The Move
Editor's Note: This is being posted by the dutiful husband, since the poor sweet wife at home is still without internet access, and probably will be for another agonizing (for her primarily, but listening to her complain about it, it's agonizing for me, too :) ) week or so. Again, if you need to tell her anything, you can always write me for now. She wrote this post on her laptop, and gave it to me via USB keydrive at work... So, without further ado, on to the post!
What a blur the past couple of days have been. Last Friday, I went to a store called Hola, which is similar to a Bed, Bath and Beyond (although not as nice stuff), to look for bedding for our apartment beds. It is a bit confusing here since the sizes of beds can really vary. Along with the normal variety you find in the States of King, Queen, Full and Twin, here they also have Taiwanese King (shorter than US), Double and Single, all of which we have in the apartment. It is hard to find the right sizes and I’ve found that you have to go to several different stores to find what you need. Anthony met me at Hola and I was pretty confused by the time we finished looking - so much so that we didn’t buy anything. We headed over to RT Mart to see if we could find Ashley some bedding – she specified that she wanted a Hello Kitty room so we were trying to find a Hello Kitty bedspread. We did manage to find one at RT Mart, of course. It’s definitely not one I’d have preferred, all cute and pink with small Kitty’s all over, no, it’s pink with one HUGE Hello Kitty in a bathing suit on the beach, with lots of bright colors on it. But, she likes it and since she was complaining that she didn’t want to move out of the hotel, we’d do just about anything to make sure she liked her new room. By this time, we were all exhausted and knew we’d have a long day moving on Saturday so we headed back to the hotel for our last night of luxury living.
We packed all our hotel stuff up on Saturday morning and a small moving van, along with Dories (DTZ rental agent) and her husband, moved us over to the apartment. We had Dories order us some pizza for lunch since we had no groceries at the apartment. After lunch, we got Liz down for a nap and I headed out (in the rain) to the Wellcome store to pick up some groceries. Wellcome is a chain grocery store here found just about everywhere. The one nearest us is a few blocks away and is pretty small. I found some basics, milk, yogurt, grapes, some drinks…whatever I could fit in the backpack. Since I couldn’t remember if we had shipped pots and pans, I didn’t buy anything that would have to be cooked. I headed back to the apartment where the moving men had shown up and were unpacking all of our shipped items. It was a MESS! But, it was so nice to see all our stuff, mainly the toys, it was like Christmas for the girls, they were so excited! Part of Ashley’s day was also spent sitting in front of the MASSIVE TV in the living room, with drool coming out of her mouth, watching her movies on the big screen. I think she must have thought she was in a theatre, she really enjoyed watching them (and staying out of our way :) ) We managed to unpack most of the boxes so the movers could take them with so we wouldn’t have to deal with it. Of course, the one item that can’t have a value put on it was broken in the move, and that’s the chalkboard easel that Anthony built for the girls. It snapped in half (just the stand, not the chalkboard itself). One other item, a small wooden letter (H) that I had painted for Ashley’s room (spells out Ashley) was broken. The movers are taking both items to a “craftsman” to fix, so that’s cool. It also turns out that they shipped a dresser that we had specified for storage. Thank goodness it actually fits in Liz’s room. We may keep it for additional storage or attempt to sell it, since it’s a cheapy dresser from Target and not necessary to keep if we don’t need it. We also now know what we should have shipped and what we could have stored, but we knew that would happen at some point. It is nice to have our stuff though, mainly the toys and the clothes.
After we tried to make sense of most of the stuff, we had a babysitter come over to the apartment, her name is Miss Woo, and she only speaks Chinese! She came highly recommended from some friends and they helped set it up since they had asked us to join them for dinner. Beth and Ingo had tickets to a jazz dinner at the Hyatt (of all places!) and so the Miss Woo came over while we were giving the girls baths and took right over – she got them both out and dressed for bed. Liz was crying, not wanting me to leave, she’s become a bit clingy lately, since she’s at the separation anxiety stage. But, we made it out the door, with Liz screaming and Ashley quite happy. We joined Beth and Ingo and had a very enjoyable evening having dinner and listening to a live jazz band play. We had Ingo call and check on the girls after about an hour and half and Miss Woo said they were both good and hadn’t been crying. Ashley had wanted some food and had eaten whatever she could find in the fridge. We got home (yes, home :) ) at about 11:00 pm and both girls were sound asleep. Miss Woo said she had no problems getting either of them to bed, although Ashley did stay up later, until about 9:30. And then Miss Woo even picked up as much as she could in the living room, cleaned the kitchen and vacuumed. It was so nice to come home to a fairly clean apartment and totally unexpected since we still had boxes about and stuff laying around everywhere.
Sunday was another day of running around trying to find stuff we need and make some room by putting away stuff. It was a long day and I can’t even remember all that we did that day (even though today is only Tuesday!). After our shopping trips, we did manage to have our bedding completely taken care of, along with a few towels and some bathroom rugs. So, that was good. After the long day, we decided to eat dinner at Chili’s – of course, where else would we eat? After Chili’s, I remembered that Anthony needed to go by the Hyatt to settle our account since we hadn’t done that after checking out on Saturday. He took Ashley with him while I walked around Misukoshi, looking in the grocery store. I didn’t buy much there due to the fact that almost everything is in Chinese and is Chinese food, so I didn’t know what most of it was. I did notice a section of imported pastas from Italy and some Hunt’s Spaghetti sauce, so once we have some pots and pans, that will be our first homecooked meal in the apartment. Anthony met up with us and we took a cab back to the apartment. The cab dropped us off, then took off, just like normal, but a few seconds after he turned the corner, Anthony started freaking out…he’d left his wallet in the cab! And due to the fact that we’d been shopping at Costco, which only takes cash, he had quite a bit of cash in it. We didn’t know the cab number or even the cab company, since we are always taking cabs and really don’t pay attention. There are many different cabbie companies here and with the city being so big, it would be impossible to find it. So, after waiting about two hours, hoping maybe the cabbie would return to the complex with it, Anthony called and cancelled his credit cards and cash card. Thank goodness that I have a credit card that he doesn’t have so we have one usable card. Only the credit card companies will send them international, so he should get them in a few days. He’ll not have a cash card for a while though since they won’t send it international, only to our local address. Frustrating. After all this, I was not in a good mood. I was frustrated at not having a vehicle, having to take cabs everywhere, having to take the girls shopping with us, not being able to find things we need (laundry baskets – who knows why they don’t have them here!), not having a stocked kitchen yet, having to take two cabbies back from Costco because we all don’t fit in one cab with the stuff we buy, and the lost wallet was just my last straw. Anthony was very happy to be in the apartment and didn’t’ seem to understand my mood. He takes everything in such stride, without getting upset or being in a mood.
Anthony headed off to work on Monday and I headed up to my friend Angie’s house. I had a wonderful time at Angie’s, with her and Joseph and another lady, Jane, and her two girls (3 years old and 18 months old). Angie has a very nice place outside of the city, more in the mountains, and she even has a small backyard (unheard of here in Taipei). She had a kiddie pool set up and everyone had fun playing in the water and running around outside. Both Jane and Angie commented that I looked exhausted and needed some sleep. I knew I was tired and exhausted too. We headed home after lunch and both girls went down for naps. I rested awhile, although didn’t sleep, couldn’t fall asleep. Anthony did call with some wonderful news. Someone had turned his wallet into the police station and so a lady from his work went down to pick it up. The person who found it did not leave a name or contact information. The wallet contained EVERYTHING that was in it when it was left in the cab – ALL OF THE MONEY! Can you believe that? From what I hear, the amount of money in his wallet was comparable to a few weeks pay for a cabbie. I am in complete shock that it was all there. It made my day though – to be in a country, where you can lose a wallet with money in it and have it returned to you, with all credit cards and all money, how great is that? Shows you how great people in this country can be. I am so thankful that it fell into the hands of someone who is honest and trustworthy and whoever it may be, I am so thankful to them.
We went to IKEA when Anthony got home, hoping to find some laundry baskets, trash cans, hangers, etc. We found some of the stuff we needed, but not as much as I had hoped. I like shopping there though since we can drop Ashley off in the front and then only have one kid to deal with :) And she loves the play area there. It’s got a big ball pit and a kiddie bathroom and a TV room with little stools to sit and watch weird Chinese cartoons. We also ate dinner at IKEA, since we still didn’t have pots and pans. We picked up some cheapy ones there though, they ought to last until we can find a decent set.
To be continued…only had this much written by Friday (hard to find time to write this week, I’ve been so busy!). Hopefully we’ll have internet access set up this weekend so I can get online. Anthony’s going to post this at work today if he can get a chance.
I miss being in touch with everyone through email and instant messaging! I can’t wait until we have access again at home!
What a blur the past couple of days have been. Last Friday, I went to a store called Hola, which is similar to a Bed, Bath and Beyond (although not as nice stuff), to look for bedding for our apartment beds. It is a bit confusing here since the sizes of beds can really vary. Along with the normal variety you find in the States of King, Queen, Full and Twin, here they also have Taiwanese King (shorter than US), Double and Single, all of which we have in the apartment. It is hard to find the right sizes and I’ve found that you have to go to several different stores to find what you need. Anthony met me at Hola and I was pretty confused by the time we finished looking - so much so that we didn’t buy anything. We headed over to RT Mart to see if we could find Ashley some bedding – she specified that she wanted a Hello Kitty room so we were trying to find a Hello Kitty bedspread. We did manage to find one at RT Mart, of course. It’s definitely not one I’d have preferred, all cute and pink with small Kitty’s all over, no, it’s pink with one HUGE Hello Kitty in a bathing suit on the beach, with lots of bright colors on it. But, she likes it and since she was complaining that she didn’t want to move out of the hotel, we’d do just about anything to make sure she liked her new room. By this time, we were all exhausted and knew we’d have a long day moving on Saturday so we headed back to the hotel for our last night of luxury living.
We packed all our hotel stuff up on Saturday morning and a small moving van, along with Dories (DTZ rental agent) and her husband, moved us over to the apartment. We had Dories order us some pizza for lunch since we had no groceries at the apartment. After lunch, we got Liz down for a nap and I headed out (in the rain) to the Wellcome store to pick up some groceries. Wellcome is a chain grocery store here found just about everywhere. The one nearest us is a few blocks away and is pretty small. I found some basics, milk, yogurt, grapes, some drinks…whatever I could fit in the backpack. Since I couldn’t remember if we had shipped pots and pans, I didn’t buy anything that would have to be cooked. I headed back to the apartment where the moving men had shown up and were unpacking all of our shipped items. It was a MESS! But, it was so nice to see all our stuff, mainly the toys, it was like Christmas for the girls, they were so excited! Part of Ashley’s day was also spent sitting in front of the MASSIVE TV in the living room, with drool coming out of her mouth, watching her movies on the big screen. I think she must have thought she was in a theatre, she really enjoyed watching them (and staying out of our way :) ) We managed to unpack most of the boxes so the movers could take them with so we wouldn’t have to deal with it. Of course, the one item that can’t have a value put on it was broken in the move, and that’s the chalkboard easel that Anthony built for the girls. It snapped in half (just the stand, not the chalkboard itself). One other item, a small wooden letter (H) that I had painted for Ashley’s room (spells out Ashley) was broken. The movers are taking both items to a “craftsman” to fix, so that’s cool. It also turns out that they shipped a dresser that we had specified for storage. Thank goodness it actually fits in Liz’s room. We may keep it for additional storage or attempt to sell it, since it’s a cheapy dresser from Target and not necessary to keep if we don’t need it. We also now know what we should have shipped and what we could have stored, but we knew that would happen at some point. It is nice to have our stuff though, mainly the toys and the clothes.
After we tried to make sense of most of the stuff, we had a babysitter come over to the apartment, her name is Miss Woo, and she only speaks Chinese! She came highly recommended from some friends and they helped set it up since they had asked us to join them for dinner. Beth and Ingo had tickets to a jazz dinner at the Hyatt (of all places!) and so the Miss Woo came over while we were giving the girls baths and took right over – she got them both out and dressed for bed. Liz was crying, not wanting me to leave, she’s become a bit clingy lately, since she’s at the separation anxiety stage. But, we made it out the door, with Liz screaming and Ashley quite happy. We joined Beth and Ingo and had a very enjoyable evening having dinner and listening to a live jazz band play. We had Ingo call and check on the girls after about an hour and half and Miss Woo said they were both good and hadn’t been crying. Ashley had wanted some food and had eaten whatever she could find in the fridge. We got home (yes, home :) ) at about 11:00 pm and both girls were sound asleep. Miss Woo said she had no problems getting either of them to bed, although Ashley did stay up later, until about 9:30. And then Miss Woo even picked up as much as she could in the living room, cleaned the kitchen and vacuumed. It was so nice to come home to a fairly clean apartment and totally unexpected since we still had boxes about and stuff laying around everywhere.
Sunday was another day of running around trying to find stuff we need and make some room by putting away stuff. It was a long day and I can’t even remember all that we did that day (even though today is only Tuesday!). After our shopping trips, we did manage to have our bedding completely taken care of, along with a few towels and some bathroom rugs. So, that was good. After the long day, we decided to eat dinner at Chili’s – of course, where else would we eat? After Chili’s, I remembered that Anthony needed to go by the Hyatt to settle our account since we hadn’t done that after checking out on Saturday. He took Ashley with him while I walked around Misukoshi, looking in the grocery store. I didn’t buy much there due to the fact that almost everything is in Chinese and is Chinese food, so I didn’t know what most of it was. I did notice a section of imported pastas from Italy and some Hunt’s Spaghetti sauce, so once we have some pots and pans, that will be our first homecooked meal in the apartment. Anthony met up with us and we took a cab back to the apartment. The cab dropped us off, then took off, just like normal, but a few seconds after he turned the corner, Anthony started freaking out…he’d left his wallet in the cab! And due to the fact that we’d been shopping at Costco, which only takes cash, he had quite a bit of cash in it. We didn’t know the cab number or even the cab company, since we are always taking cabs and really don’t pay attention. There are many different cabbie companies here and with the city being so big, it would be impossible to find it. So, after waiting about two hours, hoping maybe the cabbie would return to the complex with it, Anthony called and cancelled his credit cards and cash card. Thank goodness that I have a credit card that he doesn’t have so we have one usable card. Only the credit card companies will send them international, so he should get them in a few days. He’ll not have a cash card for a while though since they won’t send it international, only to our local address. Frustrating. After all this, I was not in a good mood. I was frustrated at not having a vehicle, having to take cabs everywhere, having to take the girls shopping with us, not being able to find things we need (laundry baskets – who knows why they don’t have them here!), not having a stocked kitchen yet, having to take two cabbies back from Costco because we all don’t fit in one cab with the stuff we buy, and the lost wallet was just my last straw. Anthony was very happy to be in the apartment and didn’t’ seem to understand my mood. He takes everything in such stride, without getting upset or being in a mood.
Anthony headed off to work on Monday and I headed up to my friend Angie’s house. I had a wonderful time at Angie’s, with her and Joseph and another lady, Jane, and her two girls (3 years old and 18 months old). Angie has a very nice place outside of the city, more in the mountains, and she even has a small backyard (unheard of here in Taipei). She had a kiddie pool set up and everyone had fun playing in the water and running around outside. Both Jane and Angie commented that I looked exhausted and needed some sleep. I knew I was tired and exhausted too. We headed home after lunch and both girls went down for naps. I rested awhile, although didn’t sleep, couldn’t fall asleep. Anthony did call with some wonderful news. Someone had turned his wallet into the police station and so a lady from his work went down to pick it up. The person who found it did not leave a name or contact information. The wallet contained EVERYTHING that was in it when it was left in the cab – ALL OF THE MONEY! Can you believe that? From what I hear, the amount of money in his wallet was comparable to a few weeks pay for a cabbie. I am in complete shock that it was all there. It made my day though – to be in a country, where you can lose a wallet with money in it and have it returned to you, with all credit cards and all money, how great is that? Shows you how great people in this country can be. I am so thankful that it fell into the hands of someone who is honest and trustworthy and whoever it may be, I am so thankful to them.
We went to IKEA when Anthony got home, hoping to find some laundry baskets, trash cans, hangers, etc. We found some of the stuff we needed, but not as much as I had hoped. I like shopping there though since we can drop Ashley off in the front and then only have one kid to deal with :) And she loves the play area there. It’s got a big ball pit and a kiddie bathroom and a TV room with little stools to sit and watch weird Chinese cartoons. We also ate dinner at IKEA, since we still didn’t have pots and pans. We picked up some cheapy ones there though, they ought to last until we can find a decent set.
To be continued…only had this much written by Friday (hard to find time to write this week, I’ve been so busy!). Hopefully we’ll have internet access set up this weekend so I can get online. Anthony’s going to post this at work today if he can get a chance.
I miss being in touch with everyone through email and instant messaging! I can’t wait until we have access again at home!
posted by The Armstrongs at
10/08/2004
