On the 24th 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.
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