Sickness and Apartment Searching

Thursday, we met Anthony for lunch at his office. There are several buildings in his office complex and there are many different places to eat in each one. There is also a beautiful water feature that runs in between the buildings with a lovely waterfall that Ashley and Anthony really enjoyed. We ate at Mos Burger again – seems to be one of our favorite fast food restaurants here to eat at. They also had this small area with sale items like clothing, kid’s toys (mainly Hello Kitty stuff), kitchen stuff, shoes, handbags, etc. It’s like a little flea market, but with fairly good quality stuff. They even have little booths with curtains to try stuff on. Anthony was completely weirded out by this, a little shopping area where people try stuff on right in his office complex. I purchased some undergarments here as they had a great deal – three for NT1000, whereas the department store prices are three or four times that much. We also got Ashley a really cute Hello Kitty shirt. The day before Anthony had bought her a coloring book and a puzzle at the same place. The girls and I took a taxi back to the hotel, and the taxi driver was crazy – he was driving 2 times the speed limit, which is pretty rare here since traffic usually prevents this. He had a weird rearview mirror, which kept flashing “speed limit” in red in the mirror. It also flashed a circle with a spoon, fork and knife and another circle with a camera in it. Very strange! I have no idea what any of that meant. He didn’t seem to care that he was speeding, that’s for sure. The girls and I took naps and Liz woke up with a pretty high fever – 102.1 F. I tried to make an appointment at the doctor we saw last time we were here, but they don’t have their office there anymore. So, the hotel staff said they have a clinic at the hotel. I took Liz down there and she saw a nurse who called a pediatrician to come to the hotel to take a look at here. The pediatrician said she has an ear infection, along with chest congestion and cough. They mixed up some powder medicine, which is awful to try and give her and gave us some antibiotic drops to put in her ear. We started giving her the medicine and all it seemed to do was make her more cranky. Friday was miserable for her, she cried and cried and wouldn’t nap, all she wanted to do was nurse, and that hasn’t been the norm for her. We looked again at the apartment across from the National Palace Museum yesterday afternoon and have realized how small it is and that it may not work for us. We went ahead with negotiations on the apartment though, seeing what the landlord would deduct. We were supposed to hear back today about the apartment and negotiations and have heard nothing. We stopped giving Liz the medicine after her last dose last night and she is in a much better mood today. Still cranky, but nothing like she was on the medicine. She’s still running a fever off and on so on Monday we will need to find a different doctor to take her to.
This morning we went and looked at another 4 apartments. We found one apartment that we really like, so we have cancelled the negotiations on the other one and are going to decide between two other ones. Very confusing, I know, even more confusing for us, since we have to go through so many different people and have people negotiating for us and waiting for people to get back to us. Hopefully, by next week, we will have an apartment contract. The one was saw today that we liked is in an area called “Shilin”. It doesn’t have amenities, such as pool, kids area, etc, but it’s a nice area, close to parks, close to science museum, close to shopping, fairly close to Anthony’s work and a great size, perfect for the girls and for having visitors. The other apartment we are thinking of is in an area called “DaAn”, is further from Anthony’s work, but it has kids area, pool, work out facility and is more expensive. So we have a few things to consider. It’s not easy to find places here and figure out where to live. This has been one of the most frustrating things so far.
Ashley is picking up on Chinese fairly quickly. She's even trying to teach Liz a thing or two. She tried to get her to say "cat" in Chinese today. Liz is also trying to speak more and said Moo while we were reading her a book with cows in it. They are still getting attention everywhere we go. I went for a long walk yesterday and at one point was stopped and asked if a woman could take a picture with Liz. Strange to think there's photos of our girls with strangers floating around, not to mention all the camera phones used to take pictures of them. Speaking of phones, we both now have mobile phones, but it's going to take us a while to figure them out since the instruction manuals are in Chinese! I'm hoping to find an English manual somewhere, although the brand of phone I chose is specifically a Chinese brand, so I don't know if there is one available. Anthony got a supernice Motorola phone. It's nice having a cell phone now, I don't feel so out of touch when I take the girls out alone.