July 1

Originally when we planned our trip, we planned to leave Jilong on Saturday and travel to Taipei. However, after I already booked all of our apartments, I realized that I had a gap for Saturday night. Fortunately, the Jilong place was still open for that night. However, that meant that we were not going to have a very relaxing and convenient fast Sunday (we broke our fast with ramen noodles and plain bread that we had bought the day before).

We started the day with packing in the morning. It went pretty quick this time – maybe because we are more used to this packing thing or maybe because we have 6 weeks less of diapers to fit in our suitcases. 

We then took all of our luggage and headed off to church. I am glad that we were attending in Jilong one last time. The ward was so friendly and the children loved the primary there. They had scripture reading assignments and so they were asking us all week to go to that ward so they could pass those off. The meetings went well. At the end of the meetings we got to see everyone in the ward gather in their cultural hall for a member to open up her mission call. She got called to California speaking Mandarin. It was neat to see her and her parents’ reactions and the excitement of everyone in the ward. 

Then we were off to the train station. Jilong is only about a 30 minute train ride from Taipei. When we got to the Taipei station we needed to switch from the trains to the subway. Our plan was to hang out in the station for a while though to take advantage of the AC, since we couldn’t check in to our Taipei place until 4pm. However, a nice older lady was on our train and she insisted that she get off with us and show us how to switch to the subway and where to go and everything like that. She ended up buying us all reusable cards for the subway and putting $20 on each one! She then refused as I tried to give her money for them. Even though it was nowhere near where she was going, she rode the subway with us all the way to our destination. So, we ended up making it to our apartment about two hours early. 

We were just waiting in the ally by the apartment and the owner heard us there. He was still cleaning the place, but he said we could put all of our luggage inside and hang out in one of the bedrooms until he was done. Knowing that our kids would most likely be rambunctious and make a lot of noise while he cleaned, I didn’t want him to regret his decision to rent to such a large family, so we just dropped off the luggage and went for a walk instead. 

We walked to the temple and the main Taipei chapel. The temple was really fun to see again and the new chapel was only something that they were talking about doing when I was a missionary. It is four stories tall and has multiple chapels in it, as well as the distribution center and a few other church offices. 

After that we walked to the big park that I remember contacting people in when I was a missionary. The trees were all much bigger now and it seemed to be quite the Sunday hangout place. There were a lot of people there taking pictures of the birds. 

Later that night we were able to get all settled in our apartment. This one is a little larger with two separate bedrooms; however, the kitchen area is right by the front door and it is very small and crowded. The children were all happy though since here we could all sleep on beds again.

The Taipei LDS temple!




Here is the Taipei 101 building from a distance.