Day 4-AIT

This morning we headed out to AIT to apply for Emily's Visa. We got there a few minutes before our 8:30 appointment time but were allowed to go upstairs anyway. We checked in Mr. Fu and had a seat and waited to be called. After about an hour or so ( I think) he called us to the window, asked us a few questions and then said that we could come pick up the Visa on Monday or have it couriered over later tonight or Saturday. We opted to pick it up Monday because, God forbid, the courier lost it, or someone at the front desk at the hotel did something with it, you can't be too careful with these documents!! Then I headed downstairs to pay the $400 fee and back up I went and checked in with Mr. Fu again. Then we got to wait some more before being interviewed. After a little while a woman called us to the window and pretty much asked us the same questions Mr. Fu had, but we answered them anyway. The good news is that she said we could come back today and pick up the Visa!!!!! So Alan went back and picked it up at about 3pm.

SO, this means that we don't have to stay til Tuesday anymore!! Alan called Un*ted and lo and behold they have business class seats for us on Sunday!!! So, we're heading home 2 days early which will be nice for lots of reasons: we save money on the hotel, we only had one more day of sightseeing planned anyway, we get to see Brady, (MAN, do I miss him!!!), we'll have a whole week to get time adjusted with my parents there, and I'm just ready to go home!!! The good thing about our seats being booked with miles is that there was no change fee, so that's a double bonus!!!

Tomorrow we are scheduled to go to the Gr@and Hotel, M@rtrys Shrine, the CK$ residence and to Y@mingsh@an N@t'l P@rk, but we're going to ask Mr. Yeh if we can change it up a bit. I really really want to get to the jade market (we had planned on going on our own Sunday) and we MUST get back to snake alley to see the scroll guy. I'm sure Mr. Yeh won't care, we had him booked for pretty much the entire day anyway!! I'm excited to get home to Brady and see how he does with his new little sister!!!

Here's some bonus pictures of Emily from this morning in the hotel room!!!
the jeans she is wearing are a size 3-6 months and they are big in the waist!!!

a little morning nap!!

hanging with Daddy!

GOTCHA DAY!!!

Okay, here are the photo's!!! The drive to Taichung was very uneventful and in fact we had to waste time at the rest stop because we were about an hour ahead of schedule!!! Mr. Yeh picked us up a little bit earlier than originally planned because he thought there would be traffic on the highway due to the rainy weather, but there was absolutely no traffic!!!

So we arrived at TWCA (the Taiwan Agency/Facilitator) and met with Samantha for a few moments. We then drove over to the foster mom's house and this is when we were told that Emily had been living with the same foster mom that Brady had!!! We were SO SO happy to hear this!!! Not only is it a link for Brady and Emily, but we think Brady has turned out just wonderful (so far LOL) so we figured she must know what she's doing!!! (as an aside, all of the kids I know that have stayed with Ms Liao seem to have the least amount of transitional "issues" and most, if not all of them are very good sleepers and eaters!!) We were "warned" that Emily is shy and that she would probably cry!!! Alan and I both greeted Ms. Liao with a hug!!! We went into her house and Emily was on the floor playing as she had just finished her bottle and was getting ready to take a nap. We knelt down and talked to her and then I just went in for the scoop!!! She didn't cry at all either!!! In fact she is mostly quiet, unless she is crying, and that only happens when we're doing something wrong!! LOL. At 6 1/2 months old she is sitting up, rolling over, and FAST, pulling herself up to sit and pulling herself up to a STAND!!!! YIKES!!!! Ms. Liao said she was also walking along her couches!!! So much for me thinking I'd have at least a month of "easy baby parenting"!!! LOL She is a busy little girl that's for sure!!!

Okay, so after we left Ms. Liao's house we went back to TWCA to meet with the birth mom and her sister!! Wow, was that emotional!!! I won't tell the whole story of what happened and I won't post any pictures, but I'll give a glimpse as to what happened. We exchanged gifts and talked a little bit. Emily's mom was looking through the Virginia book we gave her and she came to a picture of snow and asked if it was snowing now. We explained that we usually don't get snow until January and/or February. We told her that we do plan to come back to Taiwan someday with both kids and she said she would be open to meeting us at that time, which is totally fine with us. We talked a lot about Brady too and that Emily would have a big brother. Of course the most important thing we got was all of the pictures!! Oh and her mom made us a CD of pictures that includes the pregnancy and sonogram pictures!!

Once we were finished visiting with them we headed downstairs to sign paperwork and then we headed back to Taipei, but first we stopped by Emily's birth city and were able to take a picture of the hospital she was born in!!!

We got back to the hotel a bit later than we thought so Emily was a bit behind on her schedule so last night was a bit trying. After a couple of hours we finally got her settled down enough to fall asleep and once she was asleep she did great!!! All in all, it was a great day!!!

Emily was playing when we got there. Apparently she loves this Patrick balloon, so Ms. Liao gave it to us!! LOL

the "handoff"

Our first picture with Emily!!! (funny, this is about the exact same pose as our first picture with Brady!!)

she likes to be held up in the air!

Mommy and Emily at the baby store!

Daddy and Emily in the car!!

It's Time!!!

We're getting ready to be picked up by Mr. Yeh to start our travels to Emily!!! We're being picked up at 10:40 for the roughly hour and half drive to the agency. We'll stop there first to sign some papers, then be taken to the foster mom's house to get Emily!!!! Then it's back to the agency for more paper signing. At some point we'll find out if we're meeting the birth mom or not.

I'll post pics as soon as I can!!! :-)

Day 2-Night Market and Snake Alley

We went to the Night Market with Mr. Yeh, Alex and Angel and had a really great time! They made sure we tried lots of food, including the stinky tofu!!!! (well, Alan tried it, I didn't!!). The Night Market is basically a street lined with food and shopping vendors and also game areas, like at a carnival. Because the weather has been so crummy, there weren't many vendors out, but we still had a fun time!!

After the Night Market we went to Snake Alley. I don't have any pictures of Snake Alley as most of the interesting place don't allow cameras. It gets it name from long ago when snakes were prevalent, but now there are only a handful of stalls with snakes. We were hoping to have a scroll made for Emily like we did for Brady, but the scroll wasn't there!!!! Mr. Yeh says he will take us back before we leave. We did get a few really cute outfits for both Brady and Emily though!!

First up, was scallion pancakes (congyun bing). They were SO good!!!

this is a picture of the press for the scallion pancakes...they start in the shape of a ball and then she uses the press to flatten them out before frying them.

a bowl of the infamous stinky tofu!!

down it goes!!! Alan ate about 1/2 the bowl and then shared the rest with Alex and Angel

steamed pork buns!! These were very yummy!!!

That's Mr. Yeh in the white jacket putting the sauce in the bun

I think this is the stinky tofu place

This was some sort of stew like thing, with lots of different vegetables and a pork ball. Alan ate most of this, but I did try a little, and it was okay!

The chicken that Mr. Yeh insisted Alan try!!!

Day 2-MRT to the Handicraft Market

On Wednesday morning we decided to take the MRT to the Handicraft Center. We were very happy that the MRT was quite easy to navigate. Funny enough the hardest part was figuring out that we didn't get a "ticket" to ride, instead it was a token!! LOL The ride from the MRT station at SOGO to the Handicraft Center was on 20NT, which is like 65 cents!!! So the round trip total for both of us was $2.60!!! Can't beat that!! We had fun shopping at the Handicraft Center and spent most of our time and money in the basement. We bought shirts that ranged from $5 to $11, scrolls that were $1.61 each, a super cute barrette for Emily and some other gifts!! (Joyce, we got your shirts!!). Once we were done there we took the MRT back to the SOGO and checked things out there for a bit before having lunch at, yep, you guessed it, Din Tai Fung!! LOL. Three of our first 5 meals were at there!!! After lunch we came back to the hotel and rested before Mr. Yeh picked us up at 7pm to take us to the Night Market and Snake Alley!

inside the MRT

the entrance to the Handicraft Center

this DD is inside the MRT, and I took this mostly for my friend Steve who is a bit of a DD addict!!! :-)

Day 1-Morning Sightseeing

This morning we headed out after breakfast to check out the surrounding area of the hotel and most importantly we wanted to make sure we could get to AIT as we plan to walk there Friday morning for our appointment. I'm happy to report that it's probably no more than a 15 minute walk!! Once we had that "chore" out of the way, we went to the Post Office and picked up some cool Taiwan stamps. Then we set out to a find a little food place that Alan found online that makes "the best" scallion pancakes (congyou bing) in Taipei, which we found and plan to visit later so we can try them!! Then we happened to stumble across a cool little store that sold everything from pens to cards to transformers to puzzles. We bought a few things here for the kids and plan to go back to get a few more things we realized we should have picked up but didn't. Then we stopped by a tea house we found the last time we were here to buy some tea for some friends and FINALLY it was time for lunch at Din Tai Fung!!! :-) That will have it's own separate post!!!

the above picture is of the scallion pancake place and the picture below is the actual pancankes!!

the tea house/store

mopeds, there are so, so many mopeds here!!

a beautiful orchid we saw in the window of an art gallery!!

this is a picture of the Jade/Flower market....during the week it's just a parking lot, but on the weekends it totally transforms itself!!! I'll get a picture of the actual market this weekend!

Day 1-Keelung and Jiufen Village

After our sightseeing on our own, Mr. Yeh picked us up at 1:30 to take us to the port town of Keelung and then to do some shopping at Jiufen Village. Our first stop though was for some Bubble Tea, which is a hot tea that I am guessing has milk and sugar in it and at the bottom it has lots of tapioca balls, hence the name Bubble Tea. It was VERY good!!! Mr. Yeh also got us some fried noodles that were also quite good. They were very fat noodles and they had a sauce on them kind of like a chicken wing sauce and there were pickles to eat with them as well. Sounds odd/weird, but they were pretty good. And he also had a curry puff/bun for us, which I didn't really care for, but Alan liked!!

The weather was not very good for us for our trip, which was kind of a bummer, because Keelung would be very pretty with the sun shining!! We enjoyed the drive around did get out at the big buddah statue to take a look around. The views were great, but were greatly limited because of the weather.

The entrance to the Buddah statue area

the birds sure like the Buddah!

You are supposed to ring this bell either 3 or 5 times for prosperity. The gong is MUCH heavier than you would think!!

Alan stopping the gong before it hits the bell a 4th time.

The giant Buddah behind us is said to be looking over the port/harbour and the lions are the protectors. We got to climb to the top of the Buddah! You can tell by my hair just how windy it got!!

This is the worship temple

A view from inside the Buddah

these little buddah statues lined the inside

I'm guessing this was the main buddah as it was all by itself on a table

look how steep our climb was...the stairs are so narrow you have to put your feet sideways!!

Inside the worship temple

these "trees of light" (my term) were pretty! If you or someone you know is having troubles you write their name and date on a piece of paper inside a little case with a light and then you ask the buddahs in the temple to take their troubles away.

On our way out

a view of Jiufen Village

Another view

Puppets are VERY big in Taiwan so we got one of these red dogs for Brady and a pink one for Emily!! (FYI, future travelers, they are VERY cheap here!!!)

I always love all the lanterns!!

The shopping in Juifen was a lot of fun and I think we got some really good things for the kids for future birthdays/Chritmases/Gotcha Day celebrations!! It's fairly common for people in the adoption world to buy their kids one gift for each future birthday (or whatever) so we're also trying to do this. I'm not sure how many years we'll cover, but we're making a dent, that's for sure!! We got the puppets, puzzles, flutes, drums, shoes, lanterns, t-shirts, a barrette for Emily and a few other things so far!! It's definitely been fun!!!