Getting ready to go home!

Good news! We have our son’s visa – AIT told us it would not be ready until Monday but we asked if there was any way we could pick it up today. They called us a little before 2pm and said we could get it today if we came before 3:30pm. Yippee! That means we can get a flight out on Saturday night rather than waiting until Monday. We miss our other kids so much and cannot wait to see them.

Today we had lunch at the infamous Din Tai Fung Restaurant. They are known for their dumplings and they did not disappoint. They were so busy we were seated at a table with three women on holiday from Hong Kong. (It seemed like a few other tables had people seated together that did not know each other.) They told us they love the dumplings so much they come there each time they visit Taiwan. We waited about 30 minutes to be seated. While waiting for a table, the hostess takes orders so when you finally are seated, your food is ready almost immediately. Very efficient service, and delicious!

Dining at Din Tai Fung

Before we leave tomorrow we hope to return to the Taiwan Handicraft Mart to buy a few souvenirs, and also visit the weekend Jade Market.

Dinner and stroller shopping in Tainan

With Amanda in Tainan

Dave and I met up with an online friend, Amanda, for dinner tonight in Tainan. Dinner was delicious…she ordered three Chinese dishes and we ate family-style for dinner. The food tasted more like Chinese food we are used to eating at home…all very delicious.

Our dinner at the DuDu Cafe

Strollers at RT Mart in Tainan

As many of you know, we are traveling light on this journey and hoped to buy many of the baby items we need while here in Taiwan. Amanda was kind enough a few weeks ago to visit a few stores and price the strollers for me. She found some strollers at RT Mart for about $30 USD. After dinner tonight, We went with Amanda to RT Mart to buy a stroller for our son – it’s just a basic umbrella-type stroller. We had also seen a couple of strollers at the Carrefour store in the Tienmu area of Taipei, for about the same price. There was a larger selection of strollers at this RT Mart, though. The cheapest stroller at SOGO Department Store in Taipei was about $100 USD, but they were much fancier than what we need.

Weather in Taiwan

This is the first morning we have woken up to rain since arriving in Taiwan. We have been blessed with beautiful, hot weather. The first two days, it was relatively pleasant and did not seem as hot as everyone had said it would be. I think that is because we are used to humidity from where we live, and there were quite a few clouds in the sky. On Friday and Saturday, we realized just how intense the sun is here – it’s okay in the shade but the heat from the sun just takes your breath away at times. I compare it to a hot, July day in south Florida. It’s fairly common to see people walking with umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun. The picture shows a temperature reading in Danshui yesterday: 32 degrees Celsuis = 89 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat index was 98 degrees Fahrenheit. It was hot!

Taipei: Day 2

The anti-jet lag diet seems to have worked – we have adjusted pretty quickly to the new time zone. Today, we bought our train tickets for our weekend trip to Hualien, shopped at the Chinese Handicraft Market, ventured to the top of the world’s tallest building – Taipei 101, and managed to survive the craziest cab ride ever (Dave was impressed with the speed in which we arrived back at the hotel; however, my knuckles are still white from gripping the door handle.) We are hoping to go to one of the night markets tonight. Here are a few pictures. . .enjoy!

Dave outside Taipei 101, world's tallest building

At the top of Taipei 101

The view from Taipei 101

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.

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.

Figuring out children’s clothing sizes

I spent last weekend organizing our kids’ dresser drawers, packing away clothes that are too small for our kids and pulling out clothes that I think will fit our little guy when he gets home. I found a helpful guide on eBay the other day and thought I would pass it along. I’m using the height and weight measurements we receive each month from our agency to guess our son’s clothing size. I wish I had found this guide earlier…I finally understand the difference between a size 4 and a size 4T. (Click here for the guide.)

On the adoption front, we’re still waiting to hear about our travel dates. Stay tuned!

‘A Well-Trained Mind’: Professional Storyteller Jim Weiss

We just returned from two days at a conference hosted by the authors of The Well-Trained Mind, a book about classical education at home. This week the authors, Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise, are releasing the latest edition of the book and celebrating its 10^th year in publication. I now have a better understanding of how the three stages of classical education fit together, as well as where my focus needs to be during the early years of teaching our children.

The biggest surprise at the conference, though, was meeting professional storyteller Jim Weiss. He was scheduled to host three or four of the sessions and I had not heard of him or his company, Greathall Productions. I had thought we could just skip his sessions if we needed a break or if we were bored – but his skill of telling classic stories and engaging his listeners was absolutely amazing. We bought three of his CD’s and we have played the first one for our daughter – I wasn’t sure whether it would have the same effect for her, since we were watching him act out the stories. But she laughed and seemed to enjoy the story as he altered his voice to match the characters in the story of The Tortoise and the Hare.

Jim Weiss has one of the most calming voices I have ever heard. His recordings are not meant to replace parent-child storytime. I think we will probably use his CD’s in the car as well as at bedtime, after our regular bedtime routine. His CD’s have sold in countries all over the world – all of the recordings are in English, but apparently the recordings sell well overseas because they are helpful in teaching English. I am looking forward to hearing more of the stories on his other CD’s.

Waiting is not so bad. . .sometimes

Waiting in line at the Starbucks drive-thru today, I placed my order and waited.  And waited.   When I finally drove up to the window after sitting behind a customer who must have had 20 questions about her order, the barista told me my drink would be free since I had to wait so long.  Wow.  That’s good customer service.  It’s on days like today I wish I had placed an order for a venti instead of just a short mocha.  It doesn’t matter though – I’ll still take the complimentary drink

The Sniffle Question

When it comes to sick children, I am all for parents keeping their kids home and away from others while they are contagious.  I’ll admit, when my child gets sick, I try to figure out who gave them the germs.  But we are in “sick season” and despite my best efforts (and my refusal to stay inside and away from people all winter), it’s virtually impossible to keep the germs away.

Both of our kids came down with a cold last week.  The first couple of days are always the hardest. . .when their noses run constantly and their sleeping is interrupted with coughing spells.  The kids were pretty much all better on Sunday but we decided to keep them home from church, just in case, plus if there are other germs lurking around, we want them to be healthy before they pick up anything else.

A couple of days later, the kids were pretty much back to normal.  So I decided it was okay to go ahead and put them back into a childcare class during one of my meetings.  Soon after I dropped them off, I was summoned to pick up one of my kids and take her home.  She was fine when I dropped her off.  But now, I am told, she had yellowish discharge coming from her nose.  Then I was told, it’s greenish-yellowish discharge.  Interesting. . .since my daughter has never had anything green coming from her nose – that would be cause for alarm.  I picked her up – she’s fine.  She was fine the rest of the day.  Occasionally she would ask for me to blow her nose, but she’s the type that asks before you even see anything coming from her nose.  I personally think the teachers that day were a little hyper-sensitive and over-reacted when they asked me to remove her from the classroom.  But I guess that’s their prerogative.

Then I found this article in the New York Times yesterday. . .it’s written by a doctor, on the topic of children too sick to be around others:

“The child with fever clearly needs to stay home, as does the child who is vomiting or is just plain miserable.

On the other hand, I do remember getting several calls from day-care directors or school nurses to inform me that although my child seemed happy and active, there was in fact a lurking fever — and I remember biting back the question, what kind of zealot takes the temperature of a happy, active child?

But of course, they were worrying about the other children. And that is a fair question with any child who is borderline sick: who is infectious, what’s the risk, and is there anything we can do to reduce it?” – Read the full article at The New York Times, February 9, 2009

So, moms and dads, any thoughts?   Should my children stay in hibernation all winter, just in case?