too, but we will cross those roads when we get there. Fortunately, we have one of those nifty thermometers that light up green/yellow/red based on temperature, giving Julien a very clear indication of the verdict. Thursday it worked like a charm: "green, yay, no fever, let's go!" Friday there were, however, a couple of glitches that had me holding my breath. First of all, I totally spaced the official thermometer routine (you see, I hadn't quite recognized its true value yet) so when we got to the school gate, Julien panicked, informing me that we had to go back and do it. I hesitated. Was that really necessary? Probably. So I calmly said, "You're right, we forgot. We'll go back, take your temperature and when it's green we'll come back, deal?" He was all in favor. So in desperate efforts to maintain this child's sense of security and predictability in this crazy new life of his, we sweated our way back to our apartment building, up the elevator and into the kitchen for the official thermometer reading, which I was absolutely positive would confirm his non-sick status and would send us back on our merry way. Now, I was aware of a slight malfunction of said thermometer: when Ryley had been sick earlier, I noticed that it tends to avoid yellow all together and jumps right to red whenever it exceeds the "normal" range. Unfortunately, we found out that that is the case at a mere 99.8 degrees! As the thermometer reading climbed a bit past normal, I became a somewhat nervous about the color verdict. As it flashed red, I tensed for the upcoming battle of my you're-not-sick-but-just-overheated-from-our-fast-paced-sauna-walk-home argument vs. the color verdict of this silent gadget. I felt certain I'd lose.

The funniest thing though was Julien's total look of surprise at the thermometer's sick decree. He obviously hadn't expected it...and apparently didn't even welcome it. Two seconds into my explanation that his body was just a bit overheated, he nodded in agreement and willingly proceeded to get his shoes back on in order to return to school. Apparently all he needed was the formality to take place.  And he really did want to go to school because, as he stated, he "liked it now!" Such words, spoken at the school gate scene (take II), were music to my ears :)

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[Excerpt from Wednesday's writing therapy, in case you wanted more details.]
"This morning was the third day that Julien really struggled going to school. He has come home happy each day. It's just the going part that is really hard. Yesterday and last Thursday I ended up letting him just come home for the morning and then go back to school in the afternoon (which still took some major persuasive nudging efforts). But this morning I had the pressure of needing him to go to school so Ryley, Theo and I could make it to Wagor for a meeting with the English Director. Having Julien with us would have been very challenging. Plus I was just getting very concerned that, as I had feared, Julien was feeling that all school attendance was negotiable and it was making him a nervous wreck. He's always struggled with making decisions (like whether to go to the store with Daddy or stay home with me) and regretting whatever he chooses, insisting that he wanted the other option. Yesterday after finally getting him to walk the whole way to school and get inside the gate, talking about stars and rewards, he started getting upset because he wanted the full day's 10 stars not just the half day's 5 star reward. To avoid a complete melt-down, I reassured him he could do 5 extra chores when he got home and it would be the same thing. So this morning, after being just fine up until go time, he insisted he was sick and couldn't go to school. Then after a struggle of a walk to school and into the gate, he panicked and said he only wanted to go a half day and wanted to just do chores. Really needing him to go today, I carried him into the courtyard where his teacher and classmates were doing stretches and exercises, but he started crying and clinging on to me so I went back behind the wall where his classmates couldn't see (would hate to add teasing to his list of school challenges). It was so hard though. Julien's desperate pleadings and negotiating, and he wouldn't stop clinging and our hot, sticky skin was rubbing and I thought I was going to pass out. I fianlly firmly told him that he needed to go to school this morning and that I'd come to the school at lunch time and make sure he was o.k. Teacher Rebecca came over and very kindly took his backpack and talked to him calmly saying it was time to go. She got my nod to go ahead and carry him but there was still those couple of moments where Julien was still trying to cling to me and I added my tears to his. I hated it. I just stayed in the lobby a bit and tried to explain to Sophia that I just wanted to make sure he calmed down ok. He wasn't flailing or anything, when they took him, just sad. Sophia called up to his call and asked if he were doing ok. She said he had started to eat breakfast and was ok. With all their reassurances, I still had to fight the tears most of the walk home.


We were a bit late for getting ready and getting a taxi to go to Wagor. More stress added to an already nerve-wracking situation. It was my first time taking a taxi by myself in this place where I don't even know how to talk to people...and Theo is so hard to handle. He constantly is trying to unlock and open the door. I didn't even try to attempt the complicated car seat / stroller option. I'm not confident in how to get that thing buckled in and it was all dirty and not ready to go, etc. So again there was more "bad mom" feelings to add to it all. During the ride there I was trying to prep Ryley for good behavior, feeling the pressure to make a good impression. Over all it went o.k. Ryley was quite clammed up most of time. He was slouching and mumblings and twirling around in his stool, despite my reprimands not to. Teacher Bart (the English director) is very kind and good with kids. Theo took a tumble down a few stairs at the library and he was quick to distract him with a book to help him stop crying. Ryley tried on his uniforms to get sizes right. It's quite the list of things he needs: socks, cap, backpack, wool jackt, sports jacket, long-sleeved violet dress shirts, t-shirts and shorts, etc. Most of it needs to be ordered (guess they ran out and have a factory order to place).

Enjoying the Fruits of the Sea

We decided we had lived on this island long enough without seeing the ocean, so we took our trusty ipad google map app and asked it to take us to Taichung's Fisherman's Wharf for the afternoon. It turns out at the end of the day that we still had not exactly seen the ocean, but at the wharf we were able to fully enjoy the fruits of the sea...first by sight, then by taste--smell was an all encompassing experience.

We wet our appetites with some roasted squid. My microbiologist father would be happy to know that even though it came from a street vendor, we were careful to only buy the one that we watched him slice open, roast and season right in front of us. We were feeling pretty good about this arrangement up until he asked if we'd like it cut. The scissors and metal bowl where that procedure was done called for an extra prayer to ask for a blessing on the food we decided we still were going to eat :)






Julien's favorite parts were the tentacles because they were bumpy.
















Ryley liked it too...

...as did I (believe it or not).











Theo gave it a try but ended up spitting it out--as he does most anything these days, so squid is at least on par with apples, pasta, pickles, and mangoes in his opinion.

Cultural experience: I forgot to take the pokey stick away from him right away, so a very helpful stranger informed me (I can only assume) that my parenting duties were being neglected and took it upon herself (with a concerned yet kind smile) to remove the hazard from his hands. As much as such a moment can kind of chafe, I think I could get used to having extra sets of eyes and hands helping to make sure my boys survive their childhood!

This next series of photos are to document our sea creature feast that we had the adventure of ignorantly ordering, diligently consuming (as best we could), and finally honoring the little restaurant by paying a bill that made the owners' little son (and Ben) get all wide-eyed about. Oh how valuable it will be when we learn our food vocabulary! To order our food, we had about 5 restaurant people gathered around our table at one point trying to help--one of them with a few English words to contribute. While looking at the menu, Ben tried using his nifty iphone app to help decipher some of the characters, I had my ever faithful Chinese phrasebook, but it was slow going and there were too many people eager to help. Finally they just took Ben outside to choose a fish from the tank and offer other suggestions of what could accompany it. Somehow Ben inadvertently managed to communicate that he wanted to take them up on all of their suggestions. The platters kept on coming and coming! I wish I would have had my camera ready at the very beginning though because the best part was when the little boy, with a huge grin, walked up close to our table to show us a huge, flip-flopping fish in his net that he was taking back to the kitchen to have cooked for us!

fresh bamboo with mayo

fried little crusty shrimp things that you eat whole

big shrimp that looked at you as you beheaded them

an entire crab--we really had no idea how to eat this thing--especially with chopsticks?!?

Ryley named this dish fish spaghetti--it had all sorts of sea creature parts in it

Our fried fish...head removed because they must have known that's how Americans like it (what a pity that we choose to miss out on the cheek meat!)

Surprise! The fried fish was only half of it. Some of our fish also was made into a soup...

...and into a dish of sashum

Finally, we could eat no more!

The rest of our time on the wharf was spent just looking, not eating.

Happy 8/8 Day!

 One thing I love is learning about new holidays I never knew I could be celebrating! This past Thursday was one of those days: August 8th (8/8) is the Chinese Father's Day because the number 8 [ba] sounds like Daddy--which is "ba ba." How cool is that!

Ryley made this poster which shows "ba ba" written out in characters.








I made this poster, of course in honor of Ben, but also to try and impress my new Chinese tutor. It says "fu qin jie kuai le" which is the more formal way to say "Happy Father's Day." This poster had several draft attempts and the assistance of a much repeated character stroke-order website animation :)









Julien also had his Ba Ba day contribution: he made this card at school. He made sure Ben knew that he had given him teeth so he could eat and "nose holes" so he could breathe.






 


As a grand finale to the day--and this was Thursday, mind you, the day that the honeymoon officially ended when Julien wouldn't go to school, and my tutoring lesson was in 2 minutes increments between all 3 kids crying/fighting/climbing on me, and a full awareness of my true burden on Taiwanese society started to sink in as all I could do was mutely smile and shake my head as the OK-Mart cashier talked at me and the apartment guard talked at me and the City Super clerk talked at me--but seeing as it was Ba Ba day, I stuck to the plan of meeting Ben at a Chinese dumpling restaurant close to our home after he got off work. The day still deserved to be celebrated.

I had scoped the place out the day before and noticed a long line to be seated, and fearing that Father's Day would be even worse, the plan was for the kids and I to go early to get our names on the list and then Ben would meet us there. But this simple plan actually had me quite nervous, especially as my nerves were already rather raw from the day's sequence of events. Here are a few highlights of the misfortunes and good fortunes that shaped our evening:

- misfortune: I still don't have a phone (have to wait until my resident card comes) so I needed to keep a watch out for Ben's email saying he was leaving work and that was our go signal to head out to the restaurant. Man, I miss my cell phone!

- good fortune: The hostess taking names for the reservation list spoke some English, I was thereby able to clarify, with only minor difficulties, that we in fact needed a table for 4 people and 1 baby because their father was on his way.

- misfortune: After a significant amount of uneventful waiting time, when our table could have been called at any moment or Ben could have come and would need to find us at the spot I told him we'd be, Julien decided an urgent, non-negotiable bathroom break was needed.
 - good fortune: I remembered to stick my Chinese phrase book in my purse, so when I couldn't find the bathroom and the first person I tried to ask didn't speak any English, I was able to point to the "where are the restrooms?" phrase and get the needed information.


- good fortune: We made it back to the restaurant waiting area before our table was called, plus there was the good fortune of knowing when our table was called because of a display board with the numbers being called (there's no way I could have understood the number 5014!)

- good fortune: As we were being seated, I mentioned that my husband should be there any moment and asked if they could bring him back to our table. The hostess was about to take his name but hesitated and asked if he were Taiwanese or American. Then, knowing that she would be watching for a conspicuous foreigner, she put her pen down and just nodded--no problem.

- misfortune: Theo's baby chair didn't have a buckle to secure him down and even with one hand on him at all times, he managed to reach over to the table next to us and knock over their soy sauce bottle (And they laughed at the "ke ai" [cute] little child! Which only encouraged him!)

- good fortune: my purse has a detachable strap that was able to be wound around him and the chair to limit his escape'ability and allow me to focus on my chopsticks.

-misfortune: Theo managed to get all tangles up in his efforts to escape.









-good fortune: The walk back to our apartment is really pretty at night. The trees are all lit up and it isn't even Christmas time! Although Ba Ba day would have deserved such an exceptional show of festivity, the tree embellishments are actually a constant benefit from the mall that's a couple of buildings away from us. Nice.

"If" given enough encouragement...

 Julien was all good to go to school on Friday. Thank goodness! I think it helped that we had written out a couple of action plans and reward incentive contracts and given him a few extra hours of sleep :) Now, If given the possibility of earning 10 stars at the end of each day at school (normally stars are given out 1 or maybe 2 at a time based on desirable behaviors like making a bed or using good apartment lobby etiquette) along with a few other perks added for these first couple weeks, Julien seems quite happy to go. I think he's enjoying all the social time too. It's also amazing how caring and attentive all the teachers and staff are--it has to feel good for him to be basking in their love! 

We are all feeling the "special" factor of being the only foreigners at the school. Even with my limited Chinese, I've been able to understand a few parents telling their child that "that's the mama of Julien" as they smile and nod in my direction. I've seen the mama of Jeff (all the kids have an English name in addition to their Chinese name) picking up her son about the same time as I do every day. It was really sweet to hear her rehearsed "nice to meet you" phrase on the 3rd day we saw each other--before that our exchanges were mainly non-verbal :)


Here is Julien's If Kindergarten backpack and his 3 rice bowls with spoons for eating his school breakfast, lunch and snack. Like all typical kids, his report of the day is mainly centered on what good food he got to eat. It's funny to hear him describe some of the foods he's not familiar with. Apparently I need to learn how to make a "purplish-orangish" soup.






This is the correspondence notebook that they send home with Julien every day...












...this is what it says inside. As you can clearly see, it informs me something about his eating time, class time, napping time and social behavior. I greatly appreciated that token indication of what was being communicated. In acknowledgment of that appreciation, I decided to sign my name on a line that looked like it wanted a signature, thereby attesting to the fact I had seen said information. Not that I had understood any of it!

The following day Joanne had an insert taped in the front with an English translation of it all :) Guess that will help my signature mean a bit more in the future.



This is the highlight of our walk home from Kindergarten: one of the shops has this aquarium right up against its street side. The boys have already named a lot of their fishy friends and enjoy visiting them every day. It's hard to drag them away.









We've decided that at every grocery store run (of which we have several each week) we're going to buy something that we have absolutely no idea what it is. Here is such a fruit. I'll eventually get back to you about what it's called. I don't think we'll be buying it often, however. No one really cared much for this one. Live and learn.

And finally, here's Ryley with a few more teeth gone. He decided he would lose a couple this week and test out the theory that the tooth-fairy, like Santa Clause, can find you anywhere in the world. Just to be on the safe side, however, he did write her a note specifying that he wanted NT$ rather than US$ seeing as how he couldn't spend the latter over here. This child is so good at covering his bases!

Honeymoon Over

Today was a rough one. I do believe we've officially ended with our "honeymoon phase" of life in Taiwan--that being the technical cultural adaptation term. I need to check my notes, but I do believe that what's in store for us next is a deep plummet into massive adaptation struggles, then gradually we're supposed to emerge into a phase of successful transitions, and then there's something at the top of the graph..., what was it? total victory ?? I'll need to double check.

Because I'm exhausted I'm just going to paste an email from today to highlight the core of the difficulties of the day. There were other issues on the fringes, but here's the main one.  Sorry, no photos to make it interesting. Just picture Julien's big, blue eyes full of tears and mine struggling to keep clear especially when our favorite apartment guard looked concerned and asked why Julien wasn't at school (again, sympathy gets me every time!)
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Hi Mary Lynn,

Julien had a really rough day with not wanting to go to school today. Apparently he was sad at school yesterday saying he missed his mommy and this morning he was pretty set on not going. And so it begins--this was one of the challenges of living here that I knew would come and was worried about how to best handle it. It's such a balance knowing how much to push and encourage and how much to respect their little person fears and give them time to baby step into new experiences.

We managed to walk to school this morning (just a little late, only because we had intended on being early) but he was clinging to me and crying so we came back home and made a plan for what he could do during the morning to get some more courage to go back after lunch. I really had to bust out all my tricks and powers of persuasion! He finally was good to go with his favorite stuffed animal in his backpack, an aromatherapy pad with his favorite oil in his pocket to smell when he got sad, and a list of little rewards he'd earn at the end of the day by being brave and going to school.  I just hope tomorrow doesn't require as much mothering energy--I'll get burnt out in no time!

Anyway, we didn't get back from the post-lunch drop off until 1pm and Theo went down late for his nap and I'm hoping he'll make up for it by sleeping late.

Sorry today turned out to be a bad market day. Tomorrow we're going to visit Ryley's school, but I'd still love to go to the market with you soon. Would early next week sometime be good?

Take care,
Angela

"If Kindergarten"

Today (now yesterday) was Julien's grand debut at his bilingual, all-day Kindergarten. To clarify what "all-day" entails, the latest I'm supposed to drop him off is 8:30am and the earliest pick-up time is 5pm! Rather intense, but he sure loved it. I was so proud of him! His personality is so eager and accepting of new experiences. He waltzed right in, not minding a bit that he only knows about 5 words of Chinese, asked where he should sit and said "bye, Mom." Wish we all could have that gift!

As for this photo of Ryley with the mask: when we were leaving our apartment for the 10 minute sauna walk to school, I decided I'd better dawn a medical mask to conform to social pressures, seeing as how I'd developed a little bit of a cough these past couple of days. And of course, since it looked fun and oh so cool, Ryley did the the same :) You see, at this point I fell into one of the main categories of people who should be wearing a mask. The other category is comprised of all healthy people who are afraid they might catch some disease from other masked, or unmasked, people. This being how it is over here, at any given point you'll notice nearly half the people on the street are wearing masks. Come to think of it, there really is a third category too: scooter drivers just trying to to keep exhaust and dirt out of their mouths! Now that's understandable. Personally, as far as the other categories go, I'd much prefer the hand-washing approach to staying healthy rather than be forced to breath my suffocatingly stale, recycled air for any amount of time. After just a few minutes, somehow my mask ended up in the bottom of Theo's stroller. Ryley's stayed on. What stamina!



 Here we are approaching the gates of If Bilingual Kindergarten where Julien is enrolled in their senior class (Kindergarten is still part of the preschool system). Interesting name, interesting story of how we found this place. Once we selected our apartment during our home-finding trip, our next focus was to find a preschool that was walkable. Bilingual preschools are quite common over here (such an amazing focus on learning English at a young age), and they have anywhere from 10% to 90% of their curriculum in English. We were searching for a school with a solid 50% to still be in Chinese for Julien's benefit, but the walkable factor was also attractive for several reasons. Foremost, I knew I'd no longer be the minivan-driving-mama I once was. Logistics needed to be taken into consideration. Secondly, even though many of the big-name preschools will pick kids up in their cute little buses, but I knew it would be good for me to have a built-in routine forcing me to leave my apartment every day, as a safe-guard against those dark, reclusion tendencies I get when depression clouds start to hang low. The other very attractive aspect of walking Julien to school was the face-to-face interactions we'd have with other parents and kids. We really want to make friends over here and hoped our pathetically eager smiles would communicate that :) 

So during our home-finding trip, our quest to find a good preschool within a short distance was communicated to Andy and he said, "no problem." He drove us across the main boulevard and around the block in a little neighborhood and there was a whole line of preschools. Seriously, at least four in a row! We parked the car and started knocking on doors seeing if any of them had openings. No go, another no go, smoking man in wife-beater shirt said there was room at their most wonderful preschool (i.e. no go), and then finally we arrived at If Kindergarten and were greeted by this young lady in the photo with Julien. Joanne's English was impeccable, she was professional, organized, and very warm and caring. She said that they had never had a foreign student before but would love to have Julien join their small school (they just have one class of 22 students in each grade) and there happened to be 2 spots left in their "puppy" class which was the senior/ Kindergarten equivalent class. Yay! Again we felt so incredibly blessed and recognized another answer to our prayers.

The name may seem a bit odd at first, but it's actually based on a poem they have displayed in their lobby: it's something very endearing, inspirational, and grammatically correct about if you let a child learn and explore, etc. then they will blossom and grow (or something to that effect). Very nice. And after awhile that dangling conjunction [If] seems like the best possible name for a good preschool :)

Here you see its playground. We knew Julien would go nuts over that climbing dinosaur! We were right.

After Julien said goodbye to me (a.k.a. shooing his mother away), Ryley had the lovely idea of stopping by 7-Eleven for an early morning slurpee. And look at that, there just so happened to be one at the end of the street!









This is the best stretch of sidewalk that we have on our trek to Julien's school. It lasts for at least 4 store fronts and has minimal gradient changes from shop to shop. And look at those considerate scooters who chose to not park all the way up to the wall. Taiwanese sidewalks and strollers really don't get along. Most of the way we find ourselves on the street edge competing with the scooters for road shoulder rights.










The tall, skinny building on the left is what an individual residence looks like in Taichung. They are basically a super narrow town-home with a garage on ground level and rooms 3 or 4 stories stacked. We're grateful to have been given the apartment option. You can see our crazy tall apartment building in the background--the one with the blue, tan and white stripes.










This photo captures what it was like to have Julien's energy (shall we mention the naughtiness factor too?) gone to school all day. In the quite hours of Theo's nap, Ryley took up sewing buttons on dried baby wipes with my travel sewing kit. His new-found skills turned into a project he wanted to make as a surprise for Julien: a sewn coat for Julien's stuffed animal, Puppy, to wear. This quiet, focused endeavor lasted for almost 2 hours. How lovely it was!

I was a little bit eager to pick Julien up and make sure everything went o.k. on his first day. He came into the school lobby with bright eyes and a smile and reported that he loved it :)


As a reward for braving his first day at school in Taiwan, he got to have a "motor tub bath!"