Yangmingshan

Always so much to say about our first few days in a new country...

Our house is great, very spacious, huge backyard.  We do have to be very diligent about cleaning to keep the ants and cockroaches away.  There are also several poisonous snakes in Taiwan and lots of stray dogs.  We are living in an area called Yangmingshan, which is on the mountain on the north side of Taipei. It is beautiful up here, a little cooler than the city, tons of hiking and views (see picture below) and hot springs. We live in a neighborhood that used to be U.S. military housing and is still used by State, so all of our immediate neighbors are also Americans. We've never lived like this before, where we just send the kids outside, there are tons of great families and we are immediately part of the community. The kids love it!!

J and I have started orientation for our training. Always tons of bureaucratic check-in stuff, plus all the set-up of phones, Internet, currency exchange, grocery shopping, etc.  There are about 25 students in the language training, and the teachers took us on two bus tours of different parts of the city.  Next week there are language evaluations and class starts officially on the 19th.  Of course, all of this is possible because J's parents, Tom & Karin, came with us and can watch the kids while we run around.  Now the big challenge is figuring out care for the kids after they leave.

Our plan was to send the older kids to local school.  We had emailed the school several months ago, and they said to just register when we got here.  Well, when we went into the school, they told us the kindergarten was full.  Hmm.  We called other local schools--same story.  Back to square one.  We talked with other families in the neighborhood and decided to apply for the Taipei European School which seems to have a stronger Mandarin program than the American school.  Usually they are full at this point, but when we called they said they had a few spots, so we submitted the forms, and we'll see if they take the girls.  As for the boys, we're still exploring options (day care, nanny, etc.)