Language lessons

Dave and I have been working on learning some basic Mandarin phrases in preparation for our trip. I have borrowed every resource available from the library. However, the best program I have found for learning the language on our own has been Fluenz. This is a software program, written with a business person or traveler in mind: the goal is to help you learn phrases and words that will help you the most when trying to communicate while traveling. To complement Fluenz and make sure we are saying the tones correctly, we found a Mandarin language tutor in our area who is originally from Taiwan. She has taught us phrases to help us order off the menu at restaurants, shop at night markets, buy train tickets and ride the subway, and also understand numbers and currency. The Fluenz program teaches some phrases that are more formal than what would be spoken in Taiwan, and having a language tutor from Taiwan has been helpful in learning these differences. Will we be fluent by the time we leave for Taiwan? No – definitely not. But we are more confident about our language skills and hope we can communicate with people in Taiwan on a basic level.

Pre-travel preparations

This post is intended for other adoptive families getting ready to travel. I thought I would write a little about what all we are doing in the weeks leading up to our trip. We leave in less than two weeks!

Our parents will be watching our other children while we are traveling, and we want to be reachable at all times. We looked into adding the international calling plan to our mobile phones, but I think our phones  lack the technology for international calling. And even if our phones did work overseas, the rate-per-minute was pretty high. So we have decided to rent a mobile phone through a company called Travelcell. We will pay a weekly rental rate, plus insurance. Incoming calls are free; outgoing are 99 cents/minute. So if our agency needs to reach us, or our kids at home just want to talk to us, we’re reachable, and at a reasonable rate.

The Travelcell phone will have a Taiwan phone number, so we have added an international calling package to our home phone. That’s $4.99/month, and the rates for calling Taiwan are 7-9 cents/minute. If we did not add that to our calling plan, we could end up paying $2-3 minute for calls from our home phone.

We plan to “skype” with our family and friends while we are traveling. Dave has configured our home computer with our television, so when we call home using skype, our computer screen will be on the TV and our kids will be able to talk to us on TV. Pretty cool, eh? We tried it out while I was standing in another room, and our son thought it was so funny to see his mommy on the TV screen! Hopefully it will work as well when we are in Taiwan.

We plan to use our netbook computer in Taiwan. That computer does not contain any sensitive personal information. But we still want to protect our computer from any potential hackers. So we have subscribed to use a VPN (virtual private network) while we are traveling. As Dave explained it to me (and if I understand it correctly), any information we send over the Internet will be encrypted and sent through a router in the United States.

We have started packing and I will post our itinerary soon!

Beware: Credit Card Foreign Transaction Fees

It’s been a few years since I have traveled abroad, but one thing I know to do is to call my credit card company to let them know of my travel plans ahead of time, lest I have a problem using my card overseas because the card company flags the transaction as possible fraud. I called last week and was surprised when the customer service representative told me there would be a 3% foreign transaction fee on any purchases I made with my card while traveling overseas. I asked if this was new, and he said it has been in place for the last two years – the last time I was abroad was more than two years ago, so it’s new to me. I calculated it out and 3% for a four-night hotel stay is about $20-25…not that much, but that’s money I can be spending on something else. I did look into a few other credit card options and found one that does not charge any foreign transaction fees – so now I am just waiting for my new card to arrive in the mail, hopefully next week.

Good stuff: Adoption reading

I wanted to recommend two good reading materials on adoption – one is an online article, the other is a book by Russell Moore called Adopted For Life. Both of them examine God’s role in adoption.

Russell Moore has adopted two boys from Russia and shares about his journey to bring them home in Adopted for Life. As Christians, God has adopted us into his family. Moore does an excellent job explaining the theology of adoption and God’s plan for orphans. I highly recommend this book.

Jennifer Newton Martin in her online article, Moses: The First Adoption, looks deeper into the Biblical story of Moses:

“I remember watching a DVD last year filled with interviews of children in Ethiopia who were awaiting adoption. Many of the children were still living with one or both parents, but were not being supported and nurtured in a healthy way. Many of the interviews included statements made by very apparently distraught mothers who had lost their husbands to AIDS, and a number of the women dying of AIDS themselves.

“It was heartbreaking but inspiring to witness these mothers make the same sacrifice that Moses’ mother made so long ago. These are men and women who understand that as hard as it is to part with their beloved children, the ultimate sacrifice must be made to ensure their safety and well being…” - Read the full article by clicking here.

Book Recommendation: “Taipei In A Day”

While researching hotels and travel in Taiwan, I stumbled across a website promoting a travel guide book, “Taipei In A Day”. I am so happy I found this book. It contains a tremendous amount of information on Taiwan, and goes beyond Taipei (despite what you may think from reading the title). The author centers most of his recommendations in the Taipei area but gives hotel advice and travel tips for the other major cities and destinations in Taiwan. I wish the book was organized a little differently – it starts with a five-day suggested itinerary for Taipei and surrounding areas, then goes to “Taiwan from A to Z”. The last section, “X, Y, & Z (Useful Information)”, provides some valuable cultural advice and personal experiences of the author. It is, hands-down, the best Taiwan travel guide I have seen…with much more detail and personality than the Lonely Planet Taiwan guide. If you are going to Taiwan, buy this book!

Our new travel toy: Netbook

Update 8/26/09: Our first netbook, the ASUS computer pictured below, was defective. I contacted the manufacturer and they told me a part was being ordered and they had no idea when it would arrive. Ironically, the part is in Taiwan…probably would have been easier for us to just pick it up when we get to Taiwan. It seems this netbook model is having a lot of technical issues, so we returned it for a refund. We have now purchased a netbook by Acer from Costco - so far, so good. Acer is based in Taiwan, too. So if we run into problems with the new netbook while we are traveling, maybe we should just swing by Acer’s headquarters?

We have planned all along to take our laptop with us to Taiwan. But we have changed our minds and have decided to leave it at home - instead, we are going to take this handy little netbook:

It looks like a standard laptop but it only weighs 2.8 pounds and is less than half the size of our laptop. It has a webcam so we will be able to “skype” with our family while traveling. It also has a slot for my camera’s memory card  and the battery life on this particular model is 10+ hours. The netbook cannot play DVDs or CDs but that is a feature we are willing to give up for the smaller size. Take a look at this photo below, which shows how big our laptop is compared to the netbook.

Shopping for travel necessities

I spent some quality time in Target yesterday with a shopping list of our travel necessities. I still need to pick up one or two more items, but we wanted to go ahead and buy most items now so we won’t be running around right before we leave. You will probably look at these photos and think we are going a bit overboard, but I would rather be prepared when we are in Taiwan. I didn’t have Charmin-t0-go on my list but thought it wouldn’t hurt to carry a little extra toilet paper with me just in case. . .LOL! I bought a few baby items but I plan to buy most of what we will need once we get to Taiwan. I also want to have enough room in our luggage to pack gifts and souvenirs for our return trip home and I found a 28-inch duffel bag at Target that folds up into a little tote bag – it should be just big enough for any extra packing room we need.