Went to the post office today, it costs 28 NT dollars to mail a letter to the US. I mailed some thank you notes and some address changes, nothing interesting. Also bumped into Fran and Kay Dee at the RT mart, helped them find a lighter for their oven. I do all my errands with the V-man on my back, I feel like a mule at times. A lot of other people end up staring at me and my contraption, but I feel quite mobile and agile. My thumb is killing me these days, I twisted it when Vince was 2-3 months old and it hasn’t healed yet. It gets better, the more Jeremy is around, since he can carry Vince more, but when I’m by myself, I reinjure it all the time so today it was even painful opening up the mail. I hear from the Strickers that Emy is un-telephonable these days, I hope she is doing well.


What a big day! Today Vincent ate his first real non-milk food! Well he has had some crackers and a good bit of paper, but never babyfood sweet potatoes. Backing up a moment, we went today to buy a baby seat for the dining table. He is starting to it up more reliably recently, and we have had some luck with baby seats in restaurants, so we decided now was the time. While we were downtown, we also got chops made for the three of us. When we got home we did a little shopping and settled on some sweet potatoes for Vincent’s big meal (we had chicken, vegtables and rice).

I was really quite grumpy today. I think some days I do really well, other days I wonder why I’m here. So we finally got softer beds! Woo hoo! I can’t belive it. We also got more dressers and another shelf unit. I found out later from Helen that Ms. Liu hasn’t charged AMD for the extra furniture. Gotta fix that tomorrow. Droopy, Leah and Ms. Liu came over for the delivery and we played and played, Leah held the sleeping Vince in her arms while I rushed to fix the beds and such. For lunch, we went to the drivers license office and got Taiwan licenses. Then in the afternoon, we chased away the ghosts from the front of the house. Helen, Ms. Liu, Leah, Droopy and I all went to the front of our building and I put out a watermelon, kiwis, and mangos. I speared them with the sticks of incense and waited until they burned halfway down. Then we went over to the big flaming kettles and threw the incense in and followed it with paper money. Helen then took me to the fish market and the fish there looked so good. Yum! We went out to dinner with Sei-ping and Man fai and checked out the movie rental place nearby. Jeremy got his huge phone today, it’s really quite funny.

Yeager – sad news

So we got bad news from Emily on Wed. The Yeager-meister has cancer. It sounds like he has bone cancer that has spread to his heart and lungs. So Jeremy and I have decided not to bring him to Taiwan. Without knowing exactly how he is feeling, I just can’t bear the thought of him in quarintine for three weeks. Jeremy talked to Emy today and she is willing to be his nursing home. I was telling Jeremy that Emy is good at this kind of stuff, very clear-headed and calm, whereas I’d be a nervous wreck. I feel terrible for abandoning our furry feline in his time of need. That’s what really sucks about being so far away. So we got the news in the morning and Jeremy spoke with Emy today and it seems like Yeager is fine and in not too much pain. Which is a relief. I spent the morning after hearing the bad news at the Elephant Day care with Vince. He had his first taste of having a toy that he is playing with be taken away by another kid. He was quite unhappy. We went home at 10 am for a long nap, and I snacked during the day. Wed afternoon, I went to see Ms. Liu down at the realtor’s office, sat around for 1.5 hours shooting the breeze and playing with Droopy. It made me feel a little better. Everyone’s advice is to get another cat, but I want the Yeager-meister. Wed night, Vince was a bit upset because of his teeth, so I gave him a dose of Tylenol and he immediatly fell asleep at 8 pm for the night, which is unusual. Today, Thursday, we had a date with Kay Dee, Emily, Fran, and Grace to go to Taipei. I was originally thinking that we’d go see the “sea world” which seemed like fun, but I think that the Browns/Pellerins needed to do some more power shopping. I’m not sure what I really thought when they said that they needed to buy meat, it didn’t cross my mind as being unusual. But when we got there, I understood that this was no ordinary shopping trip. We loaded up van-fuls of stuff, salmon, steaks, chips ahoy, coloring books, cheerios, spaghetti sauce, chicken broth, etc! I really enjoyed hanging out with them, I’m really bummed that we don’t live closer. We went to Hola, B and Q and Costco. Whew. I’m beat. We also got a nice letter from our frient Cindy, who reported that Ruby and Monty are enjoying themselves.

I finally got up with Jeremy at 6:30 am. Was tough, Vince didn’t like it either. But I got all my morning chores done before 8 and so I walked over to the Elephant English school and spent a good part of the morning there. It’s really a lot of fun. I met the other english teacher who teaches upstairs to the older kids and watched them stand in a circle and sing and dance. Vince hit his head a number of times, once on the floor of the place and once in a crib while I was trying to lay him down. Ugh, it hurt for sure :). Then we went home and had some lunch and went to sleep together for about 2 hours! yipes. Then in the afternoon, I went to the RT mart and bought dinner, a chicken casserole, not too impressive this time and some delicious veggies. Then I went to the dry cleaners and then to the realtor’s office where I had a nice chat with Miss Liu. She’s a sweetie and with the kid and the dog, there is lots to talk about. Man Fai came over for dinner again and then we went and saw his apartment. We are about to get driver’s licenses and needed our pictures taken, so we went first to the RT mart, no luck. Then I remembered a photo place next to the dry cleaners and they take photos, we had fun, even took a family picture for the grandparents.

Today was our first working day at home. I’m trying to follow this website’s advice flylady.net to keep the house clean. We’ll see how it goes. I saw Droopy (our substitute Ruby) today and she was doing well. I also found some friends at the elephant english school. Met lots of little toddlers and it turns out that Vince and I are welcome anytime. That’s good. I went out and bought dinner and made meatloaf, which turned out pretty good. Man fai came over to eat, and we ended with a game of Trivial Pursuit.

wow, a day to relax. Spent the morning calling a lot of people in the US; my parents, Bob, Jasmine and Donald. Jasime sounded really good, she’s still teaching loads of AMDers. We just went shopping mostly. One trip to the RT Mart and one trip to the HomeBox. Both were quite successful. Jeremy and I are learning to call cabs; we’ve both had a few successful attempts, so I think we’ll be able to find our way around. For dinner, we had some delicious buns with pork and veggies stuffed into them. I think that Jeremy and I are getting a bit stressed out, sometimes we are a bit short with each other. Our apartment is coming together, we have the big pool right outside our window, it’s really nice to hear kids playing all day outside.

On Friday, we moved into our apartment. We said goodbye to Katherine at the front of the hotel and went back upstairs to pack all of our stuff. saying goodbye to the staff at the hotel was a bit traumatic, I’m going to miss them quite a bit. Then we moved all the stuff into our apartment and went to McDonalds for lunch. After lunch, we went back to our apartment to wait for our sea shipment to arrive. 31 boxes came by with no problem and we started unpacking. We had invited a bunch of collegues of Jeremy’s over for dinner tonight, so we called Helen, our realtor who has befriended us, to help us find a place to buy plates. she drove us to the middle of town, parked her car in front of a store with her double blinkers on and walked in with us in tow. We bought some night plates with blue-green fish painted on them. After that, we went to the RT mart to go shopping and buy some household goods. Today we went and met our nanny which was nice, we also had to prep a lot for dinner tonight. It was fun, Emily and Grace, the Browns & Pellerins 4 year old daughters ran around the house, we had a wonderful american spaghetti dinner with 3 bottles of wine polished off and a lot of discussion of who was doing what and marvelling at the fact that we were surviving in taiwan.