Settling In

We're all home now and doing very well. David seemed to have a rough time with jet lag, and for a few nights he was waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning and having a lot of trouble going back to sleep. But last night he went to sleep at 8pm and woke up at 7am - Yay! he was only awake for about 20 minutes during the middle of the night, but went back to sleep after we gave him a bottle.

Annabel and Margaret have been having a lot of fun with David, though I think they are sometimes a bit disappointed to realize just how young he is. Despite our best efforts to prepare them, they may have been expecting someone who could have been more a playmate right from the word go.

David is also adjusting to a whole new routine, with one nap in the afternoon - down from a morning and afternoon nap - and a whole new range of foods. At St. Lucy's he'd mostly eaten formula and rice cereal mixed with pumpkin or sweet potato paste. Now he's learning to eat noodles, soup, oatmeal, bananas, papaya. He's even had a bit of mac and cheese and some rice and beans - though he wasn't too into that.

He's learning to walk on grass - which I don't think he had many opportunities to do at St. Lucy's. This morning we spent a good 45 minutes just walking around the back yard and checking out the twigs, leaves, and mulch. We've been to the playground a few times, but it's usually just after he wakes up from his nap - and he seems to take a long time to wake up from them. Perhaps part of him still believes that he's being awakend from his night time sleep. So up to now he's been in sort of a daze at the park and hasn't been too into the swings or slides.

Grammy was very excited to meet David and thought he was a very sweet little kid. She did a fantastic job looking after the girls while we were gone and is already looking forward to her next visit.

On a separate note, the girls are doing super with their bikes. Annabel in particular has gone from being fairly shakey in her confidence to zooming around the little track at the playground with a big grin on her face.

The one big hurdle that we haven't yet overcome with poor David is the bath. He seems to be absolutely terrified of the tub and the water and has screamed his way through the baths we've given him. So we'll let him watch the girls bathe for the next couple of nights and clean him with a washcloth - just let him get used to the idea of bathing by watching them. Then try it again. We've heard from other people that their kids also screamed their way through baths for the first couple of weeks and then started to really love it. So we shall persevere and hope for the best.

Poor Linda has been having a rough time of it unfortunately. I don't think she ever fully got over the bug that landed her in the hospital in Taipei. That seems to have been compounded by jetlag and lack of sleep with David, plus a minor bout of her Meniers brought on by all the salt and MSG she ate in Taiwan. She's been taking sleeping pills the last couple of nights and is going on an ultra low salt diet for a few days, so hopefully she'll be able to kick this thing soon and start feeling better. Unfortunately, the next two weeks are going to be fairly rough for her anyway as her students finish up their courses and turn in their final projects to be graded.

We're Home & Last Day in Taipei

Well, after a very eventful last day in Taipei, we are very happily home! We'll post pictures later after we unpack and find all the appropriate cords, etc. We arrived home at 9:30 this morning and the girls were very, very happy to see us and there was lots of bouncing going on! They made a great sign with Grammy that said "Welcome Home Little Brother! and Mom and Dad". Now all is peaceful as David naps and the girls have quiet time. David has settled in immediately and is completely exhausted. We'll wake him up in a couple of hours and try to get him adjusted to our time zone as soon as possible. He did very, very well on all the flights and only got fussy towards the end of the second one.

Our last day in Taipei did not go as planned. . First, Josh set off for the AIT about 11 am when I put David down for his nap. He called at 12:30 to say that the visa said 'female' and he was sent away while they tried to fix it. He eventually got back to the hotel at 2 pm with a visa for a 'male'!

Meanwhile, David fortunately slept for the entire three hours because I was becoming a close and personal friend to the toilet in the hotel room. I couldn't stop vomiting. Josh came back and asked the front desk where the nearest doctor was. They sent us to the Taiwan National University Hospital Emergency Room. Not exactly on our list of must-see sights of Taipei. The doctor and nurse we saw were very understanding of our need to leave the hospital by 6:30 to get back to the hotel and pack and go to the airport. They hooked me up to an IV and tested my blood and gave me two different times of anti-vomit medicine. The second one worked and I puked for the last time in the taxi ride on the way back to the hotel.

While I was in the hospital, Josh had to run around town trying to change money to pay the hospital bill (we had very cleverly spent most of our Taiwanese money at this point!), finding food for David, going back to the hotel to get the stroller, etc.

Apparently it was something I ate - most likely some chicken at a coffee shop. So, is the moral of the story that I should have eaten pork?!

A Day in Taipei

Not much to say about today. We spent the morning at the American Institute of Taiwan (AIT) doing paperwork. We go back there tomorrow to pick up David’s passport and visa. We wandered around after that. Had lunch at a coffee shop and went to the handicraft market and bought lots of things! David is much heavier than we expected and my back was very sore after all the walking with him in the carrier so our next venture was to the Carrefour – a huge Target/Ikea like store. We bought a stroller (yeah!) but were less successful at buying some new clothes for David – a combination of him being much bigger than his measurements implied and a cold turn hitting Taipei means that we don’t have enough cold weather clothes that fit him. Josh is now back at the night market looking for clothes and eating all sorts of meaty treats without me! David and I ate some noodles, bananas and steamed buns in the hotel room. He is such a trooper. Barely cried again today despite the fact that we were doing very boring things and he was very tired. He goes to sleep really well – last night he fell asleep drinking his bottle (very bad for his teeth, we know, but two more days of orphanage habits won’t make a difference in the long run). At nap time today, we put him in his crib and he talked to himself for about 3 minutes and then fell asleep! Tonight he cried when I put him in his crib because he was enjoying playing and didn’t want to stop. But within 1 minute, he stopped crying and he fell asleep within 10 minutes. Hopefully this behavior lasts once we get home!

I happily discovered that our camera takes videos so you get to see David in action today. . We have lots more footage on our actual video camera but we don’t know how to get that onto the computer.

He continues to be very smiley and happy. He really likes the stacking cups we brought and gets delighted anew every time he discovers them. He charmed lots of people at the AIT this morning running around and smiling at them. We saw one another adoptive family there but didn’t have a chance to talk to them because they were standing in different lines.

We fly home tomorrow night – we leave Taipei at 11:30 pm and arrive in San Francisco at 7:30 pm on the same day! Then, we keep our fingers crossed that our AMERICAN AIRLINES flight to Chicago isn’t cancelled. We are very ready to be home with our girls again. Unless we’re very inspired we probably won’t write a blog entry before going to the airport but we’ll try to post after we’re home.

P.S. Back to the pork thing that I wrote about the other day – last night we ate dinner at the buffet in the hotel. I was delighted to find sushi (there’s a big Japanese influence in the food here) but subsequently shocked to discover that of the 3 different rolls they had, one had ham wrapped around the outside and another had a cube of ham on the inside. Really, pork in sushi????!!!

Saying Good-Bye

Wow! Today was quite a day – I’m not even sure where to start. We have David with us in our hotel room in Taipei – he is happily playing with stacking cups on the floor with Josh. I know he had toys at the orphanage but he still seems so entranced by even the simplest of toys. He was a real trooper today. He had a lot of good-byes and he knew something was up. He was not as happy to see us as he was yesterday and cried when his caretaker first left the room. But he warmed up to us over the 4 hours we were at the orphanage. When we left at 1:30 he was exhausted – he amazingly didn’t cry when we got in the taxi and he fell asleep in my lap looking out the window. He stayed sleeping through the train station, and through most of the train ride back to Taipei. When he woke up about 20 minutes from the end of the ride he was immediately entranced by all the other people on the train. He hasn’t cried yet since we left St. Lucy’s. It’s just amazing. We really thought he’d be sad when he woke up on the train, surrounded by strangers, in a new place, and without anyone from St. Lucy’s.

This photo is of Chien-Chien with the main caretaker. So, backing up. We got to St. Lucy’s at about 9:15. The translator came at 9:30, and we spent an hour or so asking questions and learning about his daily routine. At 11, the birth family arrived. The birthmother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were there. But they told us that the great-grandmother couldn’t come inside because she would be too emotional and it would be too upsetting. So, Chien-Chien was taken outside to say good bye to her without us there. Then the mother and grandmother came to meet us.

Miss Manners has not written the etiquette lesson about what to say to the 19 year old girl who is giving away her baby whom she clearly loves very much. She has visited him two times a month for the last 14 months. She had written us a letter which we had translated after she left – it asked us to look after Chien-Chien, love him lots, protect him from bullies, and make sure that he didn’t make friends with the wrong kind of people. She also said lots of this to us during the visit, and she wants us to tell him that there are lots of people in Taiwan who love him. We will be able to send her pictures and updates through St. Lucy’s and she asked us to do this every year on his birthday and on holidays.

We had brought her presents which we gave her (including a photobook of Indiana), but we had not thought to bring her a photo album of our family. So we gave her the ratty laminated photos that we had sent to Chien-Chien and a small wallet sized photo of all of us. She was really happy to get these. The grandmother didn’t say very much but just looked very sad. It was a really hard meeting – both the birthmother and I were crying. It’s just so sad that she will probably never be able to see her son again. She made the choice to have him adopted in America but the reality of that decision was obviously difficult. She gave Chien-Chien a very special diary in which she wrote him a very long letter. We will have to have this translated for him. He is a very lucky boy to come from such a loving family; she has given him a huge gift by writing him a letter to read when he’s older. (as an aside, while we’re very happy for Chien-Chien, this makes us so sad for Margaret who was adopted from China and has no knowledge of her birthfamily – the amount of info David has will not make her life any easier.)

Before we left St. Lucy’s, we were given a beautiful scrapbook with pictures from every month of his life and notes from the St. Lucy’s staff. We also got a CD with every photo they’ve ever taken of him, including lots of him with his birthmother and all the ones from today (along with ones of the great-grandmother who we didn’t get to meet).

As I wrote this, Josh was reading him a book and he was fascinated – for the first page or two anyway, after which he got bored and went back to playing with his other toys. He is such a happy child. We got to hear him laugh today for the first time when people were playing with him – he has a very sweet laugh.

As an aside, the St. Lucy’s staff dressed him in a shirt today with the number 68 on the back. He’s wearing it now. It’s an amazing coincidence, because for some reason that we still haven’t quite figured out the number 68 is currently Margaret’s favorite number. She’s always talking about how she’s going to eat 68 bites of something or play for 68 more minutes.

Tomorrow we have our visa appointment and then we’ll explore some more of Taipei and play with our baby boy.

Hi Everyone. This is Linda writing this portion of the blog. Josh will pick up later and tell you all about our afternoon seeing the many sights of Tainan, but he’s out taking photos of temples right now!

We spent the morning with David again this morning. It’s hard to think of him as David though now – we’ve been calling him Chien-Chien along with the St. Lucy’s staff. He definitely remembered us today – and there’s no doubt that he’s going to be a daddy’s boy. He did not want to be held by me but I still got lots of smiles as we played together – he really liked playing peek-a-boo with Daddy’s baseball hat and looking out the window at the mopeds and bikes on the street! He also likes noisy toys – we have lots of those waiting for him at home. I think he’ll be totally overwhelmed though when he sees our basement, which is full of toys. He was perfectly happy today playing with just a couple of things for two hours.

He is a very cute and charming boy and it’s really clear how much the St. Lucy’s staff all cared for him. Today we got to basically hang out in a room with him for 2 hours. At one point, his caretaker came in and he immediately went to her and wanted her to hold him. But then the next time she came in, he went to Josh!

I have to say that he is much happier than I expected. We were told that he didn’t smile much and was a very serious boy. . . he smiled at both of us a number of times today. He cried twice – once when I scared him with a doll (bad mom!) and once when his rice cereal was too hot. Both times he calmed down extremely quickly. I think he’s destined to have a Mohawk for a while though – his hair is so thin it won’t stay flat on his head. We’ll either have to basically shave it all off or let him run around with it sticking up. Jessica, our main contact at St. Lucy’s, said a number of times today that she’s amazed at how well he’s doing with us. They had been showing him the pictures we mailed every day so I think he recognized us – especially Josh. My picture didn’t actually look a lot like me, but Josh’s photo clearly looked like him with his glasses and a non-changing hair style.

Tomorrow is the big day – we will go to St. Lucy’s at 9 am and stay through lunch. David’s birthmother will come at 11 to see him and meet us. I imagine that will be a very emotional visit but I’m really glad that we’ll get to meet her and she’ll get to meet us. Hopefully she’ll be happy with David’s placement. We have a number of questions we want to ask her including if there’s any significance to his name. We also have questions about his daily schedule, etc. that we’ll be able to ask the caretakers.

I can’t think of anything else to write about David, so on to my next topic -- food in Tainan. Last night we ventured out and walked around the part of Tainan near our hotel looking for a restaurant. We managed to pass a children’s clothing store on the way, which was handy, and we bought some bigger clothes for David and some new shoes – hopefully they’ll fit. We also bought some of the surfboard (rice) crackers that he likes to snack on. It’s such a globalized city – we passed a Puma store, an Adidas store, a Nike store, and a Birkenstock store! Then we found a restaurant that looked promising – I ordered shrimp noodle soup and Josh ordered some sort of pork noodle soup. I was very disappointed to discover that my shrimp were encased in pork. Since I don’t eat pork, I was feeling very frustrated at how hard it is to find things to eat here (it was partly our own fault – a friend had written out “I don’t eat pork or beef” in Chinese but we had left it in the hotel. Even that would only have helped so much since the restaurant we were in did not have a single item that didn’t contain pork). So, I ended up eating cold noodles from 7-11 in the hotel room.

But, this morning I decided I had to take action. Josh was telling me that I wasn’t being a very adventurous eater, which I felt was a little unfair since it’s hard to be adventurous when 99% of the food contains an ingredient that I don’t eat. Our friend (thanks Hai-Chu!) had also given us a list of vegetarian restaurants in Tainan. We showed it to our driver when he picked us up from St. Lucy’s – he happened to know the husband of the vice-manager of one of them and he called and got us a 20% discount on our lunch. The lunch was the most amazing thing I’ve ever had. It was a buffet with at least 150 different items – including 4 different kinds of vegetarian sashimi! They had a huge salad bar, a fruit bar, a sushi bar and other appetizers. Then they had 5 different soups. They had a stir fry bar – you could put things in a bowl and they would cook them for you. They had two bars of main dishes with pretty much nothing identifiable! They had 6 different kinds of ice-cream, 8 different cakes, and many other custard/pudding types of desserts. Even though it was a buffet, you could apparently also order things (even though there was no menu). The waitress brought us a couple of things to try, including a veggie version of a local sticky omelette - made with rice paste, sweet potato powder, and some mushrooms - and some cabbage with cheese on it. While not everything tasted good (I now know why stinky tofu is called stinky), most of it was great. The majority of it was hard to identify – was it tofu, vegetable?? But it was very nice to know that none of it was pork! Anyway, whether you’re a vegetarian or not, I highly recommend this restaurant to anyone going to Tainan. If you go, give yourself at least a couple of hours to do it justice and have time between courses.

We basically hired Stephen, the taxi driver recommended to us by others, for the entire day. He took us to St. Lucy’s in the morning, then to lunch, and then on a tour of Tainan in the afternoon. His English is very good and he did a great job taking us to different places and explaining what they were (although we did consult the Lonely Planet guide a couple of times when we weren’t clear exactly what we were seeing!). The very coolest thing we saw was an old salt factory that had been consumed by banyan trees. Since Josh is a much better history buff then I, I’ll let him take over the writing now. . .

We made six stops during the afternoon. The first part of our tour took place in a district of Tainan county called Anping, which was right on the coast. This was one of the earliest settled parts of Taiwan. We drove down a street that was called the first street in Taiwan and then visited the Golden Eternal Fortress, which was built in the 1870’s to shore up Taiwan’s defenses against the Japanese. We were able to walk to walls, which had been extensively planted with flowers, and look at the cannons.

Our next stop was the Anping Tree House, which Linda mentioned above. As she said, it was an old salt warehouse that over time was completely consumed by banyan trees. The roots grew all up and down the walls, covered the roof, and grew in the middle of the floor. They had metal walkways built up over the roof so that you could walk among the banyan trees and look at the roots snaking their way across the roof.

Then it was on to Anping Fortress, where we were able to climb a tall tower for a great view of Tainan. In just a one small section of the city directly in front of the fort we counted at least six colorful temples, and those were just the ones that were large enough for us to see. The fortress had a gift shop, and that was actually the first time so far on the trip that we had found any souvenirs. So we went a little crazy, buying gifts to give to David as he gets older. I also bought three cookbooks of Tainanese dishes.

After that, we returned to downtown Tainan and visited the Chihkan Towers, which started out as a fortress built by the Dutch and were later occupied by many different governments. Now it is a temple to two different gods of education and literature. Many students go there to seek blessings on their examinations. They have little boards where the students can write their names and what they hope to do well on and hang them on a prayer wall.

The Confucius Temple occupies a tree filled park. Inside the park is the largest banyan tree in Tainan – it towered over us and shaded a huge section of the park. Our guide, Stephen, told us about how he had taken part in ceremonies to celebrate the life of Confucius when he was a boy – they hold celebrations at the Temple every September.

Our last stop was a Koxinga’s Shrine. Koxinga was a Ming Dynasty general who was sent into exile when the Ming dynasty collapsed. He led 30,000 mainland Chinese to Taiwan to overthrow the Dutch occupiers. Koxinga died a few months later, but many of his followers stayed and more soon followed suit, establishing a strong Chinese presence in Taiwan.

Next to the shrine was a beautiful park with a curved stone bridge and beautiful fountains.

On the way back to the hotel we passed lots of preparations for a celebration to take place this weekend for the Jade Emperor, the main Taoist god. There were numerous stages set up along the street and plays or re-enactments seemed to be taking place on them. We think that this upcoming celebration might be the reason for nightly fireworks that we’ve been hearing. It seems like fireworks must be a pretty common thing here, because when a huge display goes off most people don’t seem to bat an eye or even look up even though they’re much louder than at home.

After returning to the hotel I went to check out a local temple – one of at least three within a 30 second walk from the hotel. It was a tiny affair, but the woman who worked there was kind enough to sell me some incense and then help walk me through the complex procession – I went to at least a dozen different stations, each with statues of different gods, and at each one I said a little prayer for David’s health and happiness and was then instructed to leave either 1 or 3 sticks of incense in an ash filled container in front of that diety. Outside the temple was an oven where people went to burn stacks of yellow lucky money that they had purchased from the temple.

Arriving in Tainan and Meeting David

This morning we tried breakfast outside the hotel. Linda got what she thought was a chocolate pastry, but turned out to be something else, and strawberry yogurt which had lumps of something in it that were definitely not strawberries. I got what can only be described as an omelet in a bag. They took a crepe, cooked an omelet on top of it, added some vegetables and a strip of bacon, then chopped it up and placed it in a bag. It was quite tasty, especially when eaten with sweet chili sauce. We also picked up donuts from the Dunkin Donuts located right next to the hotel. (The other stores next to our hotel in Taipei include Starbucks, Cold Stone Creamery and Seven Eleven!)

After checking out, we traveled to Tainan by high speed rail. The experience was the complete opposite of Amtrak. We left right on time and actually arrived a few minutes early, and there were absolutely no delays. The train went very fast, and each stop only lasted a minute or two. The funniest part of the ride was the three monks who walked on the train with their cell phones and Starbucks cups.

One thing that really struck us as we looked out the window was that from Taipei to Tainan, which covers almost the entire length of the country, there was basically no break in population. There were some places that were clearly more populated than others, but there was no real stretch of uninhabited land. Taiwan is supposed to be one of the most densely populated countries on the planet, and I think that must be doubly true because so far as I can tell one half of the country is absolutely jam packed with people, and then as soon as you get to the mountains and the southeastern coast the rest of the country is only sparsely inhabited.

There also seemed to be very little land that was either undeveloped or not under agricultural production. Every spare piece of land along the railway line was planted with rice, vegetables, fruit trees, or some other crop. Most of the people seem to live in high rise apartment buildings, and the few houses we saw seemed to have vegetable gardens in them.

We were met at the train station by a taxi driver named Steven. He came recommended to us by some other folks who adopted from St. Lucy’s. The orphanage is apparently very hard to find and he both knows where it is and speaks some English. Steven brought us to our hotel, which is right in downtown Tainan. It’s interesting, our room is on the 10th floor, but we have a little balcony and when we open the window there’s so much noise coming from outside that it feels like we’re on the ground floor – construction, traffic, music, and loudspeakers.

Our guidebook listed one restaurant in town that expressly does not put MSG in their food, and since Linda has trouble with MSG we decided to give it a try for lunch. No one there spoke English and we didn’t really understand their menu, so it was an interesting experience. We each took a plate and picked out some raw foods that we wanted to eat – vegetables, mushrooms, tofu, fish, meat. Then they cooked it up in a special broth along with a bowl of nicely spiced noodles. I apparently picked some items that did not go well together and ended up getting three dishes because they didn’t think that some of the things I had picked should be included in my stir fry. Anyway, it was all pretty tasty – though Linda couldn’t have their signature sauce on her dish since it was made with pork. So her food was a bit on the bland side.

After lunch, Steven picked us up again and drove us to St. Lucy’s, which is located down a series of very narrow little alleys. Inside their little compound it was very quiet and peaceful. They have a two story building set up around a garden courtyard with fruit trees and flowers, and there are a lot of open walkways. They have three nurseries, one for the youngest babies up to three months old and two for the older children. David is apparently the oldest child they have there.

When we got there, we were greeted by Jessica, who speaks excellent English. She showed us around and told us a little bit about David. He was still napping at the time, but we were able to get a peek at him and he is huge, much bigger than we were expecting from the measurements we were given.

Eventually he woke up and we were able to spend some time visiting with him. He never cried, which was a very good sign. We’d sent them a set of photographs of us and they have apparently been showing them to him every day. At first he was a bit shy, though that might have been because he was still waking up, but after a time he let us hold his hand, and then he even let us hold him. We took him for a walk all around the grounds, and were even alone with him for a while. He’s already a good walker, and was able to go around with us holding our hand and even walk on his own. He seemed especially fascinated by the stairs, and really wanted to go up them.

We were both able to spend time holding him and walking with him, though he does seem to be partial to his dad! He seems like a very serious little guy, but we did manage to get a few smiles out of him. He’s definitely a cute kid, but I think we’re going to have to go clothes shopping tonight or tomorrow because I’m afraid he may be too big for many of the clothes that I brought. His hair is also very funny. It’s quite thin, and most of it just sticks straight up.

Anyway, we had a good time hanging out with him and will go for another visit tomorrow morning. We should be able to help feed him then. It seems like an extremely friendly place. There were many caregivers and social workers around and they all knew him. As we walked, everyone was always calling out his name, waving to him, or coming up to hold him, so we know that he has been very well loved.

Jessica told us that his birth mother comes to visit him sometimes, and we will have the chance to meet with her on Wednesday. I expect that will be difficult for everyone, but it will also be an enormously important meeting. We need to know who she is so that we can tell David about her as he grows older.

Tonight we’ll go explore a nearby night market and also see if we can’t get a few more clothes for David as well as a pair of shoes – he looked like he was about to burst out of the ones he had on today. They also had some rice crackers that he seemed to really enjoy, so we’ll try and find a couple of boxes of those to bring with us.

First Day in Taiwan

We arrived in Taipei early this morning and took a taxi from the airport to our hotel, which is right in the heart of the city across the street from the Main Train Station. One of the interesting things that we noted on the way into town from the airport was the proliferation of trees and green space. Long sections of the road in from the airport were made up of forested mountains. We also drove past many tiny little farms and rice paddies right on the outskirts of Taipei. It was odd to be gazing at rice paddies with factories and apartment buildings right in the background.

We had breakfast at the hotel, which was very reminiscent of our experience in China. The buffet was massive and seemed to cater to all different tastes. There was Chinese congee or rice porridge with a wide range of toppings, miso soup, braised tofu, smoked mackerel, eggs, bacon, French toast, pastries, cold cuts and cheese, and fresh fruit.

Having fortified our stomachs, we headed outside to have a look around, and discovered that the area around the hotel is like one giant restaurant. All the sidewalks are covered with concrete awnings to protect you from the sun and rain – which was good since even at 9:00 in the morning it was probably 80 degrees. As we walked along we passed countless stalls selling fried dough, noodles, omelets, and a dizzying array of other options, and almost every single one of them seemed to be packed with people.

After a short walk, we made our way to the train station and navigated the subway system to get to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. CKS, also known as the Generalissimo, was basically the father of modern Taiwan. He was the leader of the nationalist party in China. After losing the civil war there to Chairman Mao on the communist party he led more than a million of his followers in a retreat to the island of Taiwan, where he established a military dictatorship that essentially lasted until the 1980’s, and continued to assert that his government was the true government over the whole of China.

To get to the memorial, we had to pass through a small wooded park where a large number of people were practicing Tai Chi in among the trees. Leaving the park, we entered a massive open square with the Memorial at one end, and a huge theater and concert hall at the other. It felt in many ways like a somewhat smaller version of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The Memorial itself was quite reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial – an open faced building with a larger than life statue of the Generalissimo seated in a straight backed chair.

Feeling temporarily defeated by the heat and jet lag, Linda came back to the hotel to rest while I went out to explore some more of the area around the hotel. After a bit of searching, I managed to find a bookstore. Not surprisingly, almost all of the books were in Chinese, including a truly gigantic selection of computer manuals. But one of the clerks did speak a little bit of English and helped point me towards a couple of English language volumes on Taiwanese culture and the experiences of Expats living in Taipei. I also found a music store and picked up a few random CDs by Taiwanese or Chinese rock bands.

After resting for a while myself, I did my best to rouse Linda, who was still crashed out on the bed, and then went out to do some more exploring. I rode the subway for a few stops and then walked in search of the Dihua Market. I never did find it, but did find a whole lot of interesting stores to poke around in. Many of the shops in that section of town seemed to specialize in dry goods, literally, so the sidewalk displays were made up of stacks on dried berries, mushrooms, flowers, roots, seeds, nuts, and other less identifiable items.

I also came across the Xia Hua City of God Temple, which was a tiny little temple on a back street. The walls and roof were decked out in colorful murals, and there was a long stream of people who kept coming in to burn incense and pray. Eventually, after watching the crowds for a while, I made my way up to the front and put a few sticks of incense as well. A very kind woman saw me looking confused, unsure what to do with my incense now that I had it, and helped show me the ropes. Apparently, this particular temple, which she said was some 2,000 years old, is particularly popular with young people in search of a boyfriend or girlfriend. They go there to pray for looking in their search. But, other people also use the temple to pray for happiness and good luck in their families, safety from evil, and general all around well being. So I lit my incense and said a few prayers for David, hoping that he will be healthy and happy as he joins our family. Then I burned the incense in a large fire pit at the front of the temple and sampled some of their “blessed tea”, which was a sweet concoction of cherries, wolfberries, and sugar.

In the evening, Linda and I both went to the Shilin Night Market. Night markets are apparently very popular in Taipei, and Shilin is the biggest one. It was a real fairground atmosphere, with carnival games and vast numbers of food vendors. I ate something called bun in a bun, which was basically some sort of deep fried dough, crushed up, topped with peanuts, and wrapped in a crepe. It sounds strange, but turned out to actually be pretty tasty. Then we braved the crush of people to walk down one of the streets where small vendors were hawking their wares. It really was wall to wall people, and we were packed in pretty tightly, but it was fun to check out what they were selling – and it really was a bit of everything. There were shoes stores, belts, t-shirts, flip flops, make-up, jewelry, dresses, men’s clothing, lingerie, toys and more, all being sold by people who were shouting into loudspeakers and microphones to get attention.

There were also a huge number of people selling snacks from small carts. We saw grilled bird’s eggs, crab, all kinds of seafood, grilled dough, various iced concoctions, and many other foods that I don’t even know how to describe.

We’re back at the hotel now, and will head to Tainan in the morning. We’ll leave from the Main Train Station across the street, and travel all the way to the southern tip of Taiwan by high speed rail – the whole trip will take less than 2 hours. We’ve already arranged with a taxi driver to bring us to the hotel and then take us from there to St. Lucy’s – where we will have the chance to meet David for the first time! So by the time we write again we should be able to tell you bit more about him. Wish us luck!

We're Here

After over 24 hours of travel, we made it to Taipei and have checked in to the hotel which has a great shower! We're both now clean and hungry (and tired but we won't think about that since it's 8 am here!). The flights were uneventful.

We Leave Tomorrow!

Tomorrow's the big day. I leave bright and early at 6 am - driving to Chicago with grad students for a meeting. I'm thinking it might be a little hard to concentrate on work all day but I'll have to do my best! Josh will drive up at a more reasonable hour. I'm going to get the train from downtown at 3 pm and meet him at O'Hare. Our flight to San Francisco leaves at 6:30.

The girls are excited that Grammy is here and looking forward to all the fun things they'll do with her while we're gone.

We'll post again from Taipei after we get ourselves oriented.

Great Video

Another family adopting from the same orphanage as us has created an amazing music video of their wait for their daughter Lucy. They have been waiting for 6 months to get court approval after accepting their referral. Did I mention we were extraordinarily lucky to get approved so quickly?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg2nnlbYpjQ&eurl=http://taiwanlucy.blogspot.com/

Just scrolled through all the yahoogroups dealing with Taiwan adoptions -- it makes me feel very unprepared to travel. We were very organized with webcams and Skype 2 years ago when Josh went to get Margaret - and then he couldn't get it to work from China. So we haven't even thought about it for this trip and we gave away our second webcam so can't do it. . . I'm not sure it would help the girls to see us on the computer though since we're only gone for a week and the time difference makes it hard to actually connect at useful times.

On a more positive note, I did learn that the hotel we're staying in in Taipei is a popular one and people really like it and it's in a great location. Two more days now until we leave. . .

Our Last Weekend as a Family of Four

We had a good weekend together spending lots of quality time as a family before Josh and I travel to get David. Saturday we assembled the girls' new trampoline, went swimming, read books, and just hung out. Sunday the girls played on the trampoline, rode their bikes, and we went to Chuck E Cheese!



Margaret (left) is much faster than Annabel (above) on her bike but Annabel is determined to get faster!

Not much other news to report. Josh's mom arrives on Wednesday and then we leave friday! Not long now. . .

Waiting and Waiting

It's hard to believe that we leave in 10 days. After the initial excitement of learning we were traveling so soon, we've settled back down into a somewhat normal schedule. Josh is incredibly organized and is taking care of all sorts of little details for the trip - like getting travelers' checks, starting to pack, and cooking lots of food for the freezer.

I have dangerously started to read The Lonely Planet guide and now want to skip the cities all together and spend our week in the forest. Taiwan is an incredibly beautiful country with lots of natural resource amenities. I know Josh is looking forward to the thrill of being in the cities and soaking up the culture, though, so I'll put aside my dreams of hanging out in the woods.

The girls enjoyed dressing up for Easter and looking for eggs. . we managed to have some tolerable weather to be outside hunting for them. But we did get a sprinkle of snow later in the day. This winter seems unending. The girls have also been enjoying riding their new bikes - they're amazingly good at it already and seem to enjoy the challenge of staying upright going over our very bumpy sidewalks! We need to get some photos of them on their bikes but for now you'll have to settle for easter smiles. . .

Our Adoption Timeline

I know other adoptive families are always curious about how long it took --

So here's what we recollect. We didn't keep very good track of dates so this is just from memory:

We decided in Summer of 2007 to adopt again. We submitted our application to Journeys of the Heart in July and immediately initiated home study activities. Since we'd adopted before and we worked with the same home study agency, we were somewhat expedited. We didn't have to meet with a social worker as often as first-time adopters.

It took a couple of months to get the home study done including all the police checks, pet vacinnations and other random things that the state of Indiana requires (proof of pet vacinnations was a new one for us from last time!). Then, it took JOH and our home study agency a few weeks to agree on the text of the home study before it could be finalized.

Meanwhile, we worked on putting together a set of family and house photos to send to JOH. (There is way much less paperwork for a Taiwanese adoption than a Chinese adoption - this was very nice).

So, our home study was finalized and sent to JOH at the end of September (Sept 28). At this point we were officially on the waiting list but we didn't know what this would entail. So in early October, Josh called to ask how long we should expect the wait for a referral to be. He was told that there was actually a file on their desk with some special circumstances and it wasn't in the normal referral queue. We won't go into those circumstances here, but, long story short, there were some odd medical issues even though it was not a special needs file.

We received the first emails with David's picture and medical info on October 16. Our doctor at Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis had a number of questions that she wanted answers to before she felt comfortable giving us an assessment. It took St. Lucy's quite a while to answer the questions -- finally we got answers on November 27 and accepted the referral on November 28. In our hearts, David was already our son from the first time we saw his picture and I don't think it would have mattered what the doctor recommended but we waited for more information just so we at least knew what we were getting ourselves into. Turns out after all the waiting, it doesn't appear that there's anything troubling about his health.

The referral was logged into the Taiwanese court system on December 25.

The first court ruling came through on February 18 (quite a bit sooner than expected!) and we received the final court ruling last week - March 11.

And so here we are. We were told it would be 4-6 months before we traveled after we accepted our referral. We expected to be at the longer end of the timeframe, and find ourselves very much on the short end of it.

Less Than 3 Weeks!!

We just learned today that we'll get to spend time with David on April 7th and 8th before he's officially placed with us on the 9th! So it's now less than 3 weeks until we meet him and hold him! We have to go to St. Lucy's after 2:30 on the 7th to meet him. This is great news as it will hopefully give him a chance to get to bond with us a little bit before we take him away. And it means we get to meet him 2 days early! Yeah!!

Everything else for the trip seems to be shaping up. We have hotel reservations in Taipei but still need to make them for Tainan. We were going to stay at a cheap YMCA type hotel near the orphanage but we just got word that St. Lucy's recommends we not stay there because of mosquitoes and because it might be hard to find food. Not sure what this really means but it seems best to listen to the advice we're given and keep everyone happy.

We went to Toys R Us over the weekend and bought more toys for David. We still had some baby toys left over from Annabel but we couldn't resist buying some new things. Some of the new toys are small and we'll take them with us for him to play with when we're in Taiwan. We also bought the girls lots of things - new leapster games and new bikes (their tricycles were getting too small). We enjoy spoiling them too much and they're now old enough that it's becoming a problem. . . they won't get the leapster games until we leave. They have the bikes already and took their first spin around the block today. They both predictably fell even with the training wheels, but that's what helmets are for!

After months of waiting it's now getting so real. . lots to finish up here before we can leave. I (Linda) have a huge pile of tasks on my desk and my 'to do' list seems to be getting longer not shorter every day. Josh is trying to finish writing the draft of his second book and get his first book in decent shape to send to people to review while we're traveling. And we're trying to spend lots of time with the girls. Margaret had surgery last week on her cleft palate so we're also spending time thinking of new and inventive 'soft foods' she can eat and keeping our fingers crossed that everything's healing well.

New Pictures

We got new pictures of David yesterday. . . .

We also finally confirmed out plane tickets -- we were hoping to fly on Eva Deluxe but there were no seats available so we're flying on Economy. It will be a fun cramped time!

Introduction

We received final approval to travel to Taiwan this week! Now we're busy booking plane tickets and finding hotels to stay in. We'll be leaving April 4 from Chicago and probably flying through San Francisco to Taipei. We'll arrive in Taipei the morning of April 6 and will spend that day seeing Taipei. We'll then take the high-speed train to Tainan on the 7th. We will officially be united with David Yueh-Chien on the 9th, but we're hoping we can visit the St. Lucy's orphanage on both the 7th and 8th to meet with him. We hear that he is very scared of strangers and so we want him to get to know us a little before we suddently take him away from the only world he's ever known. We'll travel back to Taipei on the 9th for a consulate appointment on the 10th. We will return to the U.S. on the 12th.

We will post here periodically before we travel to give us some practice! And we'll post here as much as possible from Taiwan to keep everyone posted on our journey.

You can click to see a short video of David from last December.