Feeling more comfortable

Check out this sweet Hello Kitty bike!

Here's another view of Guang-Fu Lu.

Today has been a great day and I'm starting to get more used to the initial shock of moving to Taiwan. After our daily routine of breakfast together at the hotel restaurant, and Kelly takes the complimentary shuttle to the Science Park to work, the kids and I took a taxi to explore another shopping area called the RT Mart (in Chinese, it's called Da Run Fa). I am still scoping things out to know what I'll need to bring back after my brief trip home in a couple of weeks. The RT Mart was similar to a big super Walmart, and had some little shops connected to it. They sell appliances and clothes, shoes, food, and just about everything you'd see at Wally World.

The taxi driver didn't speak English, and I don't speak Chinese, but somehow, I got the message across to him that I wanted him to come back to pick us up at 1 pm, after two hours of shopping. I wrote down 13:00 on a piece of paper and he was there waiting for us, luckily. Again, the prices weren't phenomenal, but were similar to the cost of things at home. Except for some imported goodies that I found, like a Betty Crocker cake mix box for the equivalent of about $4 US dollars. Lindsey and I fell in love with this pink and white Hello Kitty bicycle that was adult sized and had a basket in the front to transport things in. Kelly is talking about buying a scooter, so if he gets one of those, I'm getting that Hello Kitty bike! Can't you just see me showing up at a triathlon in the States next year with that?

We picked up some lunch to bring back to the hotel room from yet another American fast food chain here, KFC, and the darling salesperson asked what drink we wanted with the meal. (So much for losing weight, if I keep this up!) She said there was Coca-cola, Sprite, a couple of other drinks that I couldn't understand what she said, then concluded with "original juice." Since I didn't want any of the soft drinks, I was curious what the original juice was. Her coworkers then started laughing at her and corrected her with the correct English description, which was "orange juice." Now every time we refer to orange juice, we will call it original juice. She was so embarrassed and I assured her that we were completely impressed with her English, which is a thousand times better than our Chinese.

We made it back safely to the hotel room, then got an email from Kelly telling us that we would be going out to dinner tonight with his coworkers and that the kids were included. We were all very excited about that. Remember when I mentioned that we went out to dinner on Monday night to a place similar to the Melting Pot? Well, that is where we went again, but we didn't want to tell anyone so they wouldn't feel bad that we just went there. We liked it a lot, so it was a nice treat. I did take a few pictures and said that my friends wanted me to post some pictures of Taiwan, and one of them asked if I have a blog or place where I add them. He was wondering if he'd do a search when he got home and see what I had put about the event, and I saved him the trouble, and gave him my blog name, then at the table they all looked it up and started passing it around. So now I have to make sure I say nice things. Not that I wouldn't. They were all really delightful and the dinner was delicious. I was impressed that every single one of them spoke English really well. When we've gone shopping and looking at apartments, that has not been the case. I guess Kelly just works with smart people. (How was that for sucking up a bit?)

It's been a really good day. We found out that the owner of the larger apartment that we like has agreed to all of our requests, and will put in a new large refrigerator, a washer and dryer, and even an oven. It looks like we will be able to move in later next week, just before I leave to take Lindsey to BYU-Idaho.

Sorry that I still haven't taken the time to figure out how to upload pictures from Lindsey's laptop. I will soon. Promise.