Nov 2nd: Ryley's 8th Bday!

I can't believe my baby is 8 years old! 

Following in his daddy's footsteps, Ryley spent hours researching online exactly which "spy car" he hoped to get for his birthday (taking into account all the reviews about battery life and other cool factors). Amazon Prime order and delivery to my mom, followed by her  awesome efforts to get our first care package mailed, a breeze through customs and this is the pure joy smile where its journey ended :) 

Ryley also received some wonderful gifts from grandparents, including some fun spending money.

The incredible part of Ryley's birthday is that he was able to get baptized a member of our church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) that evening. Again, I can't believe how old he is!

There was an incredible amount of support from our little English-speaking congregation as well as from family back in the States. I managed to figure out how to get Google Hangouts to work to allow grandparents, aunts, uncles and some cousins to join in by internet video call. Both of Ryley's grandmothers gave talks at Ryley's baptism with a microphone held up to the computer and with Ryley in their view. It was sad to not have them be able to be here in person,
but so awesome to still have them participate!

 

Andy came!

 

 

 

This is Theo's nursery teacher who is every striving to win the lad over. She usually sits with us during Sacrament meeting and tried to buy his love, one craisin at a time :) 

 

 

Taichung Jazz Festival

Since before we moved here and I had just started my research on Taichung City, I have been looking forward to their annual Jazz Festival! It happens around the last couple of weeks of October every year and it extremely popular. Taichung area is a big producer of saxophones, so maybe that started it all. In any case, it provided the little nudge we needed to get out into the night life scene! 

We took our first bus ride as a family. We hopped on a bus just right outside of our apartment building, stood sardine-style and enjoyed being a public spectacle for a short ride, managed to squeeze our way to the door at (what we hoped to be) the right spot, and successfully got every family member and stroller off that moving mass of bodies on wheels!

We then took a little stroll over pedestrian bridges and "sidewalks." 

And hooked up with our good friends.

We found amazingly close seats to the stage (yes, the sea of people extends way, way back). 

Our time at the concert mainly included food procuring and potty runs...

...a little chitchat with some more friends as we listened to the music, 

and then Bobo told us it was time to head home.

Indeed.

Drastic Measures

It has come to this. I can no longer justify my lack of motivation to get up and get things done. Ben has always had an incredible source of self-torturing ability motivation for early-morning endeavors. Since moving here he has taken up jogging the streets of Taichung in the wee hours of the morning. He's getting his sense of direction that way and memorizing the Chinese characters on the street signs. Noble efforts. Not that I'm a competitive person (in the least), but I'm going to try and match his stamina...

...blog catch-up time, here I come!

Parent Messaging Group

Way back towards the beginning of the school year, I attended Ryley's class parent meeting. It wasn't the meet-everyone-and-bond time that I had hoped it would be (at that point we had been in Taiwan for about 6 weeks and I was still feeling pretty desperate for acceptance) but it did prove its worth: I got on a list to be added to the parent "Line" messaging group.

With my acceptance to this phone app invite, I entered into a world of messaging like I'd never known! This group mass texts each other anywhere from 20 to 200 messages per day (especially when there is a parent council project such as Halloween classroom decorations)! My phone turned into a "bling-a-ding-ding" alert fest and I just learned to ignore it. I was tempted to "un-invite" myself from the group on several occasions, but then I saw one other parent do so and noticed that a message popped up saying that she had withdrawn from the group. I knew that would be very bad for my international relations, so I decided to stick with it.

Most of the time I get a notion of what is being discussed based on the crazy use of stickers and it would amuse me to make up stories in my mind of what was being discussed.

The real gem happened, however, when there was an open house, which I wasn't able to attend due to Theo, and some of the parents took photos of the kids and posted them. I made my first post--in English of course--thanking them for the photos. In response there was an onslaught of photos and videos sent!

At one point the photo below was posted so I responded to the sender directly, asking if that was her son in the photo.

I screen captured our little exchange and was tickled pink by it :)

Spaghetti with Squidballs

Tonight for dinner I made spaghetti with meatballs squidballs!
The kids loved it :)

Before anyone gets too impressed, here's the CostCo bag of frozen squid balls...

...that I marinated in the crock-pot for a few hours.

And topped with jarred tomato and basil marinara sauce.
But I'll still humbly accept a few points to be added to my "successful adaptation" tally. 

 

We finished of the meal with a new fruit that's in season: green oranges.

 

Lost and then Found

Today I managed to lose my wallet--with the boys' and my Taiwan resident cards, a credit card, both a US and Taiwanese bank debit card, our CostCo card, a local library card, my official proof-that-I'm-Ryley's-mother-and-can-check-him-out-of-school card, 2 local grocery stores' reward cards, my temple recommend, a couple important name cards that I keep on me as reference for when I need help, and about the equivalent of $30. 


Thinking about the logistics of replacing everything had me in a panic. Life is complicated enough here without having to figure out communication channels and reapplication processes for all of those things! I was just so mad at myself and my negligence in having placed my wallet half-shoved in Theo's stroller pouch. 
After having double checked my apartment lobby and Julien's school (including going to his classroom and looking in his bag), I knew it had to have fallen out en route. 

Still in possession of my phone (thank goodness) I typed in a few key Google translate phrases "I lost my wallet. It is black. If someone finds it please call me," and started retracing my morning walk from Ryley's bus stop to Julien's school. I let my phone tell my sad predicament to my beetle nut selling friend, to the OK Mart cashier, and then to the lady at the corner car rental shop. It was here that I was given the full help-unfortunate-foreigner treatment. 

The lady didn't speak any English but her adult son did, so after she was already on the phone doing her best to solve my problems, he informed me that she was calling the police and that they would be there soon. "Nooooo!," I thought. I didn't need that! My efforts to express my concern about not needing the police involved only led to his reassurance that they would be there in no more than 10 minutes--because "they are very fast to come in Taiwan." He also reassured me that in Taiwan people are very happy to help. So true, so true. But at this point I just wanted to get home and go look up my account cancelation numbers. Too much help was actually a hinderance at this point. And what more could the police do anyway? My address was on my resident card should anyone be inclined to turn it in. 

After the police has been summoned, and knowing that I was concerned about putting a block on my accounts, car-rental lady called my Taiwan bank to let them know. Again very kind, but not having my passport # memorized, that effort quickly met a dead end. I tried to call Ben for our US card #'s, he wasn't reachable. I used my new google voice app to call my parents at home but our conversation kept getting cut off and they only got enough info to be concerned but unable to help.


Still waiting for the police, car-rental lady wanted to take me down the street to tell ALL the shop owners about the wallet. Could this get any more embarrassing?! I mutely followed her as everyone came out to discuss the problem. Whenever someone tried to direct a question to me it was quickly established that that was a fruitless effort and they would continue talking among themselves. I would nod when I heard the word "black," but that was about it. 

Soon someone indicated that the policeman was headed our way. I understood the question directed to him asking if he spoke any English. He answered in the negative. At this point son of car-rental lady was no longer with us; he had had to go to work. So we were all on our own: a group of shop owners, the police, Theo and I, and my iphone.

Luckily it had just turned 10 o'clock and my yoga friend who comes on Monday mornings made her usual call to let me know she was down in our garage and ready for me to come unlock the door. Her incoming call seemed like a life-line: since she speaks some Chinese I asked her (without much ceremony or explanation of my current predicament) if she could inform the police officer that my wallet had my resident card in it so whoever found it would know where to turn it in and that I just needed to get home to take care of my card cancelations. Lauren did her best (bless her heart), but upon conclusion of the phone call, the police still was indicating--with a couple of English words--that I needed to come down to the police station. Arggg. This was just getting worse!I looked in my phone contacts and realized I didn't have the # for my tutor who is so good at solving all my problems, but I did have the phone number for our relocation contact person up in Taipei. Good fortune was with me and I got a hold of her, explained my need to communicate with the police officer, and then handed off the phone. In the middle of their conversation there was some commotion half way up the street with some enthusiastic hand motioning. Someone had turned in the wallet! 

The crowd of shopkeepers escorted me up there and we all celebrated the find. Policeman left. I was instructed to wear my wallet on my person and not in the stroller--which I agreed was "bu hao" [not good] and immediately demonstrated my compliance--and only then did I realize that Theo had been kept happy by some gifts of a water bottle (now half dumped down his shirt) and some dried fruits with large pits (which were quickly confiscated). 

More smiles, gratitude nods, and thank you's and I was finally on my way. None of the cards were missing, but the cash was gone. Finders fee, I suppose. I still called to put blocks on my cards just in case. Several lessons learned. One of which being that I need to make sure and contact my fretting parents sooner than later to let them know all was well. My poor mother had to take Maalox after that whole ordeal!

Hosted a Halloween Party

The above photo shows the apartment's front desk's Halloween decorations. Halloween is becoming more marketed here the past 5 years or so (not the trick-or-treating, but rather there have been marketing efforts to get people to buy festive candy, decorations and little trinkets. The bilingual preschools and elementary schools also do crafts and have little parties. My tutor's explanation is that Taiwan makes all that stuff anyway and wanted a way to still get money for the surplus from exports.

Below you can see our one faithful Halloween decoration:
 giant spider who holds doomed super heroes in her clutches.

T'is the season of kid parties and so I decided to jump on the opportunity to work on some friendships. I set my plan for a low-key cookie decorating party with the only other foreign family who lives in our building (our Korean friends) and a family from our church, who both have kids who line up with Ryley and Julien. The kids played well and the 3 moms made the cookies together, a good activity which helped lessen our otherwise glaring communication limitations.
It was bonding :) 

I was able to get a hold of the ingredients I needed although I know I paid top Taiwanese dollar for the little 2 lb bag of "Gold Medal all-purpose flour" and little box of baking powder. I got them at the foreign/specialty food store in the basement of the mall close to our home. I was later told that I can find all purpose flour (and even bread flour) just fine at any regular grocery store. It's just that I wouldn't have known that's what it was until I learn the Chinese characters. So my ignorance handicap has quite the markup at this point. At least I'm fulfilling a certain target market that is making some business-minded person very happy!

I had to improvise a bit on the decorating materials, since no jarred frosting or food coloring is to be found. I made a glaze with powdered sugar (another over-priced item) with some passion fruit juice and milk. Yummy stuff. After the kids decorated the cookies, we took a plate to the apartment secretaries and cleaning crew who were about to have their lunch break. I don't know how weird that might have been for them, but hopefully the gesture was understood. 

Not 30 minutes after that cookie delivery, we reminded the apartment employees of just how much they deserved those cookies (and more) as we managed to get ourselves trapped up on the 32 floor as we were exploring with our friends. Here's a brief recap of that embarassing story:

Our elevator key is programmed to only lets us go to certain floors--common areas and the 9th floor where our apartment is. We recently discovered that we can also go to the 32nd floor and when we went up and peeked one day I noticed a bunch of signs on the doors leading to one knew where.

In my typical hesitant, risk-adverse approach to life, I told the kids we were going to wait to go through those doors once we knew what the information signs told us. Having an English-speaking Taiwanese friend with us today, we ventured up there and she said it basically said to make sure you closed the doors behind you and didn't let your dogs urinate or poo up there. Easy enough. We proceeded through the doors and found ourselves outside, on top of our building in a rather utilitarian space for hanging large bedding or  the likes to dry. It was safely guarded with high brick ledges that didn't allow for much view, but the kids enjoyed exploring for a few minutes then we intended to head back in…only to find the door locked with nowhere to scan my key or push a button.

We located an intercom button and I pointed out that my friend was the natural selection of the person to do the talking to explain our predicament seeing as how she spoke Chinese. Seeing no counter argument to that point, she tried to get clarification of how to get back in.

A long 5 to 7 minutes later, one of the secretaries had made her way up the correct elevator and to our rescue (there are several different towers in our building each with 2 sets of elavators which lead to separate lobbies and this elevator required quite the walk from the front desk) . She then showed us how to turn a knob to prevent the door from locking when we went out. Lesson learned. More cookies deserved!