It's Been a While!!

I know, I know... This blog has not been updated in ages. So much has happened and we've both been exhausted every day since we've been here! But, we are safe and sound and quite happy to be living in our luxurious pad that's almost completely devoid of furniture!! Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, massive kitchen, living room and dining room, and we have finally managed to get a couch. So now we have about 1% of the space covered :).

We're most definitely in the boonies. I didn't believe it when everyone told me, but yes, Taiwan actually has rural farmland with NOTHING in walking distance. Unbelievable to most who have visited Taiwan, but it does exist. There are plenty of (not yet fully grown) pineapples and guava plants thriving around us though.

We've also had a bit of excitement already - there was Super Typhoon Sepat, which just got our house a little soaked inside, and today, our elevator broke down with a friend and his child in it! And now we won't have the elevator for awhile, and lucky us, we live in the top floor of the seven-storey building. We've also received our boxes from our Indiana shipment, and the things that surprised us most as to what we treasure were:

- our wireless router (we can now both use the internet at the same time - whatever did people do before this invention?!!!)

- our travel coffee mugs (we no longer have to down our coffee in the morning AND we can refill during the day)

- our 8 boxes of books

- my toothbrush holder (I bought it about 2 years ago in Taipei, carried it with me to Toronto, then Ottawa, then to Mexico, and it finally flew back in the crate to Kaohsiung, where I have now finally cut off the tag to use it!)

- the one framed photo of Kris & me

- the 3-hole puncher

What I did wish I brought (and having lived here before, we should have known...) are hanging files and the crates they go in. THERE ARE NONE here.

Another exciting moment we've had thus far is the purchase of our first scooter. A whopping 50cc (think ~2000cc for a small Honda Civic) red (some argue that it's more of a fuchsia/pink) little thing that we bought second hand from a Canadian guy. We're dubbing it the "Milk Truck" as it can't go much further than the nearby village for... milk. We've also made friends with the scooter repair shop lady, who is, and I'm writing this "for the record", the FIRST Chinese person who has EVER said my Chinese was good!!!!

We are still on the look out for a car, but right now, there are two factors hindering the progress:
1) the rains and typhoons have flooded out many cars so there are no good ones left
2) we want a small, gas-efficient, preferably common-brand name (ie. Toyota) car for cheap - surprisingly, apparently many other people are looking for the same thing - who knew?!

So, this has been more of a ramble with no real sequence, but I wanted to keep everyone updated since we had been trying to up the visitor rating on our blog, and have failed to do our part to keep it up!!

Keep praying for us, and pray for our students!