ten months!

go to flickr, KrityMetz

One thing I have noticed is that the blogger isn't the greatest for putting up photos, and I am taking a lot of photos...so if you want to see more, I'll try to upload more photos to my flickr account. Tip: click on the blue words 'flickr account' in the previous sentence, and the link should take you there.

Ryan and Torben

We also went to a park and Ryan watched Torben trying to eat rocks although in this pic he is eating the camera case. All in all, it was a pretty good weekend considering. We are all glad that last week is over with and we hope that things don’t go that way again. I think it is all part of adjusting to a new environment. Now, if I could only get use to the scooters.

Taintan Temple

Sunday. Torben is back to his normal routine of waking up at 5:30. I got up with him today, Tim slept until 7 and I went back to bed and got up around 10! Yunche called and asked if we wanted to go to Shabushabu (hotpot) so we quickly had ‘About Coffee’ coffee and then got on our way. Remarkable it was not that hot today. We got to the restaurant which happened to be next to this temple called Taintan Temple, which is the oldest temples in Taiwan. It was crazy. Since this is the Torben blog here is two pix of the monkey but if you want to see more, go to my flickr account. After the super cool temple we hit a different hotpot place. There was a sign on the door that said ‘no cameras’ or I’d have taken a picture. Everyone gets there own little pot of boiling broth (you get to select your broth flavor) then you go over and select your meat and they slice it up super thin...then you go and grab platefuls of seafood (clams, shrimp, squid, scallops...then a bunch of other unidentifiable seafood), and vegetables and dumplings and many different kinds of mushrooms...and many, many, many other things - take them back to your table and then you cook it all in your boiling pot of broth. It was enjoyable but like usual Torben was difficult to deal with because he hates to sit. Ryan, Yunche’s son is a year older and just sat there like an angel. My favorite part of the meal was feeding Torben a little ice cream. I gave him a bite and he had that usual disgusted look on his face, the look is ‘what the hell are you feeding me now?” and then the eyes got really big and looked straight at the bowl and then a big smile...it was hilarious. Go figure, he likes ice cream.

Torben tries some seaweed

The dinner place is called (Chinese translation) ‘The Big Happiness’, it is Chinese food but they have an English menu – which takes a lot of the guesswork out of ordering. It was good to get out of the house even if it was just for those two short trips.

Ahhh, Saturday...Feeling better

Everyone is feeling better. Tim still has a cold but it hasn’t prevented him from vodka cocktails and running the 15 flights of stairs multiple times so it can’t be all that bad. We took things pretty easy on Saturday but the day did include a trip to the park near our house and dinner at an outdoor place down the street from our apartment.

That week...

Well we hit ‘that week’, the week where you say to yourself,’ why did I come here when things were going so well in Vancouver, and now I am in this really strange place and can’t communicate with anyone and have all these scooters to deal with and it so frikin’ hot’. It started on Sunday. We had a hard time getting a cab from the beach. We decided to leave pretty quickly after we got there mostly because Tim wasn’t feeling all that great. Even at the beach he got ‘sick’ if you know that I mean. But then felt immediately better, as one always does right after they get ‘sick’. I told him this but he felt ‘fine’ so we figured we’d wait it out. He didn’t get better, he got worse and was sick all day on Monday too. No big deal, I can deal with Tim being sick and everyone gets food poisoning once in a while. On Tuesday he went to work and Torben and I went to the pool which was great. He had fun climbing up these big cement stairs, the pool was ok too. Did I mention I also has some sort of cold that had started in Saturday morning...minor inconvenience but it did prevent us from going to Kaousling to Costco and Ikea with Yun-che that day. Ok, back to Tuesday, things were looking up, Tim was better and I still had my cold, but it was minor. Torben went to bed as usual but then got up at around 11 screaming and the screaming didn’t stop until early morning...there was maybe and hour or two of napping between the screaming, poor kid He also got sick a bunch of time and definitely had a fever. I am sure the monkey had no idea what the hell was going on, he’s never been sick before so I am sure it was quite confusing for him. He seemed much better in the morning but we took him to the doctor to be sure. It was probably a virus that Tim had, not food related. He is feeling better now but we’ve hardly left the house all week and getting much sleep has been very problematic. No immersion Chinese for Torbs, and on top of that he now has my cold. It has been a pretty crappy week for our household. It is an entirely different traveling experience with a small child. Usually I am pretty care-free when it comes to sickness and such, but with Torben I worry about it a lot and worry about his health and what he eats and drinks. I worry about this stuff at home too – but when you are traveling it is so much harder – especially when you can’t read any labels. I have probably read too much on pesticide use in Taiwan too so I don’t really want to feed him too much of anything. Oh and the sun, not too much sun, and he gets hot pretty easily so no long walks in the mid day...and his feet, and what about all the crap he tries to eat off the ground. Even in the apartment some of the paint is pealing on the wall, right at his level. I found a pile of paint chips... I am sure he made a meal of those and now has lead poisoning. And then all the people that want to touch him and hold him, do I tell them ‘no’? Would that be rude? Is it ok to be rude? I don’t want him getting H1N1, WTF am I doing here? I did buy three new tubes of hand sanitizer something I use to think was ridiculous. Especially in Africa – all these white people walking around with their ‘hand sanitizer’. What is everyone so afraid of? Although, hand sanitizer is not going to keep him from eating lead-flavored paint chips! I just wish people would stop touching him! The highlight of the week was a had a chicken salad from dinner, Tim had burritos which he said were awful, but my salad was quite good.
No plans for the weekend, I have a bunch of work to do. Tim found some ball hockey people he is going to try and play ball hockey on Sunday. If he can meet some people through that it will be huge. Maybe after the weekend I’ll have something more positive to report...

A day at the beach

Sunday, Sunday, what to do today? Torben and I went to the Family Mart and got our coffee. We also hit Laguardia, this breakfast place next door – I had an egg wrap with ham and I got Tim a bagel sandwich – egg and ham. Both were pretty decent. The best part is they had an English menu so I could read what I was getting instead of pointing to a picture. Additionally we discovered that it wasn’t too hot today! Wow, crazy. Tim had mentioned checking out the beach this weekend so we decided to see what the beach was all about. We are after all on an island and we do live in a city that is on the ocean, the Taiwan Strait which is part of the South China sea and what separates Taiwan from it’s big brother China. Yunche had written down the place to go in my little book so the adventure started with a cab ride to the beach – it turned out to be about 10 km (6 miles for the Americans) away. There was a nice walkway above the beach and the beach itself has a lot of potential. It looked as if the government had put in a lot of money into the beach development but it never caught on so it was pretty run down. There were some people fishing and one other family playing and swimming in the water but that was it. The tide was in so that wasn’t the greatest. I think if the tide was out Torben could run around a little more. The waves were way too big for him to play around in unassisted. The beach was black sand and so the dry sand was pretty hot. Because Torben loves to put everything in his mouth I was a little stressed out about what he was ingesting. It was a nice outing but it wasn’t what I had in mind when I first though about taking him to the beach everyday. I probably won’t be going to the beach every other day. It also took us a long time to get a cab back to town. Good thing it wasn't too hot out today.

RT-mart loves the Monkey and the Monkey loves RT

It is also sort of a pain to go places because Torben gets so much attention and everyone wants to hold him. If there wan't some deadly intestinal virus going around it probably wouldn't bother me - it doesn't bother me too much, but it bothers me a little. A sizeable proportion of people wear masks - I am not sure what the point is, if that means they are sick with something themselves or if they are trying to keep from geting sick. According to Yunche most of the public knows that the masks are only helpful if you, the mask wearer is the one who is sick preventing your infection from spreading...but anyhow, at one point in RT there were probably close to ten women surrounding the Monkey. Fortunately he loves the attention. He hams it up whenever he can.

Soft tofu, tofu for cooking, tofu for hot pot, tofu for soup, what kind of tofu do I want?

Torben went to the nanny on Friday because we were going to hit the Costco and Ikea on Friday afternoon with Yunche and Grace...many things got in the way and in the end it was 4:30 and we decided to go and get foot massages instead. I’d been wanting to try out the foot massage place since we got here and Yunche said he visits the place at least once a month “it’s good for your health” so I was certainly up for it. The foot massage is really much more than a foot massage although the foot part of it took most of the time. It starts with a nice foot soak bath while some trained professionally gives you a back, neck and head massage - this all lasts about 20 minutes then it’s on to the feet – and that all took around 45 minutes. Because we were all together and Yunche really wanted to go Tim sort of had to. The guys are really rough on the feet unless you tell them to go easy but Tim just figured he had to tough it out. He said it was pretty painful, mine was very nice. One of the best things is i can’t speak Chinese so I didn’t have to even mutter a word to the guy! I hate small talk during massages. I was still pretty disappointed though, I had my heart set on Ikea. The contingency plan was to go to Ikea on Saturday morning but then I woke up with a sore throat and decided the day would be better spent in bed – or at least the better part of the morning in bed. Since Costco and Ikea were no longer on the table as Costco is in Kauosling, about 45 minutes away and too far to go without a vehicle we decided to spend the afternoon at RT-Mart, a very large store next to our apartment. Although I have never been in a Walmart, I imagine it must be similar – one whole floor is just cheap crap and then the lower floor is food. We got a few necessary items. I am not crazy about shopping there but it is AC’ed so that is very nice. It is crowded and it is also difficult to tell what anything is because most everything is written in Chinese but the worst part is many items have some English on them but not really enough to give you any sort of understanding of what the item is. For example there is an entire isle of what looks like milk and some descriptions are all Chinese and then others just say things like ‘high quality” - how is that helpful, high quality what?? I bought what I thought was tofu the other day, and it looked just like Tofu but it was not tofu, in fact I still have no idea what the hell it was, it was nasty though. Every time we walk outside it is something new, every time we walk around the corner something exciting is there. Yesterday we walked around the corner from RT and there was my favorite tea place (it is a chain). I go and get tea after I go to the gym. Oh yeah, I joined a gym – that place is a trip, more on that later. For dinner I wanted to try out the Mexican place called ‘Mexico to go’ not far from out place but I walked down there and it was closed, so I hit the Indian place instead. It was a pretty mellow day.

Dinner

Torben napped for a while after all the afternoon excitement of Yu Kids Islands and then Tim called to see if we wanted to go to dinner. Yunche and Tim picked Torben and me up and we went to an awesome Japanese restaurant. We got our own little room while was great because Torben could run around and (sort of) let us eat. He is a real hassle to take to dinner because he just will not sit still. The dinner was a set meal type thing and they start out with a little mushroom appetizer and then sashimi and then a little fried shrimp roll thing then a tempura shrimp, then soup, then...I can’t remember all of it. It was excellent.

Some people have asked me what the language situation is like, basically very few people speak English. The cab drivers speak no English and worst off they can’t read English or what is called Pinyan – which is the pronunciations equivalent to Chinese – unfortunately everyone has different spelling of Pinyun so a street would be Dasyue (University Ave) or Das Huey or god I don’t know, I’ve seen about six different spellings of that road. So unless you have the road written down in Chinese characters-forget it. That is why my little book is so important. The same goes with food. We went to ‘Tainan A Hue Fried Eel” which is right near our apartment and we had to just point at a couple of things on the menu and hope for the best, in that case we got two squid noodle dishes and one eel dish, all three were great but then we also got noodles with liver, ummm yuck. We felt pretty fortunate that we got 3 out of 4.

Yu Kids Islands

One of the places that Yunche suggested we go when it is really hot out is a department store that has a play yard for kids. We decided to check it out today. Torben LOVED it. There was lots of screaming and all around excitement. The place was really pretty cool (temperature and atmosphere). Lots of fun things for young kids to play on. Also one bonus is there is a really nice grocery store downstairs - so maybe we can go oftern since we need groceries, right?? I have noticed that in all the large and fancy department stores all seem to have 1. a food court and 2. a big fancy grocery store. After we had so much fun playing at Yu Kids Islands we went to grab the bottle for Torben and somehow I had left it at home...so the shopping at the grocery store was abbreviated. After we got home Torben fell asleep in the middle of his lunch. What an exciting day!

Tainan Park

The Japanese build this park when they were incharge here. Lovely job.

Tainan Park

the walk home

Yesterday Torben went to Mandarin immersion class and I had a lunch meeting with one of the ecology profs at NCKU. After lunch I decided to walk home. Here are a couple of pictures from the park by our house. We live on Gongyuan South road, Gongyuan means 'park' so we live on south park road. We are still 6-8 blocks from the park but it is nice living so close.

A day at home

Yunche loaned us a bunch of toys and we also brought a few but Torben's favorite is this water bottle.

I left my little notebook at Yunche's yesterday. This was very important because it has all my place names in it. When I get in a taxi, I open up my notebook and point to a page that has the street name (in Chinese characters) of where I want to go. This includes the name street that I live on. Without my notebook I can hardly leave the house unless I plan to travel on foot. Yesterday, the heat index was 102 so we weren't walking anywhere. After it had cooled off a bit we did venture out but most of the day was spent indoors.

almost to the bottom

Still excited!

back to the pool

It's another hot day in Tainan so we hit the pool again. Here is Tim and Torben on the water slide. Torben is totally excited!

Butter Lion

Torben enjoying Butter Lion. I bought him at Family Mart this morning. Torben likes.

living room

Here is a pic inside the apartment, this is the living room, or part of it.

view from balcony

As I mentioned - we are on the tenth floor.

Courtyard

Back to the apartment for the mid-morning nap (Torb). Here is the view of the courtyard from the balcony.

our 'hood.

After 'about coffee' we took a little walk, literally just around the corner we ran into this place. There are really beautiful temples and things around the corner from our place.

good morning

We hit the 'about coffee' this moring. It is a really nice place. We ordered set 1 and set 3. We had set 2 the other day...which was toast with tuna and cheese and banana. I thought it was pretty good but apparently Tim doesn't like tuna. Set one was a blueberry bagel with some sort of cream cheese and walnuts - and then this lovely salad with fruit in it. Set 3 was sausage with sauerkraut and mustard (OK?). It was quite tasty. I think I'll stick to set 1. It takes them about 45 minutes to make it though. Marilyn...they make GREAT lattes too!

after dinner sight seeing

Friday night - We had dinner with Yunche, Grace and Ryan. Torben was huge pain. He just could not sit still during dinner. Most everything we’ve eaten here has been fairly tame . Tonight we had this yummy tofu dish, a shrimp dish, a pork item and then some pigs feet. I like to consider myself pretty adventurous but I just could not bring myself to trying the pigs feet – too much skin. Honestly I didn’t see any meat, it just looked like skin. Maybe next time. After dinner we walked around this old fortress and Torben and Ryan checked out the marble statue.

Family Mart

Here is a picture of the friendly 'Family Mart" this on the street below where our apartment is. I have made a daily ritual of going down (we are on the tenth floor) to the family mart and getting a 12 oz Americano coffee at Family Mart. It takes them a while to make my coffee so I always look around at all the stuff and usually buy something. This morning I bought a butter lion change purse. It is a pretty great store and the second largest convenience mart after 7-11. There is a 7-11 on every corner here. For a while I was also getting rice balls, which were triangle rice cake things filled with various meats. We needed something for breakfast and they were pretty good. Later we found a breakfast place around the corner and we have gotten a couple of breakfast sandwich things there. But just yesterday we found a new place that sells bagels. I bet we'll go there tomorrow.

Planes, buses, trains and cars

Here are some highlights of the trip to Taiwan. It doesn't exactly capture the complexity of the trip but there are some cute pix of the Torbs.

walkie

Torben has been practicing his walking and I swear he gets better every day. Amazing kid!

pool time

Day at the pool! There are three separate pools, two outdoors and one indoors. It is so frickin' hot here - the pool was amazing. Torben, of course, loved it.

Torben went to the pool on Saturday, but first we started with traditional beef stew for breakfast. I am not sure what it is called but it was quite delicious.

Tofu please

Tim and I had a long day of meetings, errands and paperwork. Torben had a good time at the nanny. We finished off the day with a great meal prepared by Yunche’s wife, Grace.

learning Mandarin

The plan for the day was to do some paperwork and errands so we dropped Torben off at his immersion Mandarin daycare – (this is the nanny that Yunche’s son, Ryan goes to) . He is going to spend the day there.

Yunche, Torben and Tim discuss plans for the day

Next day (Wednesday) Yunche picked us up – we went to Starbucks and got some ‘coffee of the day’ and some breakfast.

Back in the car...

Then back to the University, at this point both Torben and myself had had enough…we set up his peapod on the floor in Yunche’s office and Torben finally took a nap. He didn’t wake up until around 2 at which point he was UP. So I did a little unpacking and he was back to sleep by 4 and we all got some decent sleep after that.

Meeting new people

We then went to meet some University people. Again, Torben not having napped at all was pretty cranky and was really tired of sitting so we walked around in the baking afternoon sun – am I am not sure how much he liked that – aside from every woman , and some men on the street wanting to hold him and I can remember at least three women asking if they could take his picture. I have to admit, I think it is kind of weird to want to hold someone else’s kid particularly a strangers and then wanting a picture but he is awfully cute.

Torben on the HSR train

The high speed rail train traveling at 300 km per hour got us from Taipei to Tainan in little over an hour. Yunche met us at the station. By this time it was around 9:00 am and it was already 30 c. (maybe 80-85f?) and humid. After this, the day got crazy. First we went to Yunche’s apartment and met his wife, Grace. Next we needed a place to stay so we went looking at a couple of different apartments. The last one we saw was by far the best so we said we’d take it. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be ready until 6! What a bummer. Meanwhile the only sleep Torben had wass an occasional 5 minute nap here and there. Lunch was next and he fell asleep in the stroller which I was pretty happy about because I was hungry and wanted to eat. The stroller nap only lasted about 5 minutes after we sat down.

We made it!

We made it! We have safely arrived in Taiwan. The flight wasn’t so bad. Before we boarded the flight, Torben was awake and jumping up and down at the airport – and this was at 2 am. By the time the airplane took off, he was OUT. He slept in a little bassinet that attached to the wall. He didn’t even realize how nice he had it – a full length comfortable bed, two people completely doting on him and every Chinese woman on the plane wanting to hold him . As it turns out, Chinese are CRAZY about babies. The plane was only half full so when he got up 5 hours later he could move around a bit. There was some crying and another nap. Then we landed, it was as simple as that. He did remarkably well for such a long trip.