The first 2 days

Our travels to the other side of the world started with a rude awakening by our alarm clock at 3 a.m. on July 24th to get ready to catch our flight from San Antonio (where we had been visiting family) to Los Angeles. We started out fired up and excited...





 ...with some detectable nervousness behind the smiles--especially when you're 5 years old, sitting in an aisle by yourself next to a stranger.








After a 6-hour layover in LA, we were rewarded with the coolest flight ever: personal computer screens at our disposal for an entire 14 hours! Got to love it. And they did. Sleep? Why sleep and waste all that sanctioned screen time?!





Theo was a super star on the flights--couldn't have asked for better behavior from a 1.5 yr old during a 34-hour journey (pillow to pillow time). He got an energy surge during our last leg from Hong Kong to Taichung. This was our first (anticipated) experience with the intense attention factor: this blue-eyed, blond haired little socialite had quite the audience. The lady and her daughter sitting next to me were taking pictures of him and giggle at his antics.








Arrived!

...but not our luggage. A few forms and helpful English-speaking airport officials and we were reassured we'd be reunited by the end of the next day.













[Don't mind the otter in the photo. His name is Ollie. He's part of a project we're doing for Ryley's Chinese dual-immersion school back in Utah. He'll be making star appearances now and again in this blog too when I need his pictures.] 

The tap water in Taiwan isn't drinkable--potable--to use the technical term. Ben still has to remind me that that doesn't mean it's poison and that I need to relax a bit. It does present some new challenges, however. When Ben and I had our home-finding trip in June, our hotel provided a stock of bottled water for our use. Our hotel this time had its own electric water boiler pitcher. Nice unlimited supply, but the cooling off process requires patients and lots of cups (insulated water bottles take even longer).When Theo woke at 4 a.m. and he and I made our hotel hallway rounds, I had high hopes for a moment when I saw a water dispenser jug in the workout room. Cool, refreshing water? Nope. Unfortunately the options were still boiling hot, really hot, and still somewhat hot. Best not to disrupt one's system with cold water especially after the strain of exercise.

Another thing I loved about this hotel was the shower with a fogged glass wall separating it from the sleeping area. It would have made for a tricky situation with me and the boys except that we had the fortune of 2-room suite :) 
 








Still without our 8 pieces of luggage, the full-sized van that had been arranged to pick us up from our hotel to bring us to our apartment did just that. Here we are in our apartment's lobby. Just prior to this photo I do believe I deeply offended the van driver as I, finding myself with empty hands, helped get a bag and a small rolling bag out of the trunk to bring inside. Seeing me coming up the ramp into the lobby, our driver quickly insisted on taking them from there. Hopefully he felt he interceded quickly enough before it made him lose face as a driver not doing his duties. It was just another reminder for me to respect people's roles and to lose a bit of my American independent, self-reliant attitude that would make a lot of people over here very uncomfortable. Hard habits to break.






This is another view of our apartment's lobby with Andy--our realtor and best friend in Taichung--and Ben at the management desk.








Our apartment wasn't exactly ready for us on that Friday we arrived. Cabinets were still being installed, some of the furniture wasn't there, and the place still needed to be cleaned from its final construction dust. We were obviously in the way and were basically told to go elsewhere for several hours. Luckily we had just the place...but that will be for a different post. For some reason the photos of the kid zone at our apartment didn't load. I don't want to risk messing this blog post up by doing anything tricky like trying to add them at this point :)


This is a beautifully captured moment of a few of our struggles: First of all, Ben is doing his best to figure out the Chinese instructions for our automatic rice cooker that came with the apartment. Secondly, Theo is sweating buckets: Friday evening when we were allowed back into our apartment, Andy (our best friend) returned to walk through it with us. In the midst of our 30% comprehensible communication rate that we have going on with Andy, it was determined that the air conditioning was not working and that a repairman would come the next day. No biggie, right? I reassured myself there had to be 10's of thousands of people in this city who didn't have the luxury of air conditioning and they do just fine. In fact people all over the world sleep, eat, work, and play in crazy heat and 99% humidity and survive and thrive. Let's just say that our thriving wasn't exemplary: it was the most miserable 18 hours of constant sweating that I can remember experiencing. And look at little Bobo: he has "I-just-ran-five-miles" man sweat stains on his onesie! It's just not right.

But backing up a bit, here are some excerpts from my email to my family from that first night in our apartment--when as Andy was about to leave, we realized we really did need a grocery store run to buy some essentials. I was too scared to go, so naturally, I volunteered Ben for the job:

"Ben made it back from his grocery store run on Friday night, late, but unscathed. It turns out our dearest friend Andy (yes, he has climbed even higher on my esteem ladder recently) only had his scooter on Friday, which explains a lot. At the end of a long day trying to help make sure our apartment was livable and mostly functioning, we expressed the need to get to a store for a few essentials. Andy was concerned about Ben getting to and from the store in a taxi so he did the following:
* Accompanied him to the front desk of the apartment to communicate the request for a taxi to be sent for.
* Scootered his way to the Carrefour store, only to find that Ben was not there.
* Recognized taxi driver could have taken him to the other Carrefour that was farther away (which he indeed had) and scoootered his way over there. * Found Ben (who luckily was wearing a bright turquoise shirt and had a glaring non-asian look about him) wandering the aisles because he had given up hope on plan A of meeting Andy at the service desk due to the mishap on store destinations. * Accompanied Ben to said service desk to explain to them that when this non-Chinese speaking foreign man came to the desk, what his unspoken need would be is to have a taxi sent for him.
* Gave Ben a hand-written Chinese version of our address (the English one wouldn't be recognized by most of the taxi drivers) as well as a description of what the apartment was next to and his name and cell # if there were any problems.

* Then, he bid Ben a good night.

- In his sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, I-don't-know-how-to-navigate-

in-this-foreign-land state, Ben braved his first shopping trip and returned with the following live-sustaining essentials (listed from most rational to least rational...at least in my opinion ;) :

* 2 large jugs of water (our water filter isn't being installed until Monday, our hotel boiled water was gone and we were sweating up a storm in our non-air-conditioned apartment)

* diapers

* milk for Bobo (with the biggest calorie count number per serving that he could find nested amidst a bunch of Chinese characters--the milk section is quite large and confusing and there was a very pushy store sales lady trying to convince him he needed to buy this special soy milk with lots of benefits...or at least that's what Ben gathered. You need to ask Ben to tell about his moment of using a Chinese word in context during this "conversation." Very funny.) 

* some frozen chicken nuggets
* drinkable yogurt

* more yogurt

* orange juice
* a big bag of rice (all we have to cook with in our kitchen until our shipment arrives is an automatic rice cooker)

* nutella (yay for comfort food...and if it works in oatmeal, why not rice?!)
* ziplock baggies, plastic wrap and aluminum foil
* a bag of granulated sugar (?!?)

- Then Ben and I laid in bed, bemoaning our state of discomfort, feeding our sweat pool with continuous drips of perspiration as we felt pathetically unable to cope with the heat. Ben said he would have bought some fans but was worried about being able to carry everything into the apartment. Understandable.

SATURDAY

- The kids and I had a middle of the night party including snacks, a messy diaper, and decorating for Daddy's birthday (think small on that one).

- Ben's birthday highlights were opening his one present (shirts and socks the boys had picked out) and having our air-conditioner repaired, which took 4 guys about 4 hours...and they didn't even start much before noon. It was another long, hot day.

- The boys were still a little out of sorts: Ryley's fever came and went. Julien's teasing came...and mostly stayed. And Theo's phobia of the floors definitely stayed."

Backing up a bit again, this is a video that I uploaded that I have no idea how to make work, but which--could you view it--would show a most interesting problem. At one point during the first day that we were at our apartment, we thought Theo had hurt his foot or something because out of the blue he was refusing to walk. He'd tense all up and crouch down and whimper. Constipation was my next guess. But then after picking him up, ruling out any bodily harm, and seeing him jump and climb around the boys beds and nightstand in typical Bobodore style, and even walk around a bit tentatively in the bedrooms, I figured it out: he has a phobia of our polished floors. They reflect the lights and when you look down, it really can give you a sense of depth or water or something. Anyway, the poor baby is afraid he's going to fall off of these illusionary precipices and he will not (mind you, now this is his stubborn streak at its best) walk on the polished flooring! Yay, it will slow him down and create some lovely boundaries in the bedrooms. Nice thought while it lasted. Instead he's a complete wreck and panics in each doorway if I step out of the room and demands to be carried with me. 
 

This is Theo hiding out in the safe shadows of the table

This is Ben proud of the rice he bought and made in the rice cooker (successes!)

Here is some documentation of Ben's "essentials" from that first grocery store run :)

Here is 7-Eleven (which is everywhere out here) providing us with our mid-day meal because the idea of ordering at a restaurant still had us all too scared to try it. 

 Saturday evening came around and once again, we needed more water. Making Ben go again would just be downright wrong of me, so I psyched myself up for the adventure. Here's some more email excerpts from what happened:

"Then came my turn to brave our new world to provide sustenance for our family: but without Andy in my corner, I decided to opt for a smaller grocery store that was walkable. Then the plan was to find the service desk and have my phrase book marked for asking for a taxi to get me and my load home, and I'd present Andy's written Chinese address to the driver. Good plan. Didn't work. Here was what went wrong:

* First of all, I ended up with some odd things in my cart too, including some frozen pot-stickers that needed to be boiled (with what pan, you ask?) that another helpful store sales lady insisted I needed and even did me the courtesy of taping the appropriate sauce to the package and basically putting it in my cart for me. How could I refuse?

* Then at the check-out line I noticed the lady in front of me tried to use a card and it wasn't accepted. Was it her card? Was it that this line couldn't use a credit card? Could I use a card anywhere? I started to get nervous that I wouldn't have enough cash for all the food and a taxi ride home.

* Anxieties continued to mount as the cashier talked at me, eventually determined I did need a bag, took my mangoes and bananas away (apparently I hadn't attached a needed label to them) and took most, but not all, of my money. I didn't even try the credit card approach.

* I then wondered around in circles trying to find a service desk. This store was very different: it kind of spiraled you through a bunch of smaller shops to get you to the core grocery area. As I spiraled my way out, nothing looked official, so I decided to just ask a little shop keeper who wasn't busy about the taxi thing. Now in "ask" I really just mean open my phrase book and point. She then talked at me and pointed out in the direction of the parking lot.

* A gentleman who probably overheard the taxi question exchange came up to me and in fairly good English asked if I were needing a taxi. Oh the difficulties of dealing with a kind gesture in the midst of an emotionally compromised situation: I did my best not to cry. He informed me that all I had to do was cross that street (way yonder) and hail a taxi with my hand. Ok. So be it. I had thought that taxis here usually needed to be called for because it was hard to just stop them on the street, but that seemed to be my only choice. So with my overzealous load of "necessities," I labored to the crosswalk and to the other side where he had indicated.

* Waiting, waiting, and there was a taxi. High hopes when we made eye contact and I did the hand motion thing. Hopes crushed when he emphatically indicated a no-go. So with my one and only effort defeated and with doubts of the whole plan swarming in, I determined that walking home was the new plan.

* My long, sweaty trek home included many rest and repositioning stops, but I managed. I felt so conspicuous and awkward and was just looking forward to arriving at our apartment where, just like they had done with Ben the night before, I thought I would be greeted by someone who would insist on taking my groceries up to our apartment (they even wouldn't allow Ben to carry anything at all).

* Great was my disappointment when I slowly walked close to the desk waiting for this anticipated offer, only to be greeted with a "Ni hao" and nothing more. So onward I walked through that stinkin' long lobby and hallway and elevator hallway and into the elevator which unfortunately had a mirror in it which just happened to reveal my pathetic state of tomato-redness and dripping sweat and which in turn made me burst into tears.

* I tried to compose myself before entering the apartment because I didn't want to make Ben or the kids worry more than I thought they already would be due to my late arrival. But after keying in our door code and walking in, my fears of upsetting the family were quickly put at rest--Ben was passed out on the coach, Julien was passed out on our bed, Theo in his, and Ryley was 100% engrossed in playing an ipad game. All was well."

II was a little ambitious in thinking I could capture the full 10 days that have come and gone for us over here. So I just changed my blog post to "the first 2 days" and will leave it at that for tonight :) 

~Miss you all so much! Good night.~