Happy Space

When we made the decision to move here we struggled with what to do with our home and our belongings.  Of course we would bring some things with us but we were moving into a furnished apartment so we couldn't bring it all. We wanted to make sure that the Tiny American's transition was smooth so packing up his toys and what was most familiar to him was a big deal to me. I knew I wanted to bring lots of my kitchen, but had to make some modifications based on what would realistically work with the oven I was getting. Pictures and things to hang on the wall presented their own set of problems as most places will only let you use 3M tape to hang things, and yes you can hang a lot with 3M tape but some things just don't work.

We struggled with what to do with our house in Texas.  I LOVE our house in Texas and was really enjoying decorating and furnishing it so I was not happy with the option of selling it.  In the end we put most of our things in storage and rented the house to a cousin. I won't lie, I miss my house and I miss my things. Yes I know they are just things, but they are my things and I have spent a lot of time and energy gathering them all up and I miss them. Im not talking about TV's and things like that.  I'm talking about the old windows and doors that I have gathered up at junk sales.  I'm talking about the hutch that I had just refinished that my grandpa built me when I got married.  I'm thinking about the type tray that hung on the wall in my living room filled with the little rocks and shells we have collected from the places we have gone. These are the "things" that I miss.

The apartment we moved into when we first came to Taiwan a year ago was super nice.  It was  in a really nice building with lots of staff.  It was furnished and it was comfortable, but we never felt at home there.  It was dark and honestly a little depressing.  We had NO outside light.  No view of what was happening outside.  For people like us, that was a struggle.

We knew from the start that if we were going to live here for awhile we needed a different apartment. Finding one is a bit of a challenge.  Luckily we happened to mention it to the right person at the right time and we found the perfect place.  Well I say perfect, there were a couple of bumps in the road.  First it was not a furnished apartment,  second there were no closets, strange, but not a deal breaker.  I figured out what we would need for storage and a trip to IKEA solved both of these problems.

The best thing about the apartment was the windows.  Every room has floor to ceiling windows!  SO much light.  This has been great for our moods, we need sunlight!  The view is awesome and with us picking out the furnishing it feels so much more like home. We have found a couple of places to shop for "junk" to make it feel even more like ours.  I had a friend take some pictures of us around our neighborhood and this week I had those printed and hung them up.  I also printed some really cool pictures of Zane at different places we have visited in Taiwan and have those on the wall now as well.  It's amazing how much some pictures on the wall make it feel like home.

This is my favorite space in the apartment.  When I am in the kitchen J and Z and sit in these chairs and talk to me.

It's not perfect, it's an apartment, but with some time and a little patience it is quickly feeling more like a place we want to hang out in instead of the place we HAVE to be.

Stop and Smell the Roses....or build with rocks

It's been a long couple of weeks.  John has had visitors in and that means he leaves earlier and gets home later than usual, which makes for long days for me and Z. He does try and sneak home, even for a few minutes, to see us before his evening activities if he gets a chance. Zane has had the chicken pox so that has limited our outings and interaction with others and has totally goofed up our routine! We, and by that I mean me, are very much about our routine so when it is disrupted it can be challenging.  

Zane is feeling better now.  John's visitors start leaving tomorrow and life will return to normal....well as normal as it gets around here. It has been so humid the past few days that our time outside has been limited to early morning and late afternoon.  I can only imagine what it will be like this summer when it is REALLY hot! This morning, since we were up early anyway, we decided to just take a walk around the path at our apartment and then we wandered around in the courtyard.  The courtyard is beautiful and the buildings block out the harsh sun, but there is a lot of water to attract the Tiny American's attention, so we don't spend a lot of our time there.

One of Zane's favorite things to do is play with rocks.  In the courtyard there is a flower bed that is full of bamboo plants and the base is full of these big stones, just the right size for his hands, but not small enough to go in his mouth.  He loves to stand there and build with them and just throw them back in the pile. We stood here for 20 minutes today, just piling rocks up and then throwing them back in the the bed.  He couldn't have been happier! 

Sometimes I think my need to be busy, to have things planned out and scheduled gets in the way of just being.  As a mom I don't want to  push our days in one direction, making sure to get it all done, that i miss these moments.  I want to make sure that we take the time to just stop and be present.  I want to make sure that we stop and build with rocks, pick up every leaf that he sees, or enjoy whatever he is thinking about.  I want him to know that being with him is what is important, not what we are doing or how quickly we do it.  

So today take the time to stop and smell the roses or whatever it is that makes you happy.  Today don't let life get in the way, just enjoy the moment.

Not an SUV

I won't lie I LOVED my expedition.  I loved how high up I sat.  I Loved that I was one of the bigger vehicles on the road.  I loved how safe I felt.  I loved that I could load the dogs, the boy and all his trappings up and go wherever we needed to go.  And  even though I thought I would never use it I loved the built in GPS.  And don't even get me started on the seat heaters and coolers!  I miss it.  I miss being able to load up and run to the store really quick if I just need one thing.  I miss how easy it was to shop and have room for whatever I bought without worrying if it would fit or not.  I was spoiled, I admit it.  I took the convenience  for granted and I am not sure I appreciated how nice it was until it was gone.  It would not be a good fit for Taiwan.  First of all it would be a beast to parallel park, and that was if you could even find a hole big enough to try and put it in.  The regular parking spaces...no way!  The car we have, is considered big for here and it's a sedan.

I don't mind walking. I like to walk, which is a very good thing because I do a lot of it.  I walk to the store almost everyday to pick up one thing or another.  We walk to restaurants if we want to go out to eat.  Zane & I walk to the park to play.  I walk around to just explore our city.  I have seen lots of things that I would have otherwise missed by driving or riding in a car.  Zane loves it!  I don't miss driving, but I miss how much easier some things would be if I did drive.

 John came home with a TON of orchids from the International Orchid Festival.  The Flowers were beautiful but just in little plastic pots that you would find at a greenhouse so I needed to repot them or at least put them in containers for display.  I had nothing to do any of this with at our apartment.  I knew that I could ask Eric to drive me and we could run to Home Box (think distant relative of Home Depot) and pick up what we needed.  I also knew that Eric was busy with the visitors that were in town this week at John's office so I didn't want to ask him to drive me a couple of blocks when  I could walk it.

This is the part where planning comes into play.  If I am going to buy more than I can carry in my over the shoulder shopping bag I have to make sure that it can fit in the under basket of the stroller, which isn't very big. Before Zane and I leave the apartment we have to make sure that the stroller is empty of any non-essential things. Kinda like a mom's car, our stroller becomes a catch all over several days.  You'll find donut wrappers, extra shoes and jackets, a stray fry here and there, goldfish swimming loose, and water bottles.  Of course I always have to have diapers, wipes, packages of kleenex (for noses and public restrooms), Zane's water cup and sunglasses.

SO before we head out for a planned trip that will require extra space I strip it down and then we head out.  Route is important as well. Some of the sidewalks in our neighborhood are great, some are ok and then there are some that are just not even useable with a stroller.  I have to think about traffic at the time of day we are going and what the sidewalks are like on the way to my destination. I can get to Home Box a couple of ways, one of which has no sidewalks which would not be my first choice in the afternoon - early morning, no problem, there is no traffic.  So I chose the second route which includes all categories of sidewalk.  We have great sidewalk in front of our building and then there is about a block with no stroller friendly sidewalk so we are forced to walk in the street.  Now  if everyone followed the rules and only drove or parked their cars and scooters where they are supposed to, walking on the street would be no big deal....they do not.

There is a red line between the sidewalk and street that lets you know you should not park there, but they do.  I could be pushing the stroller on the street, dodging parked cars and scooters but still kind of off the road,  and someone might decide to parallel double park next to the sidewalk just beside someone else illegally parked which makes us walk even farther out into the street.  Yikes!  I'm even fine with that most of the time now, until a bus doesn't want to even move over an inch.

Once we survive that block and so far we always have, there is a nice stretch of sidewalk for the last block of the trip.  By nice I mean it's wide enough, even with the scooters parked on the sidewalk to get the stroller through, and there are only 2 places where the sidewalk has a step down and back up. And then we are there.  This particular day, when I loaded up, I even surprised myself with how much I could get in the stroller and carry home.  Luckily my companion was in a good mood , which is a huge plus.  He also knew that McDonald's was just around the corner.

This is what I bought!

With the stroller packed full, my shoulder bag with as much as I could carry and happy meal balanced on the handle bars we made our way back home.  We made it upstairs.  Unloaded our purchases and had a cheeseburger.  Repotted some orchids and had a nap! I miss my Expedition, but I'm enjoying my adventure.  Almost everyday I surprise myself with how I can adapt and make things work that otherwise I would probably not try.  Don't get me wrong when we get home I will most likely be seen cruising to Home Depot in some sort of SUV; but I also know that if I had too,  Zane and I could head out with our stroller and pick up what we need.

Orchids are everywhere in the apartment now.

With all the marble and the flowers it feels a little like a funeral home! 

I ran out of pots and had to use a mixing bowl....I like it. 

Reality of the situation....

I post on Facebook and instagram daily about the fun stuff we are doing and life in the city.  I talk about how we are adjusting and enjoying our adventure, and all of that is true.  The expressions on our faces are real, we ARE having a good time. But normal life does go on and living in a country where you do not speak the language and few people speak yours is challenging, actually it's hard. John goes to work everyday and Z and I are on our own.  Simple things like ordering meat at the deli counter cause me to sweat. If i want to have them slice me lunch meat first i have to convert the pounds or ounces to grams( thank goodness for google) and then have to try and convey that number to them.  I just learned this week that if my produce needs to be weighed at certain stores I have to take that to a separate cart before going to the register to get a label to checkout....I'm sure its posted somewhere but I can't read Mandarin, or maybe it's an understood rule, there are lots of those.  I've talked about before the multiple stores we have to shop to put a meal together which would be no big deal if the same store always stocked the same stuff.  It's not like walking into Walmart and knowing exactly where the beans are every time at ANY Walmart.

Then there are simple housekeeping and comfort issues that you might not think about that come with renting a furnished apartment in a country that values different things than we do.  We like Cozy.  We like to snuggle on the couch and read books or watch something on TV.  Our furniture is more of sit straight up comfortable.  Im not sure what the style is exactly, I mean who wouldn't love faux  alligator skin in gold with crystal buttons?  We bought a shaggy rug for the floor and that is now the softest place in the living room. We are waiting from some comfy chairs from home and plan to have this furniture moved out and purchase a more cozy couch.    And while I am talking floors....ours are white marble.  If you ever wonder how much hair you shed everyday, install white marble, you can do an accurate inventory daily!  And I will just add, white marble floors and a toddler, not a good mix! I have heard that come summertime I will appreciate the cold floors. Nearly every surface is shiny in our apartment, the doors, the walls, the cabinets....needless to say we have lots of tiny fingerprints  to clean up everyday. I'm not complaining, just sharing that it isn't all days at the park and awesome adventure, but there is real life happening here as well.

The social aspect isn't something that I thought would be a big deal to me. I am fairly solitary anyways.  I thought this would be much harder for John, leaving his work friends and just the social aspect of his job.  I have been able to connect with some people here and am making some friends, Zane makes that easy and necessary.  I have found a little network of expat moms.  I have come to realize that friendships will make this much easier, having a connection with someone else that totally understands what I am feeling.  Days when you don't hear another person speak that you understand can be very long.  John spends his day in an office where he is the only American.  He has a translator that does speak English, and some of the others speak some, but he doesn't have that social connection that he did in Texas.  He doesn't go out to lunch with his colleagues and download.  He misses that, and we have got to figure out some social outlet for him. Zane and I are awesome, but I think he probably needs a little something else from time to time.

As with any challenge, this can make a relationship stronger or it can tear it apart.  Luckily for us it is making us closer.  We depend a lot on each other and have learned to just listen when the other needs to vent or cry or be mad and not always try and fix it.  Not every situation can be fixed.  sometimes we just need to whine....like about why NO store stocks Dr Pepper on a regular basis!  I mean come on, I gave up Judge Judy and Diet Dr Pepper for this adventure, the least Taiwan could do is be consistent  and always have the same groceries at the same stores! Sorry, that was just an example....but seriously, WHY?  I've had a cold for several days now, that my loving, supportive husband gave to me, and when I called him at work today to complain that the one store that always has above mentioned product and that is within walking distance did not have a  single can today, he just listened. And when I was done complaining and assured him that I would most likely live the day, he said well I will call a couple of the other stores that carry it and see if anyone has a can and bring it home tonight.....and then added if you live that long. Support, along with sarcasm, make this work.

SO when you see our smiling faces on Facebook and Instagram know that we are very happy and enjoying this adventure.  But also remember us in your thoughts and prayers because  not everyday is toes in the sand.  Some days it takes a lot of energy to get up and put a smile on our faces and convince  ourselves that we made the right decision. But I know that God has a plan for us and for Mister Z and that part of that plan includes us being here.  We have each other and we are SO very lucky and blessed.  And if you find yourself with nothing to do some afternoon at 4:00, pour yourself a Diet Dr Pepper and watch Judge Judy because not everyone gets those luxuries!

Convenience Store Pancakes

Pancakes with butter and honey from Family Mart

It's funny what can turn a situation around.  For me this week it was pancakes from Family Mart.  Here convience stores are not connected to gas stations, they are on every block and offer a sampling of a small grocery with some hot food.

Jet lag for an adult is awful. Jet lag for a toddler is miserable.  Our normally happy Zane was NOT happy! We needed him to be awake when his body was telling him to sleep and he wanted to play when we were trying to sleep.  A few days in and we were living in a fog.  He wouldn't eat much and usually he will try anything, but he wanted nothing. We found a McDonald's and he ate a cheeseburger. McDonald's is McDonald's no matter where you are.

After several days in the hotel we moved into our apartment even though our stuff was still a week out. It was not a good day. Tired and crabby Laura is bad.  Tired and crabby Zane is worse.  Poor John didn't know what to say or do to make it better.  Everything frustrated me that day.  I knew it would be tough being here with the language barrier, but I hadn't thought about things like all the controls in our home are also in Chinese. DUH!!

So....John went for a walk to get some dinner and came back with a sack from Family Mart.  He unpacked it one item at a time.  Plastic cups so I could have ice in my drink.  Paper bowls, an ice cream bar in the flavors I love and a package of mini pancakes.  Zane eats pancakes for breakfast almost everyday, the frozen ones, we hadn't seen them anywhere.

I know it's silly. I know we will adjust to what is available and try new things and discover lots of things we didn't even know we liked. But in that moment those pancakes helped me see beyond the fog.  The tiny American and I are very lucky to be on this journey with someone who is so patient and kind.  There will be more days like this I am sure, we are creatures of habit, but together we will get through it.