Day 4 – April 18, 2009

Today we depart Kaohsiung for Taipei. Megan sleeps soundly the whole night without waking up. What a treat to skip the sleepless nights the third time around! We go down for breakfast, and Megan eats a roll and a banana. We take an extra banana and a couple of rolls for the trip. We will have to make sure we bring some bananas with us for the flights home. Baby food isn’t available in Taiwan since parents prepare their own. It does make traveling a little more challenging, but we also have a large supply of formula which the orphanage kindly provided to us.

We had brought too much luggage with us which makes train travel a little difficult, but the hotel arranged to have a couple of bags sent separately by courier to our hotel in Taipei. We pack up those bags and deposit them downstairs along with the crib and baby things we had borrowed from the orphanage. Everyone has been so incredibly kind and helpful to us during our stay. At 1:00, Miss Kau and Mr. Zhen come to pick us up at the hotel to take us to the train station. They have brought “Strawberry” along to say good-bye. Strawberry is about 14 months old and is being adopted by a family in New York. Ms. Kau gives all the babies nicknames when they arrive in the orphanage. There is another baby at the orphanage she has nicknamed “string bean”. Of course there are tears all around. Ms. Kau has cared for Megan for the first year of her life, and she will miss her very much. Ms. Kau gives Megan a string of pearls and tells us it is for when she gets married. We stop briefly at the end of the hotel driveway so that my mother and I can take a couple of pictures of the hotel. Then we are on our way to the train station. We take a few photos of Ms. Kau, Megan and Strawberry, and then Miss Kau and Mr. Zhen help us to the train platform. More tears follow by all of us, except for the babies who don’t really understand what the fuss is about.

The train is express, and Megan sleeps peacefully in grandma’s arms for the 90 minute trip. Grandma, who Andrew and Julian call “Biba”, has been completely seduced by Megan’s charm. Megan has bonded with both of us, and there has been absolutely none of the separation anxiety we were expecting. Upon arriving, we easily find the taxi stand. The taxi driver speaks no English at all, but fortunately, Grace had written all of the places we needed to go in Taipei in Chinese. We arrive at the Hyatt in about 15 minutes. While we are checking in, the woman assisting us asks if Megan speaks English or Mandarin. I’m not sure if there is English and Mandarin baby babble, but we just say that she isn’t talking yet, though she probably understands Mandarin better. The room is very comfortable, and they have a crib made up in the room with a baby sized pillow, sheets and blanket. It is made up just like our beds only smaller. We rest for a little while and feed Megan a banana. We have a light dinner and then decide to take a short walk outside since there are sidewalks in the area where the hotel is located. I ask if there is a store nearby where I can buy some more baby bottles and they give us a map and highlight the route. Once outside, we realize that we don’t feel so comfortable walking on these streets after all. We don’t have any concerns about security, but the traffic is extremely busy, and all the scooters are a little scary. We’re afraid to cross the street. Scooters are the primary mode of transportation in Taiwan. There are many cars as well, but scooters probably outnumber cars. Whole families get around on scooters, and it is a little disconcerting to see very small children riding in front of their parents. Many don’t wear helmets either, even though it is a law here to wear a helmet. I can’t imagine driving here though I suppose it is what you are used to. Grace teasingly says the rules of the road are just “recommendations”. It’s not as bad as in some countries I have visited, but it’s a far cry from traffic patterns in the US, yes even Miami. We walk a short distance before turning back to the hotel without the baby bottles.

Back at the hotel, we head back upstairs to give Megan who is now fast asleep a bath. She doesn’t enjoy the bath tonight either, but we make it very fast so she can go to sleep. We’re actually all quite tired. Tomorrow is Sunday, and we don’t have to be anywhere in particular, so we think it would be a good day to visit the museum which we have been told is about 40 minutes away by taxi.

Day 3 – April 17, 2009

We still have jet lag, though it isn’t as bad as yesterday. We eat a similar breakfast to that of the day before and meet Grace in the lobby at 9:00 to start our day. We pick up Megan at the orphanage and then go straight to see the social worker. The purpose of this meeting is for her to feel comfortable that Megan is going to a good home. We also learn a little bit more about Megan’s birth parents than we had known. We knew that the birth mother was 23 when Megan was born, and we had always assumed that Megan was the birth mother’s only child. However, we learn today that Megan is the birth mother’s fourth child and the third with her second husband. The second marriage failed before Megan was born, and the birth parents couldn’t afford to keep her as single parents. We learn this happens all too frequently. There is another little boy in the orphanage with a very similar situation. Every orphan has his/her own story. The government is very helpful though. Children are not abandoned in Taiwan. When the birth parents are not able to care for their children, they contact the social worker who arranges for the child to be placed with a foster family or orphanage. Grace explains that Taiwan has 6 certified orphanages, of which Ms. Kau’s facility is the smallest. The maximum number of children she can have at any one time is 10 children. With Megan leaving, there will be space for one more.

After leaving the social worker’s office, we return to the orphanage to play with the babies and wait for Ms Kau who will join us for lunch today. We eat a delicious lunch at a Japanese restaurant. For those of you who might be wondering why there is so much Japanese food, Japan occupied Taiwan for 50 years and had a significant influence on the island. Megan ate even more today than she did yesterday. I have never seen a one year old eat so much. She already has something in common with her big brother, Andrew who also has a healthy appetite. For being a restaurant novice, she has truly embraced the dining out experience. Of course, with such a full tummy, Megan falls asleep immediately in the car.

We say good-bye to Ms. Kau after lunch and pick up train tickets for tomorrow’s trip to Taipei. After picking up the train tickets, we are free to do some shopping. The first stop is a tea shop where we sample some Jasmine tea. I buy some tea, and we move on to one of the department stores to look at children’s clothes. We can’t resist some of the adorable little girl outfits by local brands we have never heard of. Megan is going to be one well dressed little girl. Megan seems very happy sitting in her stroller soaking up all the new sights and sounds of her first shopping spree. I think I finally have my little shopper!

After shopping, we head for Seafood Island which is a short ferry ride from Kaohsiung. The scooters occupy the first floor, so we go up to the second floor to sit down and enjoy the view of the harbor. Five minutes later we arrive, and Grace leads us to her favorite restaurant. The seafood is all on display in front of the restaurant, and we walk outside to select our dinner. It doesn’t get much fresher than this. Megan enjoys her meal of rice, noodles and fish. I, myself, thoroughly enjoy the fried cuttle fish. I don’t think I can get this back at home.

After dinner, Grace takes us back to the hotel. We stop to buy Pampers and formula containers so that Megan will have enough pre-measured formula to last us the more than 24 hour trip home to Florida.
Once back at the hotel, Megan is obviously very tired. She has had a very full day and has spent more time out of the orphanage setting than she has ever done before. First we say good-bye to Grace without whose help we never would have been able to manage. She has been the most wonderful translator, helper, tour guide, driver and so much more. We have thoroughly enjoyed the last few days we have spent with her. She has a heart of gold, and she cares so much about the children in the orphanage. She tells us that she often visits the orphanage to help out Ms. Kau when she is short handed. After Grace leaves, we give Megan a quick bath, and this is the first time she has cried for more than few moments. She refuses to sit down, so I wash her quickly while she stands. She calms down immediately when I take her out, dry her off and put on her pajamas. She is fascinated with the box from the diaper ointment tube and refuses to let go so we put her to bed with it. The orphanage has loaned us a crib for the night, and she sits contently in it playing with the box. I hand her a small teddy bear to play with, but true to baby protocol she is more interested in the box. She falls asleep easily and only once wakes up crying for a few minutes when I move her crib. We keep expecting her to start crying when she realizes she is alone with us without the familiar surroundings of the orphanage, Ms. Kau and the nannies, but she seems very comfortable with us. We think she knows she is finally going home. Tomorrow we are traveling to Taipei where we will be for the next few days.

Day 2 – April 16, 2009

Despite our best attempts to adjust ourselves to Taiwanese time, we find ourselves suffering from a classic case of jet lag and waking up in the middle of the night. We force ourselves to sleep or at least lie in bed until 6:00 so that we don’t find ourselves exhausted later in the day.

Included in our hotel stay is a buffet style breakfast with a wide assortment of Chinese and Western dishes, most of which I would classify as lunch or dinner items rather than breakfast. The food is very good however, and we start our day off with a bowl of noodle soup, seaweed salad, dumplings and scrambled eggs.

Grace picks us up at 9:00 a.m. from the hotel lobby and we head for the orphanage where we meet the orphanage staff and get to visit with Megan and the 9 other babies. We spend some time playing with the children and then leave for the first of our two doctor appointments that day. We arrive at the local hospital and make our way to the children’s ward. We wait a short time and then enter a room with the doctor and a number of nurses all wearing face masks which is extremely common here in Taiwan. Half the people on the streets wear them, presumably to protect themselves from the pollution. In the case of the hospital however; we assume it is to protect themselves from germs. The doctor is very nice and speaks some English. He reviews Megan’s medical and immunization records. He reviews her previous hospitalizations for an infection and pneumonia when she was an infant and explains that her immunizations are up to date and notes which ones she will need soon after arriving home to the US. If she had remained in Taiwan she would have received the Japanese encephalitis vaccine because of the bad mosquito problem in Taiwan, but that is one which is not administered in the US. They also vaccinate against TB in Taiwan as opposed to administering the test to see if someone has TB. The doctor also explains that though she appears a little cross eyed at times, she isn’t. That makes me feel better, but we’ll still have her examined when we arrive home. At this time, other patients have already entered the room and are waiting their turn to speak to the doctor. I thank the doctor and we leave the hospital.

Since we have some time before the next appointment in the afternoon, we pick up Grace’s husband, Edmund, and go to lunch. We go to one of their favorite restaurants where they take all the adoptive families visiting from the US. It is a Japanese style shabu shabu restaurant where you select all your vegetables, meats and fish and then cook them at the table in individual pots which are recessed in the table. The food is delicious, though it takes me quite a long time to eat since I am also feeding Megan who is happily soaking up the atmosphere, not to mention relishing her first experience with restaurant food. We learn that she loves to eat and has a good appetite, despite the fact that she only has 4 teeth. I feed her rice, salmon and tofu with chopsticks, though the tofu was her least favorite. I’ve never fed a baby with chopsticks, but it actually works quite well.

After lunch, we drop off Edmund at his home and my mother at the hotel and return to the hospital for the second doctor’s appointment. This doctor evaluates Megan’s development and assesses whether she is on target or delayed in specific areas. This doctor is very young, and I’m not really sure she is even old enough to be a doctor, but she seems to know what she is doing. They weigh Megan, and measure her height and head circumference. The doctor explains that Megan is progressing fine, though she is a little underweight. She also notes that she has a speech delay and recommends that I feed her hard crackers so that she can develop the muscles in her mouth. If I didn’t already have two children, I might actually have been concerned, but since I do, I just had to contain my laughter. Megan will turn one year old next week, and I have yet to meet a child that age with an extensive vocabulary. Her communication skills seem to be just fine. She makes sounds, smiles and laughs a lot and makes good eye contact. The fact that she isn’t actually talking yet is quite okay with me. And if she were, I would need a translator anyway.

We return to the orphanage to pick up some items for Megan but then stay for a while to help out since they are understaffed at the moment. It is non-stop feeding and diaper changing for the staff. Grace runs around picking up all the infants who wake up crying while I try to feed Megan who isn’t particularly hungry after her big lunch and play with the crawling babies on the floor.

We leave Megan at the orphanage and then leave to go pick my mother up from the hotel so that we can visit the night market. Despite the temptation of trying stinky tofu, one of Taiwan’s most well known dishes, I pass. The market is full of delicacies such as various organ meats, stands where every part (and I mean every part) of the duck can be found, whole fried frogs (not just the legs) and other tasty delights. The array of foods is impressive though not exactly mouth watering, at least for me. Since my sole job in Taiwan is to bring Megan home safe and sound, I decide that the risk of getting sick isn’t worth it. After such a big lunch, none of us are particularly hungry anyway so we pass on dinner. Instead I select a delicious snack consisting of a pancake sandwich filled with red bean paste.

After visiting the night market, we decide that it would be best to leave Megan at the orphanage for one more night, and we return to the hotel.

Day 1 – April 15, 2009

After a 17 hour non-stop direct flight from Newark on EVA Airline, my mother and I land in Taipei at 7:00 a.m. Normally, the flight stops over in Anchorage, Alaska but because of the recent volcano activity, flights are now non-stop. After moving very smoothly and quickly through immigration and customs due to the fact that the airport is virtually empty at this time, we make our way over to the ticket counter to purchase a bus ticket which will take us to the high speed rail train station for our next leg of our journey to Kaohsiung. Fortunately, two very nice and helpful Taiwanese women from New Jersey help guide us to the right counter to purchase tickets and then onto the bus to take us to the train station. What we would have done without them I’m not quite sure. We would probably still be at the train station struggling with our luggage. They are headed for Kaohsiung as well and help us with our luggage as we purchase train tickets and board the train.

The 2 hour train ride is very comfortable though the sights from the train aren’t particularly memorable. The terrain along the route is very flat and dotted with fairly uninteresting concrete block structures. After arriving in Kaohsiung we easily find the taxi stand at the train station where we catch a cab for the 15 minute ride to The Grand Hotel Kaohsiung, a very large and imposing Chinese looking building amid a sea of otherwise undistinguishable concrete buildings.

The hotel staff is so friendly and helpful, and the rooms are both comfortable and spacious and decorated in simple Chinese décor with a large balcony overlooking a lake. We settle ourselves in after our exhausting trip and wait for the phone to ring. After a short time, Grace, the translator calls to tell us that she will be arriving with Megan, Miss Kau, the orphanage director, and the nanny at 2:00 p.m. The moment we have been waiting for is about to arrive.

A couple of minutes after walking down to the hotel lobby, in walks Grace followed by Miss Kau, the nanny and Megan. Megan, who they call Intao which means cherry in English, is sitting calmly in her stroller. She is the most adorable and beautiful little girl ever (ok, I’m allowed to be biased). We hold her and walk with her in the lobby. She is just learning to walk and tightly grips my hand and my mother’s hands as we walk around the lobby. She is completely entranced with my mother’s necklace with large beads and keeps reaching for them. She lets us hold her and never once lets out a cry except for a brief second when she stumbles while walking on her own. We even walk outside with her and Grace while Miss Kau and the nanny remain in the lobby. Then, we spend some time watching and holding Megan while she plays with a couple of the toys we have brought for the orphanage. We also have an opportunity to learn a little about Megan’s schedule and what she likes to eat. I think we’re going to have to start learning how to make congee as apparently that is what they feed her now along with formula. Grace describes it as rice soup with vegetables made in a rice cooker with chicken broth instead of water. I hope David, my husband, is reading this and getting out the rice cooker now to start practicing.

Since my mother and I are visibly exhausted from our travels, they tell us to rest tonight while they take Megan back to the orphanage. As much as we want to spend more time with her, we are actually happy to be able to have an evening to rest. When we go back up to our room, we realize how very tired we were. If not for my mother convincing me that we really do need to eat a real meal that day, I probably would never have gotten up for dinner. We wrap up our day with dinner consisting of a wonderfully soothing noodle soup and shrimp and rice dish at the Chinese restaurant at the hotel. Grace is picking us up at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow so that we can stop at the orphanage before heading out to Megan’s doctor’s visit.

Arrival in Taiwan

Jessica and Barbara landed in Taipei a few hours ago, and are making the trek to Kaohsiung as I write this.

 

Once there, they'll check into the hotel, and Jessica will be posting from there.  I look forward to it!

And so it begins...

We finally got all the paperwork together, and have appointments made in Taiwan.

 

Its all for real....and Jessica will be travelling next week!!!

She has a passport

We learned today that Megan now has a passport, which puts us one step closer to the adoption coming to fruition.

 

 

What an odd feeling

We got an email earlier today from the orphanage - Ms. Kau's facility - that they had moved into a new building.  And I think that's great. 

 

There was this picture attached of the 8 children they are caring for, along with the care givers and two prospective adoptive parents.

 

Megan is on the far left, and still referred to by the name "Cherry"...

 

It seems so strange to look at the picture of our daughter and think about how she's living in the orphanage and has no idea about us or the adventure she's about to embark on in life.  It all seems so distant and far off for now.  And yet, its kind of close.

 

Its all so....so....crazy.  But in a really good way.

The process moves along

This morning, we learned that the orphanage received the "confirmation" of the adoption.  This is the next step in this process.  They will do some paperwork, and submit information back to the courts. 

 

Things are looking good.  I believe this also means that US Embassy has been notified, and their clock is ticking.  The process is parallel for the next (about) 3 weeks, but at the end, we'll have an appointment with the Embassy and the courts and be able to travel to Taiwan.

Right now, it looks like the travel dates will happen around the week of April 13th.

 

Yeah.

 

 

Sage words from "the cat man"

Down in Key West, on Mallory Square, the "Cat Man" performs at sunset. He's a Frenchman, and the act is to have the cats doing acrobatics.

Its cute and clever, and people talk about it. But for us, he has one saying about which we can say that truer words have never been spoken. And we've been repeating this phrase over an over around our house for the last several months.

The process started with a meeting about adoption, included a ton of paperwork, and desire to get this done as quickly as possible. Some of the papers had to be sent back in a short timeframe, and get notorized or otherwise sealed. So at times, we had to do things in a bit of a rush. Only to wait. Again and again.

And now here we are with ruling in hand nearly 2 years after we started. And we're waiting again for some paperwork to be completed.

The saying? "Hurry up...take your time." You can see part of his show in this video.

I never would have imagined 20 years ago when I first saw him perform that his words would turn out to be sage. But yet, they resonate and rattle around in my head.