Time goes by...
Another weekend has gone by...not much to report. We saw three apartments at the end of last week, one was pretty horrible, the others were so-so. We are now negotiating on one from the beginning of last week that we saw near the Hyatt, in an area called Hsin Yi, along with looking at one other, possibly two, tomorrow near Anthony's work. All of our stuff that we shipped over is here, sitting in storage, just waiting for it's home. We will be very excited to have a home, just hoping we can find something that will keep us all happy for at least a year.
We rode the MRT on Saturday over the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, which is one of the major touristy things to do here. It's absolutely beautiful with amazing structural elements, amazing grounds with sculpted gardens and big fishponds with koi fish to feed. The girls had fun at the fishpond throwing food in. Liz just wanted to jump in with them and go swimming. After the visit to CKS, we walked over to the Handicraft Mart, where most people buy their touristy items. They have four floors of things made here in Taiwan to buy. Anthony bought me a gorgeous silver ring with red stone in it for our anniversary. I get to pick it up tomorrow since I had to have it sized, I'm very excited! The Handicraft Mart has wall hangings, scultptures, scrolls, jade carvings, wooden toys, clothes and a ton of other stuff. It was fun looking around, although I'd like to visit sometime when every other second I don't have to say "Don't touch that", "Put that down"! For lunch that day, we actually ate in the basement of a hospital. There was a hospital in between CKS and the Handicraft Mart and they had a big food court in the basement, with Mos Burger and other Chinese foods. We ate at a chicken place with rotisserie chicken, it was pretty good. We also walked by convenient stores, personal hygeniene stores (like Walgreens), a bookstore and a supermarket - all in the hospital itself. Pretty interesting!
Saturday night was our date night. The girls stayed at the hotel with Linda, our regular babysitter now, and we took off to see "The Bourne Supremacy" - very good movie :) We really enjoyed it. Then we went to a restaurant called "Marco Polo" here in Taipei at a hotel. It's on the 34th floor (or somewhere up there) - so you can see out over the whole city. It was very pretty. The restaurant itself was ok - you know how it is - a really nice fany restuarant with really nice fancy dishes that are really small and taste very different. Wasn't the best food, but with that view, it was a really nice date dinner. We got back to the room and the girls were both asleep and had been fairly good. Linda said Liz didn't want to go to sleep, she cried quite a bit. Oh well, at least someone else got to experience our sleep routine with her :) And she was paid to do it!
Sunday was a restful day for me, I pretty much laid in bed all day, relaxing, reading and watching TV. Anthony watched the girls most of the day and took them out occasionally so I could be alone. It was nice, something I definitely needed!
Not much else going on - even over in another country, it can be quite boring :) We are getting used to living here, sometimes we even forget we are in a foreign country. Even when we are in a crowd, not able to understand anyone around us, it's becoming normal for us. Ashley is picking up on the language every day - she's now able to count to 5 in Chinese, say thank you, your welcome, hello, see you later, dog, cat and other various words. I, on the other hand, haven't really learned much yet. Maybe soon I'll start getting serious about learning the language :)
We rode the MRT on Saturday over the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, which is one of the major touristy things to do here. It's absolutely beautiful with amazing structural elements, amazing grounds with sculpted gardens and big fishponds with koi fish to feed. The girls had fun at the fishpond throwing food in. Liz just wanted to jump in with them and go swimming. After the visit to CKS, we walked over to the Handicraft Mart, where most people buy their touristy items. They have four floors of things made here in Taiwan to buy. Anthony bought me a gorgeous silver ring with red stone in it for our anniversary. I get to pick it up tomorrow since I had to have it sized, I'm very excited! The Handicraft Mart has wall hangings, scultptures, scrolls, jade carvings, wooden toys, clothes and a ton of other stuff. It was fun looking around, although I'd like to visit sometime when every other second I don't have to say "Don't touch that", "Put that down"! For lunch that day, we actually ate in the basement of a hospital. There was a hospital in between CKS and the Handicraft Mart and they had a big food court in the basement, with Mos Burger and other Chinese foods. We ate at a chicken place with rotisserie chicken, it was pretty good. We also walked by convenient stores, personal hygeniene stores (like Walgreens), a bookstore and a supermarket - all in the hospital itself. Pretty interesting!
Saturday night was our date night. The girls stayed at the hotel with Linda, our regular babysitter now, and we took off to see "The Bourne Supremacy" - very good movie :) We really enjoyed it. Then we went to a restaurant called "Marco Polo" here in Taipei at a hotel. It's on the 34th floor (or somewhere up there) - so you can see out over the whole city. It was very pretty. The restaurant itself was ok - you know how it is - a really nice fany restuarant with really nice fancy dishes that are really small and taste very different. Wasn't the best food, but with that view, it was a really nice date dinner. We got back to the room and the girls were both asleep and had been fairly good. Linda said Liz didn't want to go to sleep, she cried quite a bit. Oh well, at least someone else got to experience our sleep routine with her :) And she was paid to do it!
Sunday was a restful day for me, I pretty much laid in bed all day, relaxing, reading and watching TV. Anthony watched the girls most of the day and took them out occasionally so I could be alone. It was nice, something I definitely needed!
Not much else going on - even over in another country, it can be quite boring :) We are getting used to living here, sometimes we even forget we are in a foreign country. Even when we are in a crowd, not able to understand anyone around us, it's becoming normal for us. Ashley is picking up on the language every day - she's now able to count to 5 in Chinese, say thank you, your welcome, hello, see you later, dog, cat and other various words. I, on the other hand, haven't really learned much yet. Maybe soon I'll start getting serious about learning the language :)
posted by The Armstrongs at
8/30/2004
