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.