Valences and birthdays!

With the arrival of our stuff, life has become a bit busy around here, attempting to get organized. But I must say what a difference it makes! Amazingly, as a result of finally having our things, it seems (but perhaps also due to the natural progression of time) the girls are acting much more settled. And so am I! WOW! What a transformation! I was beginning to develop strategies for an attempt to cope with this new way of life I thought we were entering into: continuous melt-downs, tantrums, and an inability to fall asleep at night. But alas, that was short-lived! Praise God! It seems we all finally feel at home here now that our things are here. A wonderful feeling. The girls can sleep in their own beds and play in their playroom with their own toys and read their own books.....ahhh! Peace has come to this house! :)

And so, here are some pictures of the developments:

Ellie and Siri's room:

The girls' room with a view of the valence:

The playroom:

The playroom valence:

And two posts in one.....Siri turned TWO!! Happy birthday, Siri!

There are several MAK staff family members who had birthdays this week and last week, so we had a nice big combo party for all of them! And here they are:

Believe it or not, Siri was first to dig into her cupcake!

We had lots of fun! We even played a few games:

This game was called "musical mats":

Yes, even the dads got to play:

The bigger kids seem to really like Siri, and Siri seems to really like them (and perhaps all the attention):

Siri had a great party!

We thank God for our little girl and another precious year we were blessed to spend with her! May there be many more!

Container!

The container (with all of our things in it!) arrived on Thursday night! Needless to say we've been a little busy lately unpacking! Good news is, we are just about done! We have two containers of clothes to sort through and a box of home decor to arrange but other than that we are done! YAY! It feels good to be home!

Transitioning=fatigue

All is well here despite the lack of posts. :) It just seems by the time I have a moment in the day to blog, I'm completely and utterly exhausted with nothing to say. It does seem I'm suffering from the kind of exhaustion that a little exercise seems to cure most of the time, but in this heat and humidity, exercise takes a lot of motivation. The kind of motivation you need some energy to produce....hummm....

To sum it up, we are still transitioning! I guess there's no other way to describe it than to just say everything is tiring and draining! Everything takes a little more effort and a little more will-power (and a little more Chinese).

It seems these days I'm missing Panera Bread Co. Panera Bread was my little get away. After a crazy day and after the kids went to bed, somedays I would drive the 5 minutes out to Panera Bread, park in a designated parking spot and order in my native tongue the yummiest drink or pastry you can think up. Or better yet, zip over to Starbucks where the coffee drinks actually taste like coffee and on a nice crisp fall evening get a scrumptious, pumpkin spice latte with soy and as much whipped cream as I want, always knowing I could ask for more if I really wanted to (though I never did, fyi). No worrying about hitting crazy scooter drivers, or bikers, or pedestrians or suicidal dogs (that's what I call those crazy dogs that live here that literally take naps in the middle of the road). No worrying about where to park. No worrying about attempting to order, praying they understood me correctly and praying that they don't ask me any questions all the while receiving my order only to find out it's all wrong.

But before you think we are totally miserable, we are not. :) I think I have just found myself in the throes of transition along with my two children who for the first night in weeks, went to bed before 8:30 tonight, praise God! We are in transition. We are adjusting, recognizing the good, the bad and the ugly about Taiwan and digesting it one pill at a time. All the while, we are content, feeling safe only because we know we are in the center of God's will, the safest place anyone could possibly be in this crazy world.

And speaking of Taiwan, "Zhong Qiu kuai le!" Today Joey and Ellie had a day off of school for the Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival. Tonight we have heard fireworks going off almost incessantly. Here's a clip of some that went off right in front of our apartment! I took this video after the fireworks had been blasting long enough for me to pick up Siri and console her, think about what a good video it would be, get the camera, step out onto the balcony and THEN start recording, ie. there was more than a minute of these loud booms!

Living on a tropical island...

We have had several experiences lately that have reminded us that for better or worse we live on a tropical island (ok, some of these points aren't necessarily limited to only tropical islands, but they certainly aren't regular occurrences in the Mid-west US, well, except number 3.):

1. There are palm trees EVERYWHERE! This mid-western girl is just amazed at all the beautiful palm trees. This picture is taken on Joey's school's campus! Just amazing!

2. We went swimming in the pool of a waterfall (is that how you would describe what I'm trying to say?)! So at the moment I don't actually have any pictures from the waterfall but this picture was taken on the way to the waterfall. More pics to come (I hope).

3. We are experiencing a little bit of an ant problem. I know this happens everywhere, but I'm just a little annoyed and had to vent! Sorry, I refuse to take pictures of little ants crawling everywhere! :(

4. We experienced our first typhoon! Well, the winds had died down so much by the time they arrived here in Kaohsiung, they were actually only calling it a tropical storm, BUT because typhoons are so unpredictable and this one in particular had caused considerable damage in the Philippines on its way to Taiwan, the whole island had a government-declared typhoon day! YAY! And while it wasn't a typhoon technically, it rained from Sunday afternoon until Tuesday night (And, well, it's still drizzly today)! UGH!

Enjoy this video!

On our own...

We said goodbye to our live-in grandma, cook, babysitter, cleaning lady and companion yesterday. Today, Monday we are on our own, starting what are to hopefully become our routines around these parts for at least a little while.

Joe and Ellie were off to school this morning while Siri and I were off to figure out what we should be doing to stay productive and happy. The timing of Steve and Merrilee's visit was perfect! We are so thankful not only for that time for the girls (and us) to re-bond with them but also for us to get things figured out! For example, we learned lots about grocery shopping, we got LOTS of furniture, we baked lots of cookies, we started Ellie in school, Joey started school, we got a movie rental card, we got a new TV, we found the quickest way to the best bubble tea (AND I learned if you use your own bottle, you get 3NT off), and we even got cable (for 3 USD a month!). So needless to say, we seem to be getting acquainted.

Here is some of the cookie baking experiences:

And here is a list of a few taiwan frustrations of mine, just in case you were so curious:

1. COMMUNICATION! I can not stand being unable to communicate with the people around me! As a result, I'm quite motivated to learn Chinese NOW.

2. MILK: The milk situation here in taiwan is out of control! Apparently it's a newer thing for Chinese people to drink lots of milk, however thanks to Costco people drink it quite a bit nowadays. HOWEVER, one gallon of milk is not cheap, costing US$6.70 at Costco. And if you think that's a lot don't even bother going to a local grocery store where it is TWICE as much! Yep, you'd spend about US$12 for a gallon of milk! To make matters worse, Costco, where you can get it for "cheap" is 30 minutes away; Costco is obnoxiously crowded at all times; you can only buy 2 gallons of milk at a time if you only have a gold membership AND they RUN OUT because the demand is SOO high. So even if you did decide to take the 30 minute trip and withstand the crowds, you may not even get any milk at all!!

3. PARKING: I can not seem to understand what is legal with parking and well driving in general. There aren't parking lots so everyone just double parks right in front of the store, but sometimes it seems SO wrong I just can't seem to be confident in what is ok!

Ok. That is my rant, thank-you for listening.

So as to not end this post of a negative note, here are some more pictures!

This is Ellie in her other uniform that she wears on Wednesdays (the yellow shirt and blue shorts are worn on Mondays):

And these are just cute: