May 25th

Everyone woke up pretty early this morning – maybe 4:30 or so. We stayed at our place until about 7am and then went out for breakfast. Just down the street we found a steamed bun shop. We tried a taro bun, a meat filled one, and a brown sugar one. Then across the street we found a place that sold breakfast hamburgers. These hamburgers have a ground pork patty pounded pretty flat. They also have an egg and then some type of vegetables. Usually the vegetables included shredded cucumber, but these ones had lettuce on them. Then there is the special sauce which is a translucent type mayonnaise. Sometimes they also put ketchup on them. We allowed the children to pick if they wanted a hamburger or another steamed bun. Christian and Julia picked steamed buns, but the rest of us had hamburgers. 

We then walked about 2 miles to the beach. That walk almost killed us! It was so hot and humid. We brought five or so water bottles, but we used them all up on the way to the beach. We were able to stop by a morning market and pick up some different fruits (dragon fruit, lychee, and pineapple). After resting a little in the shade, the children and I went down to the shore and played in the waves. We had a lot of fun, but I was dreading the rest of the day with the children being all wet and sandy. 

Our original plan was just to stay out until the evening and go to a night market, but we decided it was just too hot for that. So instead, we decided that we would walk back to the place we are staying and then come back out in the evening. On the 2 mile walk back we did get lost again briefly, but the missionaries happened to show up and they helped us get back on track. We did stop at a supermarket right next to the place where we were staying and bought a carton of ice cream that we ate first thing when we got back. We rested for a while and waited out the afternoon heat. 

Then at about 5 we went back out and walked all the way back to the beach for the huge night market. The night market was pretty fun, but also kind of touristy. Rebecca commented that it kind of reminded her of a fair, which isn’t the way the traditional night markets are. We did get some soup filled dumplings (like 40 of them), a giant corn dog, a hard folded crepe thing filled with cheese and brown sugar, and a large flat fried chicken piece. We ended up staying out until about 9 pm that night.

At the morning market.




At the beach.








At the night market sharing the crepe thing. You can tell that Julia is kind of tired and grumpy by this point.






We got one of those big flat fried chicken things that you can see at the top of the food cart on the sign. I really need to do a better job at taking pictures of the food. But it is all just so yummy that it is half-way gone before I think about it.

May 24th: Getting to Hualien

On the 24^th we woke up in Taoyuan. Asher was pretty restless throughout the night and since he was in bed with me (along with the three other boys), I didn’t sleep all that well either. Fortunately, we had a yummy buffet style breakfast at the hotel to help start the day off right. For breakfast they had lots of American foods (cereal, hash browns, bacon, eggs, toast) as well as lots of Taiwanese foods (steamed buns, soy milk, vegetables, mango). The kids primarily went for the American food, Rebecca for the Taiwanese food, and me a combination of both. 

After breakfast we had planned to walk to a temple and park. It was about a mile away. It was fun to be out in the streets of Taiwan again. They are so different from the streets in America. It is kind of like walking through the streets of a big city, but they are much narrower, every single first floor is a shop of some type and the above stores are where people live, and there are a million signs sticking out on the buildings advertising all of the shops. As soon as we started walking we were all hit by the humidity. The night before the children were saying that they couldn’t really feel a difference, but today they were saying that they could really feel the air. One mile later where arrived at the temple very very sweaty. 

We looked around the temple a little bit, used the Taiwanese bathrooms for the first time (it seems like the bathrooms now have many more toilets compared to when I was here 18 years ago), and then found an awesome park next to the temple that we played at for a while. As soon as we got to the park we were surrounded by people. They would just tell us over and over how cute our children were and how amazing it was that we had six of them. That has been a consistent pattern ever since. Sometimes in America people will make a comment about our having six children, but it is not often positive. Here in Taiwan, they all think it is the greatest thing and they can’t stop telling us so. Even though they typically only have one or two children, they all love families here and highly value them. 

After the park we hurried back to the hotel to check out by noon. Our train to Hualien didn’t leave until 3pm though. It was very hot by that point, so we tried to just find a park with shade that we could spend some time in. We found a small one with a field and some toys and stayed there for a little while, but we were quickly swarmed again by people commenting on our children. We liked the attention and it was all very positive and friendly, but after an hour it was a little overwhelming so we walked to the train station and found a spot to sit for the next couple of hours. 

The train ride to Hualien was so beautiful! It was about four hours long. The first little bit goes through the cities, but then most of it goes right through the hills and mountains along the east coast. I had really been looking forward to this train ride for some time, but even though the scenery was so beautiful, the jet lag caught up with us and we all fell asleep. We arrived at Hualien at about 7:00 and it was already dark. We had about a mile to walk to get to the place that we would be staying, but I took us in the exact opposite direction and we probably walked 2 miles before we finally arrived. Our place is really nice. We have one big bedroom with four double beds in it. It is probably about the size of Christian’s bedroom back at home. There is also a kitchen and a bathroom. It does feel cramped of course, but I think it is better than we were expecting. That night I went out to the street and picked us up a fresh loaf of bread to eat and a fried fish paste thing called tian bu la.

Morning in the boys' room of the hotel in Taoyuan


This was the sauna in our room that we used the night before.



Outside of the hotel they had a little pond with fish and turtles that the children liked to play with.





Here we are at the Confucius temple.





I have a picture of me as a missionary on this bridge.








This was at the first park before we checked out of the hotel.



This was the second park, after we checked out of the hotel.




We stopped in a department store to cool off on our way to the train station.


They had a cool beados station where you could buy pre-made ones or make your own.





Back asleep in our place in Hualien.

May 22 – May 23: Getting to Taiwan

Well getting to Taiwan ended up being quite the adventure. Going in to it, I think Rebecca and I were expecting a lot of the unexpected, so although things were stressful, we were able to take everything in stride.

Rebecca and I spent all Monday morning packing and doing our final house projects in preparation for the trip. We were both working non-stop, but we had planned it out pretty well and were able to finish everything up in time to pick the children up from school. Once we got them, we drove down to spend the night with Nathanael and Mary-Anne. They were so nice to let us stay over and drive us to the airport the next day. It was fun seeing the children play with their cousins and to catch up with them. Also, they put their smoker to good use and we got to enjoy some smoked chicken legs and homemade bacon! While we were there, I realized that I had forgot to pack our Taiwan money. I had exchanged about $3,500 American for us to have as cash to use as we traveled around. I had kept it in a peanut butter jar and I didn’t recall taking it out of the jar ever to put it in with our luggage. But I couldn’t figure out how I would have forgotten it because I had packed up everything else that I had placed in that spot. Unfortunately, that spot was on the ground and we figured that Asher must have picked it up and played with it and placed it somewhere else in the house. So, we figured we would just have to exchange some money in one of the airports.

Getting on our first flight from Salt Lake City to San Francisco was no problem. However, about ten minutes in to the flight the pilot made his usual announcement. He said that we would be arriving in San Jose in about an hour and a half. Rebecca looked at me and I figured he must have just made a mistake. Surely they didn’t allow us to get on the wrong flight. After talking to our neighbors we found out that after we got on the plane they made an announcement in the terminal. They said there was poor visibility in San Francisco, so they were going to fly us in to San Jose and then bus us to the San Francisco airport. I was a little worried when they announced that, but we had a three hour layover and they were estimating only 30 minutes for the bus ride, so I figured it would be no problem. Well, with traffic the bus ride was 1 hour. That meant that when we got to the San Francisco airport we had two hours to get checked in and to our gate. The day before I called in to let them know that we would have a lap infant. Apparently, for international flights, lap infants still have to have a reduced cost ticket. The ticket itself was $50 for the round trip, but we also had to pay the $250 for taxes and fees. There was nothing I could do about it then, so I bought the ticket over the phone and they said I would have to check him in in person when we got to San Francisco. So as soon as we got there we rushed to find the Cathay Pacific counter. For some reason, they couldn’t figure out how to check Asher in. We spent another hour at the counter while they tried to figure it out. Now we were panicking some. I told them I was worried we were not going to make our flight, but they said it should be no problem. By the time we got all of our boarding passes and luggage checked in it was 12:20 and we had to board by 12:55. I got some quick cash, but only about a third of what we had originally planned because the rates did not seem very good. After that we ran to the security and luckily got to go through the priority lane. It was still a long line though and we made it through all of the security by just before 12:50. So I, with some of the older kids took off running as soon as we got through and we figured that we could stall them until Rebecca and the younger children caught up. When we got there, they ended up being delayed by 20 minutes so we were not late at all.

The plane ride went great. I think Asher hardly cried at all, but maybe I just didn’t hear him because I had my noise cancelling headphones on. We did have two stinky diapers to deal with from him, which wasn’t that fun. But basically, we all just watched movies and did a little bit of sleeping. At first I was worried about getting the sleeping timed just right, but then I realized that the children were staying up pretty much the whole time to watch movies and play games that they would be tired and ready for bed as soon as we got to Taiwan. That was perfect because we were not getting in until 10pm. The food was all pretty awful. There were two meals and I tried to make sure the children ate half of each one, but I didn’t blame them for not wanting to eat any more than that. They said Asher had to have a baby meal since he was a lap infant and so they brought me to jars of baby food. One was applesauce, which he scarfed down. The other was chicken. He ate one bite and spit that out. I tried it after that and almost threw up. We have never fed our children baby food and I am sure he was wondering what we were trying to put in him. For all of the meals I was really hoping that Rebecca and the children weren’t thinking that all of the food in Taiwan was going to be that bad.

We landed in Hong Kong and had an hour to get to our connecting gate. We did have to go through security again, but it all ended up going smoothly and we made it there in plenty of time. When we got on that final plane, then it really started to hit me that this was going to be a real adventure. On the flight to Hong Kong, there were people of all different nationalities and they said everything in English first. However, on this flight to Taipei, we were the only non-Asian people on the plane. Everything was now Chinese first, and then English. I thought it felt really cool.

After arriving in Taipei we had the usual routine of customs and things like that and it all went really smoothly. Then we had to catch a taxi to our hotel. For all the other nights I picked places that we could walk to and use public transportation, but for this first night I couldn’t figure out how late the buses and trains went and if they were even close to our hotel, so I knew we would have to do a taxi. I wondered what they would do for all of us though. They ended up just having us go in two taxis. Rebecca was worried, but I had remembered that the taxis were still pretty cheap and the cost for a twenty minute ride for both of them was still only $30. On the taxi ride to the hotel I wanted to start up a conversation with the driver, but I was really nervous that he wouldn’t understand me. After a minute or two of working up my courage I did though. And the conversation went great. I was a little slow on processing things, but I did get everything that he said. And I stumbled over my words here and there, but I was able to say everything I wanted. I was so happy about that. But then I thought about Rebecca and the three children that went with her. She couldn’t communicate with her driver at all. What if he got lost or couldn’t figure out which hotel we wanted. I realized that I had the hotel address with me. Scenarios were running through my head about needing to go to all of the police stations in the area to see if any lost Americans had showed up. I just realized how much trust Rebecca and the children are placing in me with this trip. I hope I can make it fun and a worthwhile experience for them.

When we got to the hotel we had another unexpected expense. I had thought I purchased two larger rooms so we could all fit in. The rooms were large, but they charged for extra children that were taller than a certain height. So with the two rooms, Rebecca, Julia, Ethan, and I were covered and Agnes and Asher were too short, but we had to pay $15 more for both Elliott and Christian. So Rebecca, Julia and Agnes are in one room on the fifth floor and I am here with the boys on the sixth. There is a sauna in our room, so we did that, then all took baths, wrote in our journals, and then watched a Spongebob episode. They all fell asleep pretty quickly after that.

So a lot of stressful things came up as we traveled to get here, and some unexpected expenses, but I am so glad that we are here and super excited for the morning!

All of us in the car ride on the way to the airport. Nathanael was nice enough to drive us and take care of our car while we are away. They also sent us off with some donut holes and muffins!



At the Salt Lake airport. Ready for the fun to begin.






The first flight to San Francisco (I guess I mean San Jose).





All set on our flight to Hong Kong. You can see the treats and headphones for movies.






In the Hong Kong airport waiting for a plane to Taiwan. You can tell we are all a little sleep deprived here. But, it was only 7pm Hong Kong time (5am Idaho time).





On the final flight to Taiwan!!!