Our week in Taipei

I had hoped to do more blogging while here, but discovered that doing so in the middle of the night did not work, because it meant that I was ready for bed much earlier than my sweet boy. And what about blogging during the day? Don’t think so! Jason and I have been bonding so amazingly well! We laugh and play together, in fact we do EVERYTHING together. Privacy issues – out the window. Just try to close that bathroom door! Really though, we are having such a wonderful time. This week of just getting to focus on him has been wonderful.

I have to say that the people in this country are the nicest that I have met anywhere! They are so friendly, helpful, and polite, even in a city of over 2 ½ million people! The city is so clean, too. We took the MRT transit system and it was amazingly clean. We also had people give us their seats on the train more than once, and others that would make sure to point to where we should go next once they figured out where we were headed. And of course Jason gets tons of attention wherever he goes. We discovered that he knows more Mandarin than we thought. We will be with someone and Jason will start making a noise that sounds like baby talk to us and the person will say, “Oh, he’s saying ‘zai jian’,” or some other Mandarin word.

So, here is a brief rundown of what we have been doing since our last update: On Sunday morning we took a taxi to St. Christopher’s church and attended one of their Masses in English. It was quite packed and I believe that I heard that there were people there from the Philippines, as well as from Taiwan. After the Mass I went to the priest and asked him to give Jason a blessing. When I was leaving a very nice lady came up to talk to me and asked me if I needed a nanny. I thought she meant for just the time we were in Taipei, so I said, “Oh, no, thank you, we are leaving on Friday.” However she responded, “Well, I have a Visa, I can come with you.” I thanked her, but explained that I stay home with my children and take care of them. Later on Sunday we went to Taipei 101. It was too cloudy to go to the top, but we are hoping we will get a chance before we leave.

Monday morning was AIT (the American Embassy) day. Our guide, Fion, took us to our appointment where we went through documents with one person (our JOH friends know Joseph!) and then met with someone else for a brief interview. And that was it! Our Visa for Jason to enter the U.S. (unfortunately not as a U.S. citizen yet since only one parent traveled) would be ready the next day. After our appointment Fion took us to the Longshan temple.

On Tuesday Fion dropped us off at the zoo. She wasn’t feeling well and decided to wait in the car. She asked us how much time we wanted to spend there. Of course we had no idea what it would be like inside (and I hated for her to have to wait so long in the car) so I said an hour and a half. She gave us her second cell phone and told us to call her if we needed more time, which was a good thing because we discovered that everything was very spread out and that there was no way we were going to see much in that amount of time. It probably would have been better to have arranged to go there for the day because we probably only saw about a fourth of the animals there. We did get to see some koalas and the wonderful panda bears, though! Jason’s favorite part was the little train that went around the perimeter of the zoo.

On Wednesday we had a lazy day in the hotel room just playing and hanging out. I was thinking that Jason probably thinks that this is his new world, living in the hotel with just us, although he has been saying the Mandarin words for big brother, big sister, and daddy, and he has talked (or listened) to them on the phone. In the late afternoon we took that transit system up to the Shilin night market, which opened at about 4pm. Wow! It is the biggest night market in Taipei and is filled with shops and food stands. We were able to find plenty of bubble tea stands, too!

Back at the hotel we stopped at a dumpling place close by and picked up an order to go. Then when we reached the hotel, we stopped in the lounge. I walked in and the man and lady working there said, “Two Singapore Slings?” (Can you tell we’ve made a nightly ritual of this?) We actually had them put them in paper cups to take back to our room. We discovered that evening time is when Jason likes to play ‘toss everything off of the table,’ so it just works best to enjoy them in our room.

I am amazed that I got through this whole blog! During the night Jason will be sound asleep, but he always has one hand and a foot touching me and I can feel them kind of moving around to sense if I am there. If not, he usually starts to cry and I have to comfort him back to sleep. I think I have tricked him this time with a couple of heavy throw pillows in my place! Anyway, only two more days left in this marvelous country. It has been so wonderful to spend this time with Jason in his native country!