Ni Hau

Well, another month has come and gone!

To those of you who do read my website from time to time, apologies that there has not been any updates lately.

So I hope all of you are doing well. We are all carrying on regardless....

Rory arrived last Tuesday, the boys were very excited for him to get here, and he got here in one piece (even though he left his passport and airticket in the trolley when he went to the bathroom at Johannesburg Airport - lucky for him someone found it and handed it in!), but he is here, safe and sound, and adjusting to the "new" life.

We went to Taitung this last weekend by train. We were to go to register for the adoption on Friday, however when we arrived we were told the birthmother hadn't arrived and also they needed more documents for us so unfortunately we couldn't register for the adoption, so it is delayed a little longer. When we do finally register it will take about 2 to 4 weeks to get a court date and then the judge takes a month or so to make his decision and then it becomes final, so we are nearly there! I guess the governement departments are the same all over the world! No one is in a big hurry to get anything done....

Our stay in Taitung was um..... interesting... Deana had organised an apartment for us, which she had warned us was bare, except for a few beds. Thankfully she lent us some sleeping bags and blankets (we couldln't lug all our stuff with us, we were already quite heavy with luggage including the bag with the cat and all her stuff).

We arrived in Taitung at around 6:30pm and Deana and Luke fetched us from the station and took us straight to the apartment. We unpacked and then took a walk around to find dinner. The kids got hotdogs from the 7-11 and J, Rory and I had "Taiwanese Hamburgers" which is a pastry type outer with ground pork mince (almost like a samoosa) inside. It wasn't too bad - they guys enjoyed it, and we also had like a pancake filled with ground pork and veggies - again not too bad.

Friday morning we went to the courts to register, only to be told that we couldn't register like I mentioned above.

We went back home and we all took a walk around the little town. Friday night for dinner we found a little restuarant called Paspi which sold pasta and pizza - it was actually quite good. We also ordered cheese fries (which I assumed would be french fries with melted cheese or a cheese sauce - no way, it was actually these little potato balls filled with cheese - weird!). Oh and the pizza were only about the width of the top of a coffee mug - so we skipped the pizza!

On Saturday Deana from Morninglight Children's Home had a fundraising flea market (not a familiar concept with the Chinese), anyway we spent the day there at the Church, ended up buying lots of books (english) and some toys for the boys and our little princess and some delicious cup cakes.

We decided to leave and come back home on Saturday night because we really hadn't slept so well the last few nights - I didn't mention that there were only 4 single beds and 2 single matresses, so Rory slept on one bed in a room and the boys were going to sleep on their own in the sleeping bags in the other room and then J and I were going to sleep on the other single bed with a matress with Asia-Faith in the other room - only it didn't last long and all the boys eventually ended up walking through to our room and of course there is no space for them on the bed so I ended up having to move bedding and try and get everyone a space between us, not to mention the mosquitoes - we were being eaten alive, so Rory and J ended up going to the 7-11 for mozzie coils at around 3am! Then Friday night I decided to just make one big bed right at the beginning of the night and everyone went to sleep together from the start! Although still very uncomfortable and the mozzies were still attacking! So we were looking forward to getting home. So Saturday night we caught a train back home. It was sooo good to sleep in our own bed again.

I had to take Asia-Faith to the doctors a week ago to have her injections, but she had a cough so the doctor checked her out and said she has Asthma and was wheezing and that her lungs had spasms??? anyway, they put her on a kind of nebulizer thing for a few minutes and then gave me medicine for her. I took her for a check up again yesterday (Monday), and the doctor says she is fine! Praise God!!! I have to continue the medicine for the next week though, but all is well with her! Let me tell you the trip to the doctors here is no walk in the park! It is not like you phone your doctor, make an appointment and then go when it is time - no this is like going to Addington or McCords - you go, take a number and sit and wait!!!! and then wait some more!!! Fortunately I was with a girl from Church (to translate for me, although the doctor ended up being english thankfully!), anyway this girl Amy knew the nurses there and managaed to get us in after waiting for about an hour or so! Then once you have seen the doctor you go to pay for your meds (take another ticket and wait), and then go fetch the meds from the dispensary - yep, another ticket and another wait!!! The only "up" side to this is that because Asia-Faith is Aborigine she has free medical, which is great! I only had to pay NT$60 which isn't even R20!!!

Talking about Aborigine, last Saturday (21 April) we met up with Molly and Matt and Matt's mom Kim, who are from the USA, and who I met on my yahoo adoption group, and we all went to Sandimen - the Aborigine Cultural Centre. It was an interesting experience to say the least! We had been once before (before we had Asia-Faith), and we also went with a friend who lives here. This time we went on our own so we had to find it on our own! What fun!!!

We caught a bus to Pingtung and Matt and Molly's train arrived at 10:30 am (they were comming from Tainan), then from there we caught a bus to Sandimen (although not to the centre), then we had to try and find a way to the centre. We found a taxi, but then had to try and explain where we were wanting to go! Well, we had to make a call or 2 to some friends who explained to the taxi driver where we wanted to go - we eventually made it there! We had a wonderful time watching the show and looking around at all the souvenier (sp?) shops! It meant so much more to us now that we have our own little Ami Aborigine daughter! Matt and Molly were here in Taiwan to fetch their little boy Malone who they have adopted, and he is from the Paiwan tribe. We didn't get to meet him in person unfortunately as they were only fetching him on the Monday, but we have seen pictures of him and he is absolutely beautiful! So we all had a wonderful time together, and it was just so awesome to finally meet these friends after chatting for so long in cyberspace!

Well, I think I had better end off here for now, I am sure I have got you all caught up on our news!

Please drop us a line sometime to let us know how you are all doing - we really do miss all our family and friends!

~* Peace and Love *~