Mark and I have been married for over 29 years. We don’t worry much about the legal aspects of marriage except during tax season. Spiritually, marriage is a lasting commitment of energy, love, and friendship between a man, a woman, and God. The legal parts are really just the undertone. In fact, we were so unconcerned about the legalese, that after going through the proper channels to get our marriage license and have it filed with the appropriate governmental official, we never even bothered to get a certified copy of said document. We never needed it. People took us at our word that we were married. After a number of years and children, we didn’t even have to give our word, we just looked married…to each other.

Well that all changed with our moving to Taipei. In order to receive alien residence status, and Mark and I have always wanted to be designated as aliens, we had to prove that we were in fact married. It is a law designed to keep young women from other Asian countries from being imported as maids, sex slaves or whatever. There are also other indignities to be suffered through, but none so fun as proving that we were married.

Step one: We realized that we had never acquired an official notarized copy of our license, so we had to obtain one from Marshall County, Iowa. A few days and a few dollars, later, the beautifully designed government certificate arrived with all its official stamps and seals.

Step two: After arriving in Taipei, we had to present ourselves to the American Interest Center. What happens here is not a knock on the Taiwanese people; it is a US government facility. We got there about 11:45 in the morning. We turned over our cell phones and laptops to security and then went through the metal detector. It took a while since I made the mistake of wearing a blouse with metal buttons. When we cleared security, the guard apologized to us about the long wait we would have. We got upstairs to the room we were directed to. Chairs lined the walls and every one was occupied. It was 11:55. The solitary American clerk ignored us until noon then cheerfully announced that it was lunch time and we would just have to wait until 1:30. Take a seat. We waited.

Step three: Lunch was finally over. We were in a line now that snaked into the hall. Fortunately we were at the front. The clerk asked what we wanted. We said that we needed to get the documents to prove we were married. We had to go to another line to pay $30 American before we could proceed. We paid, we waited. A few minutes later we were called to another window. Mark had to raise his right hand and affirm that he was married to me. Then they stamped the form and sent us away. The wait was over two hours but watching Mark swear that he was married to me was priceless. As we left I told him that this was even better that a ceremony to reaffirm our vows.

One time zone artifact Kathleen and I are really enjoying is our Daughter Sarah calling in our morning (her evening from the previous day) asking if tomorrow (our today) is going to be a good day. Sarah has created her own sure fire fortune telling method.

Hi, this time it is Mark writing. We have been here exactly one week and neither of us has written to the blog. Sorry for our pitiful performance. Suffice it to say that moving is a bit more consuming of time and emotional energy than one really ever anticipates. That combined with moving to another country where you don't speak the language and well, it certainly gets interesting. If you think of 100 details then there are 500 to address.

The people in Taiwan are very kind and helpful but face it, we are a bit clueless from time to time and don't speak mandarin.

OK what all has happened.... on day two we met up with a friend from our home town who was visiting in Taipei. What a reminder of how small the world is. We went out to eat Thai food, since Thai and friends is a bit of a family tradition founded in our California days it was a good treat.

Speaking of Family, by having an internet phone service that allows people from home to call us on a local number we are actually enjoying more time talking to family than we did from our USA home. That is really an interesting commentary on how much we all take the people and things near to us for granted. Now that we are a half a world and 13 hours time zone separated it is much more important for all to stay in contact. We are both calling our family and being contacted by them more then we did while living nearby. There is a lesson there which I will endeavor to remember.

OK back to the adventure. We have an apartment but no furniture yet. My company wants to rent furnished and we aligned for an apartment and furniture. One small detail, the company decided to save money by waiting to fund the appt lease so now we wait for furniture. Since we are in a first rate hotel in an upgraded room this is really a velvet cage. No real complaints for sure, but no matter how nice a hotel is (and this one is GREAT) it is still not our own space. We are hoping to have furniture this Friday and Kathleen spent the day today getting herself around this bustling city picking up the odds and ends one needs to set up a household like a can opener and some clothes hangers (exotic shopping adventure huh?).

In the last week I have been spending a huge amount of time to do the things it takes to become an official alien. While many have wondered if I'm from another planet this is the first time I've actively tried to achieve official recognition of my alien nature. Many things require this documentation so I have to make sure it gets done. We can't get local phone service, a local bank account, and we were even told we could not get cell phones until I had an ARC. Fortunately, we were able to negotiate around the cell phone rules and now have a way to make local phone calls.

We have done a few fun things too. Last Sunday afternoon we took the train to the end of the line to a port town called Danshui. It is at the mouth of the Danshui River where it empties into the China Sea. When we left to go there we did not know what a big weekend destination this is and went to look it over and see the sunset over the sea. When we got to Danshui it seemed like all of the population of Taiwan was there with the same idea. It was really cool to enjoy the hustle and bustle of the waterfront. We will definitely be back. When I told some work associates what we did they were shocked we struck out to Danshui on our own. I'm sure blessed to have such an adventurous spouse.

Other random thoughts... last night we went to a Japanese BBQ restaurant. They put a big bucket of charcoal in a recess in the table and then you cook your own food. It is a chance to order lots of small tastes of different foods. Kathleen pointed out that we might have to be a bit careful when we have visitors from the USA as to not shock them with my seafood BBQ tastes. This warning came when I was cooking smelt on the BBQ. For the uninitiated Smelt are big minnows cooked and eaten whole. Kathleen and I reflected that since we had grown up in an agricultural background we had a bit more experience than our offspring in knowing that food comes from animals not just the supermarket.

OK I'm about written out and I'll get out of the Blog and leave some stories for Kathleen to tell.