Until We Meet Again...

Our last visit today. 

For some reason, I seem to be at a loss for words.  I don't know if I can really describe the thoughts I have tonight.  I also forgot to take pictures.  My mind was on leaving the whole time.  It's not natural for a Mother to leave her child behind.  Did I mention there's a typhoon headed toward Taiwan right now?  And I won't be here to make sure she's OK. 

On a better note, she said she loves me when we said our goodbyes and had a huge smile on her face.  I told her I loved her too and would see her again, soon.  At dinner tonight she gave me a card, and since I forgot to take any pictures of her, I took pictures of the card so you all could see it.

 

Me, coming here, was the right thing.  I'm so glad I listened.

Taipei Zoo

OK, I have to be honest, I'm exhausted!!  This post will be rather short, just for that reason :)

Alice and I picked up Calie at 11:00 am and headed for Taipei.  That consisted of a taxi ride to a bus stop, bus for 40 mins to a MRT (subway) Station.  Then 4 stops to Taipei Main Station, which is the main transportation hub in Taipei.  We met our friends, Brandon and Lidia, for lunch there and then Alice, Calie and I headed to the zoo.  Back on the MRT, 3 stops, get off, transferred trains, and another 9 stops to the zoo.  Then we walked the zoo for 2 1/2 hours and had to do the entire trip in reverse. 

The thing you have to know is that Alice lives in Taipei, not far from the zoo.  So this woman has been coming to Taoyuan, already three times, so that I could hang around with Calie.  That means she did the trip, FOUR times today with the taxi, bus, MRT routine.  The woman is a saint!  You could take a taxi the entire way, but she doesn't want to spend my money.  I reimburse her for the cost of each trip.  Incredible!  I was ready to just take a taxi back to Taoyuan, but she said, "Oh No, it costs $1000 NT each way".  That's $30 U.S. dollars.  What that woman did for me and Calie today was beyond the call!

We had a great time at the zoo.  It was hot, not because of the temp. so much, but the humidity was insane.  Calie hardly broke a sweat, but Alice and I were dying.  The pandas were sure cute!  I bought her a stuffed panda that was holding a heart the said "I Love You" on it.  She loved it!  Wouldn't put it down or even let me carry it for her.  BTW -- you know how most kids won't carry things all day, and they somehow get their moms to carry it?  Calie never once asked Alice or I to carry the stuffed panda, her umbrella or her jacket she had brought along.  Then I bought her a bottle of iced tea, and she carried that too.  We both offered to help her, but she just said she was fine.

I kind of forgot to take many pictures today, sorry!! 

 

 

The Girl's Got Spunk!

I've been trying to capture what a monkey Calie is and I think I may have got this time. See the first photo, below.  This is the fun girl I've been getting to know this week. :)

Today, because of the president of Taiwan visiting her orphanage, we didn't get the entire day, as we had hoped.  So, Alice took us to the TaiMall, the largest mall in Taiwan.  It's huge!!  We went to the arcade and I think Calie might be quite good at basketball!  We also played Air Hockey and a few other games.  Then we walked the mall.  They had a special Korean food event going on, on one of the floors, so the one picture is for Mindee - the lady with the pinkish dress, called a Hanbok, is a traditional Korean dress. 

I also took Alice and Calie out for dinner at an American restaurant in the mall - Three Baboons.  The food was quite good, and Calie loved the spaghetti and meatballs.  I think she'll do OK on American food!  They meal cost about $37 for the three of us.  Alice thought this to be very expensive.  I told her that the price is what we would expect to pay, so not to worry.  Calie was also very proud that she only spent $6 on her meal.  She's very frugal!  Alice told me later that Calie was upset with her, because Alice told her, not to ask me to buy anything.  Well, Calie was offended that Alice thought she had to be told this.  Alice said, "she's very smart, so she thought I was treating her like a baby or someone that was not thoughtful".  Alice said she apologized, and all was good after that.

Tomorrow is zoo day!   

 

 

OK - Now it's Hot Here!!

Wow was it hot today!  I took two showers and went through two sets of clothes.  Before today, it had been in the mid to upper 70's, cloudy with occasional drizzle.  Today the sun came out and so did the humidity!  It was in the upper 80's, but with a 72% humidity, the" feels like" temp. was 96.

I decided this morning to be adventerous.  I get up about 6 am each day (that's as long as the Melatonin will keep me asleep), and I didn't have to meet with Calie until 4:50 pm.  That's a long day in a hotel room, so I took out my Taiwan guide book and found that there is a very old town not far from here and a huge waterfall.  Well, I love waterfalls, so I went and asked how to get there.  They told me to take a taxi, but I knew a 40 min. ride in a taxi wasn't going to be cheap.  I told them I wanted to take the bus.  They gave me directions, but said to get to the waterfall I'd have to change buses in Dasi (the old city) and to be careful, because there was only one bus back at 1:00 pm to Dasi from the waterfall. 

OK, well, I did fine getting Dasi, which there are a bunch of photos I'll post, but after finding the bus station to Xiao Wulia, I chickend out.  A nice young guy (possibly the only English speaking person in Dasi) walked me to the bus station, and asked about getting back, and again, he warned me not to miss the bus back, because there are no taxis and no hotels for you to stay in there.  It's very remote.  He asked me what I was doing in Dasi without being able to speak Mandarin.  I just told him we Americans are a little crazy sometimes.  He thought that was very funny, but shook his head in agreement.  I didn't want to miss my meeting with Calie, so I decided not to risk missing the bus!  I got on the bus back to Taoyuan. :)

Tonight's visit went very well, again.  I brought her KFC, which she ate half of, and said she wanted to share the rest with her roomates.  They LOVED the dried Cherries I brought with me from Traverse City the day before!  She said they all thought they were candy.

I also decided to tell her about her new American name to see if she was excepting of it.  It took her a couple of tries to say "Calie", but she said she liked it with a big smile on her face.  Whew!  I was wondering what we were going to do if she didn't.  She also tried to say "DeMann", but that one was tough for her.  That's going to take some practice!

Enjoy the photos!  Taiwan doesn't have any FDA, so you'll get a kick out of the raw meat hanging outside in the heat!

Day Two with Calie

Hey Grace, the last photo is for you!  If you'll notice, she is wearing a Philadelphia shirt!  I told her, her Jie Jie (older sister) goes to college in Philadelphia. "OH!" she said. I don't think she knew what her shirt said before I told her.  

Today was fun!  Started with a skype chat with my family back home, then lunch with friends here in Taiwan, Brandon and Lidia Chang.  We went to a famous Japanese buffet called "Shin Yeh".  It was very good and we had a good time together.  We forgot to take a picture at the restaurant, so no photo of that, sorry!

Later, after they dropped me off, I went to one of the millions of 7 Elevens here in Taiwan to buy Calie dry noodles for dinner.  That's what she requested.  So, after showing the clerk the name she had written down for me, I picked up the noodles and a drink for her and headed over to NRCH.

Today we had the entire time, about 2 hours, all to ourselves.  After a greeting of big hugs, they left us in a room together with an electronic handheld translator and closed the door.  I'm really glad I brought some posters to color!  She loved the posters and we tried using the translator to talk to each other.  We decided rather quickly the translator wasn't much good at translating either way, and gave it the thumbs down.  We did much better with charades!  The translator turned out to be good for games, however,  We played on that for a bit together and then she found the drawing program.  It had a little stylus with it and she drew a heart on the screen and wrote, in English, "I love you".    The time flew by!  She never even ate her noodles.

When our time was up, I walked back to the main gate and there were quite a few boys and a couple of women there.  The boys started to try out their English skills on me and I answered when they said something I could understand.  Calie had gone back to her room to put the posters there.  She came running back to me, and then the boys wanted to know how I knew her.  The woman standing there had some decent English, so I was able to get them to understand that I was going to be her MaMa.  The woman was all excited about this, as were the boys.  The woman, who knew Calie, gave her a hug and said something to her in Mandarin.  Whatever she said, Calie was really proud.  She got a big smile on her face and shook her head yes, back to the comment.  The boys all seemed very interested, but somewhat jealous, as I was warned they might be.  Then, however, the woman started asking about our family and I told her Calie would have two older sisters and an older brother.  I tried to explain that Cameron was gettig married, but she didn't have enough English to understand this. 

The guard had called a taxi for me, and while we were standing there, the garbage truck came.  The garbage truck, sounded like an ice cream truck.  It plays happy music and then I witnessed the funniest thing, everyone, literally everyone, started walking out of the buildings and throwing their garbage bags in the back of the truck.  I've never seen anything like it.  The garbage truck calls the people to bring out their garbage.  My taxi was right behind the garbage truck, so it took us a bit to leave.  Calie gave me more hugs and said goodbye.  I jumped in the taxi and we followed it down the road, as more people came out of their homes with garbage bags.  The taxi driver was clearly upset about the delay.  Haha it was quite funny.

I'm back in my room now.  I broke down and went to the McDonalds across the street for dinner.  It took me multiple trys to get salt for my fries, and I was the entertainment!  They kept giving me packets of things, pepper, sugar, sweet and sour sauce and I kept saying "no" and trying to make salt shaker motions.  That got great laughs!  Finally, he gave me a white packet that looked like sugar, but I took it and said "maybe"?  They must not put salt on their fries, but I was successful!  It was salt. 

The other photos I posted are of the sitting area in front of Starbucks (I visit daily), the scooters that are everywhere and the other photo is her orphange grounds - Northern Region Children's Home.  The building near the top left of the photo is the building I have been meeting with her in.  I'm standing at the front gate taking the photo and to the right of the photo is the playground area.

Until tomorrow - Zaijian!  (Good bye in Mandarin)

Here she is...

Wow!  Where to start, I don't know.  What a day it was.  I went from waking up this morning at 6:00 am, with major a panic/anxiety attack.  What was I doing, by myself, half way around the world?  Emailed my husband 3 times telling him that maybe this was a mistake that I came here alone.  What if things didn't go well?  Rick reminded me that this was a God thing, so all would be OK.  After the multiple emails, I decided I needed to pull it together and what better way to do that, than do my devotions.  So, what did God tell me through Beth Moore, today... I have an authority problem.  What I mean is that I trusted myself to plan this trip, but I wasn't trusting God's authority to finish the plan.  I needed to submit to his authority and have confidence that he wouldn't send Rick and I on this journey again, without having things under control.  OK, Lord, I will trust you. 

At 2:30, I hopped in the taxi and headed to the Northern Region Children's Home.  Got there in about 20 mins, so I was a bit early.  Alice, the social worker from Chung Yi was supposed to meet me at the gate at 3:00.  I kind of stand out here, so I wasn't able to wait without questions as to why I was standing at the guard shack.  A younger guy came up to me after one of the non-English speaking people motioned him over, because he did speak English.  I told him why I was there and he went back to the building and came out about 2 mins later with a rather young looking woman.  That woman turned out to be Yun-Qing's social worker.  They told me to follow them, so I decided  I better just follow and Alice would have to find me.

We walked into another building up the hill and into the  lobby area.  The young guy told me to wait in the conference room, but before I could walk into it, I saw Yun-Qing peek around the corner of the door next to the conference room.  She got a big smile on her face and started to giggle.  She didn't immediately come up to me, but I waved at her and went into the room.  She was right on my heels when I turned around.  She said Nihao and I started to cry and little and reached out to touch her shoulder as I returned the Nihao.  She started giggling again, and the young guy started to translate for us.  He told her for me that I was so excited to meet her and how very nervous I was.  I could tell she was actually happy that I was nervous, as she realized it was a big deal for me to meet her and saw the tears rolling down my face.  He told her I was crying because I was so happy; she just started to laugh some more and walked over and hugged me really tight!  I felt like I had just been part of a mircle.  I had met her for less than 5 mins. and she was ready to be my daughter!  Thank you, Jesus! 

The next 3 hours passed in a blurr.  Alice came in shortly afterwards and we all sat down in the room and started to talk.  Alice's English is excellent (lived in Canada for 12 years) so communication was not a problem. I gave Yun-Qing a shirt I bought at the mall today and a bracelet with half of a heart.  The heart says Little Sister and I told her that Lily has the other half that says Big Sister.  She thought that was pretty cool.  Yun-Qing then took me on a tour of the grounds of NRCH and we played on their playground for awhile.  Then we had dinner together, all three of us, back in the conference room.  After that, we talked some more, until about 5:45 when we walked back to the main building where her social worker from NRCH was.  They called a taxi for us and Yun-Qing walked us to the gate to say good bye. 

Yun-Qing is a happy girl!  Her social worker asked her is she was happy while I was there and she said she was very happy!  I would describe her as a monkey.  She's full of energy and reminded me of Lily, big time.  Talk, talk, talk...Laugh, laugh, laugh.  Once Alice and I were talking to each other, which evidently bothered her, because she told Alice that we had forgotten to include her.  Hahaha.  She wanted my attention and was clearly enjoying being the center of attention.

What a great day it turned out to be!  The only way the day could have gone better is if I would have chosen to trust.God's plan.  I think I'll make that choice much earlier, tomorrow!





 

I think I need to become a vegetarian for the next week!

I'm sitting in my hotel right now, deciding what to do for the day, before my flight leaves LAX later today.  I've got plenty of time so, I decided to check in on my flight.  It's on-time for now, but I found the "Meal Choice" tab.  Cool, I thought, I can pick my meal, now.  Well, my options appear to be "Traditional Wattle Neck Soft Shelled Turtle with Shiitake Mushrooms and Red Dates" or "Garlic Frog Legs with Pottage Spinach and Peer Muffin".  Hmmmm, what to do???  I guess it's going to have to be the vegetarian meal "Fried Apricot Mushroom with Three Cup Sauce".  This is the only negative about flying with EVA Air based out of Taipei - Your meals options are always Taiwanese!  Hahaha!

No Skype this past Friday :(

We were supposed to have our first Skype chat this past Friday, as I mentioned in the previous post.  Well, we waited for 1 1/2 hrs. and never got  a call.  We were pretty bummed, but figured there was an issue with the date and time.

Our adoption coordinator, Fei, did contact them and we heard today that they had tried to invite me from Skype, but they thought I hadn't responded.  We never got the invite.  Fei is going to try for this weekend, before I leave for Taiwan.  We both think it would be nice for Yun-Qing to meet us all on Skype before I show up at NRCH (Northern Region Children's Home - her orphanage).

If we do end up having a Skype chat, I will post an update then.  If not, I'll post once I'm in route to Taiwan!  So excited and nervous all at the same time!

Round Two - Here we go again!

Hello Everyone!  If you're reading this blog, you are already aware that we are in the midst of our second adoption!  Back near the end of Feburary, God sent a photo of this beautiful girl to my inbox.  Not knowing if this was anything more than feeling, I brought the photos and information to my husband, Rick, for him to look it all over.  Much to my surprise, he was willing, so the praying began.  Well, it didn't take long and it was clear that God wasn't yet finished with our family!  We will be adding on to our family Yun-Qing Zeng.  She is currently 11 years old and is living at the Northern Region Children's Home in Taoyuan, Taiwan.  Only 45 mins. from our first adopted daughter's orphanage in Taipei.  Lily's orphanage, Chung Yi, is handling all the paperwork for NRCH and we hope to have her home within the next 6 months!

I will be visiting Yun-Qing in Taoyuan in the next two weeks and we have our first Skype session this week Friday the 7th of Sept.  Check back for more updates next week and we would ask for your prayerful support over the next weeks and months of waiting.