"Ke ai"

 Theo's little head injury has gotten him quite the sympathy from our apartment staff. His "ke ai" (so cute/lovable) factor has gone up even more in his pitiful state ☺

Taiwanese Social Medicine

  It was bound to happen: 3 boys + irrepressible needs to climb and test the laws of physics = an eventual trip to the doctor's to get stitches…staples in this case.

Avoiding that math equation for nearly 8 years was good fortune. Having this situation come to fruition half way around the world with barely a month of Taiwanese life under my belt was direct karma coming from all that Ben put his mother through as a child!

Theo did decide to go easy on me though and chose his moment of crisis very carefully. While my Chinese tutor and I were in the middle of our lesson he decided to step into his 1-foot-long dump truck for a ride which unfortunately ended with a head bang on the balcony door runner.

Lots of angry screaming cries, some blood (but not terrible) and no real concern for a concussion. On familiar turf I probably would have just cleaned it with my organized medicine cabinet supplies, called his nurse and gotten a recommendation for the best way to keep it clean and not get infected.

On foreign turf, with a very respected, very used social medicine network, along with a very concerned, very eager to help tutor, I ended up being driven to take him to the ER of the nearest hospital. This decision came after a rather pathetic unveiling of my disorganized medical supplies, a cleanning of wound with contact solution and a failed attempt to concoct a head-dressing that would stay put for longer than 1 minute. Even though the bleeding hadn't been terrible and I questioned whether the wound really needed stitches, I was quite concerned about infection as I witnessed peanut butter fingers touching the wound 10 seconds after they wripped the dressing off. (Bananas and peanut butter as his comfort food, how could I deny him in the midst of everything he was suffering!)

It turned out to be very beneficial to experience the medical scene with the assistance of my tutor and in non-life-threatening circumstances. Amy (my tutor) was yet another heaven-sent angel for me during the whole process and I learned a lot that will come in handy when the next medical crisis rolls around:

1. I can take comfort in the fact that if/when something of this nature occurs, I immediately have at least 5 very concerned, helpful, caring, and linguistically competent people to help me (feelin' the love from our apartment management desk people and the outside guards)!

2. The hospital was impressive: clean, efficient, and trustable service. I received the clarification from Amy that it really was the best place to go (vs. a clinic) for such things. And with social medicine, no worries about the cost.

3. I need to always have a copy of all of our Chinese names in my purse. At the registration desk, the lady had quite the struggle to know what to do with Theo's crazy long name listed on his resident card. She said she couldn't input it in the system. Luckily Amy remembered all of our Chinese names (she had done a lesson to help me learn how to introduce my family awhile back.)

4. As you can see on Theo's ankle bracelet (under his Chinese name) I need to remember that Theo was born in the year 100 of the Republic of China's calendar...but no need to know any lunar month conversions, 12/01 still holds true.

5. Theo's blood type was asked for (good thing I had all the boys blood work done right before moving).

6. Even though all medical doctors will speak English to some degree (medical text books are in English apparently) the rate of comprehension could still hover around a strained 50%. (In other words, if at all possible, bring a Chinese-speaking person with me.)

7. Follow-up appointments are automatically made and I was given a receipt with a call number which I'm supposed to bring with me tomorrow morning to wait in line to have his wound checked on. Amy clarified about what time my issued # 30 will come up.

8. Pharmacy items are issued super quickly at the in-hospital pharmacy. Very convenient.

9. ...and we are not in fact, as I had thought, on the Taiwanese medical system yet. That takes place in 6 months from now. So I had to fork over an up-front payment-in-full of NT$2000--that would be a grand total of US$60. Unbelievable! How do they make this beautiful system work?! Doctors must not get sued here.

Amy, bless her heart, is going to pick me up for tomorrow's appointment and we'll call it another field-trip lesson to replace next Tuesday's tutoring session. That was her brilliant idea :)

Ryley's 1st Day of School

 It could have gone either way, but Ryley actually does love his school uniforms. It's a bit hard to tell, but the dress shirts are a lovey lavender :)

Here's his schedule:

Mon / Fri: preppy shirt with faux tie and plaid wool-blend shorts with school logo embroidered knee socks

Tues / Thurs: sports uniform which includes gray short-sleeved shirt and long shorts with crew socks...logo embroidered as well

Wed: leisure day--wear what you want











He also has a hat to wear on Mondays for school assemblies, a light jacket, a vest, a schnazzy dark gray wool overcoat, and winter equivalents of the dress shirt/shorts and t-shirt/gym shorts. Kind of intense. Especially when all the care tags indicate line dry only, regardless of the 99% humidity issue. And for some reason they only issue one set of PE uniforms?? Julien was only issued one set of uniforms too for his 2x/week uniform schedule. It forced me to sit down with a paper and pen to map out my laundry schedule.















Here's Ryley (and of course Julien) posing for his big day of going to school.
















At 7:15 am we went out to brave the heavy rain to go to the dot on the map that I was told was his bus stop. His bus picks him (and only him) up about a block and a half away. Not too bad. Again, Julien's puddle attraction led to major soaking of feet and shorts. I'm not sure how bad Ryley's feet were. At least I had the comfort knowing he'd be taking off his shoes to put on his classroom school slippers. And wool-blend socks should dry quickly, right?










This is Theo's rain prison. 

















This is the bag with Ryley's nap-time blanket that should have gotten on the bus with him but did not. This is also the moment that I realized I'd need to somehow get it to him quickly in case it was a point of great concern. (Yes, this is yet another example of how I impose my feelings upon my children. I'm cold--they're cold. I freak out when I forget something--of course they'd do the same.)

So with school business cards in hand--to provide the written addresses I have no ability to pronounce--I approached the apartment's management desk to arrange the following taxi service:

1. Julien's school--please wait while my umbrella and I accompany him to the gate.

2. Ryley's school--please wait while I approach the guard station and speak my rehearsed "Wo de er zi Ryley. Teacher Stephanie" and hope that my message is clear enough to get his blanket delivered to him. It was reassuring to see a father right in front of me apparently dropping off a forgotten water bottle.

3. Then please take me back to where we started.

With Theo strapped in his car seat this time, our taxi adventure went relatively smoothly.


The morning's forgotten blanket situation only took a small toll on my emotional stress level, but more critically, I think it contributed to setting me up for a royal cracking moment at the end of the day:

This photo below represents the moment that I stopped my public freak-out scene and came to realize that everything was in fact o.k.. Five minutes prior, while trying to maneuver Theo's stroller, hold my umbrella steady and work my cellphone, I was simultaneously crying, screaming at Julien to get out of the road and yelling at Ben on the phone...all with a large audience of scooter drivers not more than 2 meters away. Lovely. What brought me to this point, you ask? Well here was the build up:

1. I wasn't 100% sure about the bus drop-off location (it was a different dot on the map with a little bit of ambiguity), and the need to be there at the time of his arrival was weighing heavily on me.

2. We had left our apartment early to deal with factor #1, but I had foolishly let Julien bring with us his new recorder flute he had been issued at school that day. Just shy of reaching our bus stop waiting spot, he realized it had fallen out of the stroller pocket and he panicked. Since we had a little time to spare, we quickly retraced our steps but to no avail.

3. I had another moment of incompetent, failed communication efforts trying to ask the apartment guard about the lost flute.

4. I had to reassure a distressed son that I'd go out and find where to buy him a similar flute before music class (and I really had no idea).

5. We were back at what I figured was the bus drop-off spot but since we were right next to an undeveloped field area, I felt mosquitos biting and worried about the non-vaccinated-for-Japanese encephalitis status of my boys. I thought it best to move down the street a bit to a better spot where we could still see the bus coming and the bus would have a good place to pull over. Very helpful of me? Not really.

6. As I checked my phone for the time, I came to realize the bus was already 10 minutes late and that I had just missed a call. My new phone of 2 days only had a small pool of potential callers, so my logical jump to a conclusion was that I had been standing at the wrong place and the the bus attendant had called me because I wasn't there for Ryley and they were now taking him back to school. At the same time I was kicking myself for my foolish move away from the street corner where the bus could have been coming on the other street rather than this one. How could I mess this up?! My son, possibly traumatized from his 10-hour first day of school in a foreign country needed me to be there!!

7. I redial the number who called me only to get an incomprehensible recording in Chinese. At that very moment Ben was trying to call me using a new app called "Line" (because we get charged for all calls and texts) and I couldn't figure out how to pick up the call. Obviously, I reasoned, he was calling me because the school had called him as well regarding the missed bus situation (you see, my mind works very fast in panic mode).

8. It started to downpour and rain is loud.

9. Julien, in his boredom, had started to play in the gutter on the corner of a busy street where the law of the jungle doesn't respect pedestrian rights.

10. Theo is crying because I stopped moving his stroller.

11. I finally connect with Ben (who had called me for another reason altogether) and undoubtedly startle him as I start yelling about my stupid mistake and how Ryley is for sure very scared and feels abandoned and will never want to go to school again because I totally failed at my mommy duty of picking him up at the bus stop.

12. I paw through my purse and realize that I left Ryley's English department chair person's business card at home and I don't have his school's number in my phone yet.

13. I order Ben to fix things by tracking down a number for Ryley's school and finding out where they have taken him.

14. I pause, thinking I see something green and yellow coming down the street.

15. I tell Ben I've got to go, hang up, and drag Julien (while pushing stroller and holding umbrella) to bus stop point A in time for Ryley to happily greet us as he skips down the bus stairs.

Blessed by a 7-year-old's obliviousness and the mixture of raindrops, I think I managed to hid my tears while I calmly listened to his adventures of his first day at school.

All on the same level

 Our entire family is trying to learn the Taiwanese phonetic system. Julien is learning it two characters per week at school with the rest of his classmates. The rest of us are playing catch-up!

Theo will stand with me looking up at my post-its on the the wall and repeat some of the sounds. It's cute :) I do believe his pronunciation already exceeds mine. I can accept that.







It's somewhat humbling to be struggling to work through a workbook labeled for 3 to 7 year-olds!

Hot Pot

 Taichung is famous for their "hot pot" meals. Last Saturday we went to a buffet-style hot pot restaurant with a few families from our church. It was a fun way to eat!

Step 1:
- Everyone claims their spot at the table with their own built-in hot pot and heat controls.

Step 2:
- A server takes orders for which soup broth people would like.

Step 3:
- Everyone goes to the refrigerated section where you take some tongs and load up on raw meats, veggies, blood sausages, seaweeds, mushrooms, fish balls, uncooked noodles, clams, and mystery foods.







Step 4:
- Then comes the concocting of your own sauce. In all of those tin pots are different sauce ingredients. There is a base paste that is specific to "hot pot" which must have some ground anchovies and spices, then there are other things to mix in such as soy sauce, vinegar, garlic soupy stuff, ginger tidbits, some herbs, some hot chili oily stuff, and I know there was something else...I just can't remember.

Step 5:
- Of course there is some rice and pot-stickers to load up on too. It wouldn't be a bonafide meal without them :)






Step 6:
- Return to the table to boil everything in the pots, dip in your personalized sauce, and enjoy.

Step 7:
- Repeat steps 3 through 6 as desired.

Step 8:
- Enjoy all you can eat ice cream buffet.

Julien's favorite hot pot food item were the clams. He loved how they opened up when they were cooked.

Back-to-school orientation

 One of the main reasons we were so excited about the possibility of moving to Taiwan was that our boys would be able learn Chinese really well and gain a better understanding of the culture. With this goal, we began researching schools way before we even knew if Ben had the position or not. I envied my parents' position when they were in a similar situation a few decades ago: when I was a kid and my family had our expat assignment to France, it was an easy decision for my parents to put us in French public schools--there was no other option in our small town. After researching the options and receiving many answers to our prayers through help to network and open up doors, we were blessed with being able to enroll Ryley at a private bilingual Taiwanese school called "Wagor." Back in Utah, Ryley already had one year of Chinese/English dual-immersion school under his belt and this would be a similar situation--only flipped, with English as a second language instead of Chinese. To make sure that Ryley's Chinese foundation is strong enough and that he won't be too overwhelmed, he's going to stay in 1st grade again. We'll see how that goes.

 A week ago Saturday was 1st grade orientation. It was a wonderful icebreaker for both Ryley and me. We took a $3 taxi (have I mentioned how inexpensive they are?) together to his school and were able to walk into the classroom setting hand-in-hand. That definitely helped reduce anxieties. Most of the students already had their uniforms from summer camps. They are these preppy violet dress shirts with gray plaid shorts or skirts. Ryley's are ordered but won't arrive until later. Hopefully before the first day of school!

Ryley's homeroom teacher, "Teacher Stephanie", is his main ESL teacher who speaks very good English (obviously a job requirement). Out of the many 1st grade teachers, she was the willing soul who agreed to take on the extra burden of a foreign student with 2 foreign parents of non-Chinese speaking status. I could tell she felt the weight of the challenge. She is hopeful that a part-time 6th grade ESL teacher will be available to come tutor Ryley a few times per week and help him with homework and me with correspondence questions.

Part of the orientation included having a famous guest lecturer speak to the parents while the kids stayed in the classroom doing activities. He was apparently very funny. I clapped when everyone else did, but had a hard time laughing at the jokes I didn't understand :)

I did actually have the good fortune of meeting another American/Taiwanese family at our church the week prior and it turns out their daughter is going into 1st grade at Wagor too (but different teacher). Adam sat next to me at the assembly and did translate some. The parts I did get were very motivational. This gentleman works with troubled youth and helps them learn how to overcome adversity by learning how to unicycle--they do a trip around the entire island! His main message was emphasizing to parents to not force their children to conform to a specific mold (pressure to succeed at school exams, etc) and to help them focus on their strengths first and to build bridges to other things from there.


I think Ryley really enjoyed the orientation festivities. They went all out (based on their tuition rates, I think they have the resources for such things :) Ryely did have a moment of disillusionment, however, when their panda mascot took his head off to mop his river of sweat. I don't know how he managed not to pass out!

Our 1st dinner guests!

Our home feels officially like home--we've had our first friends over for dinner!

Andy (our relocation agent) and his secretary Joyce and her son "Batterie" joined us for dinner. We provided chopsticks to help them feel more at ease, but we didn't go very Asian with our menu. Why deprive them of a cultural experience? Andy seemed interested, or more precisely, baffled by the notion that we often opt out of having rice with our evening meals.

It was our first time meeting Joyce but we already loved her. She was the superwomen behind the scenes who helped get all the appointments that led to getting our sons into the schools we were hoping for. She was so cute too: at the end of the evening, she took an obvious step outside of her comfort zone with a hug offering (a very non-Taiwanese thing to do) but which she must have known American women do all the time. It was really a sweet gesture.  Funny how back on homeland cultural turf, however, it would have probably been a bit premature in our relationship for a hug :)