It Is Finished!

Last night Sophia woke up a couple of times.  The first time she settled back down herself, but the second time, I had to rub her back and eventually she fell back to sleep.  I'm sure the mid-night awakenings are just the start of some sleepless nights for Dave and I as we attempt to settle her (and ourselves!) back to EST!

I was up again before the alarm at 6 a.m. to get ready for the day.  We eventually had to wake Sophia up before she was ready, but she didn't fuss and drank her bottle, for which we were very grateful.  Yesterday she really didn't eat or drink much, and we were really concerned about dehydration, especially in this wicked heat and humidity!  Today she has done so much better, and I attribute it all to your prayers!  God is so good!

We ended up arriving a couple of minutes late at the American Institute in Taiwan, or AIT, for short.  This is where all Taiwanese citizens who want to enter the United States must go to get a tourist, student, or immigrant visa.  The first floor was packed with people waiting to get tourist and student visas.  The second floor was where Americans could take care of business if they were living in Taiwan (voting, updating passports, reporting births, etc.) and the third floor was immigration.  That's where we went.  We met our social worker who had already got the ball rolling for us.  There weren't many people in immigration at 9 a.m. today.  We waited a little bit and then went to a window and answered some questions, handed in our tax return from last year, and signed a couple of things.  Then we waited again to be interviewed at a second window.  Our interviewer was a very friendly African American officer who basically had us sign some things, congratulated us, and sent us on our way!  We were told to come back at 2 p.m. to pick up Sophia's visa...from start (a few minutes late!) to finish we were there an hour.  Again, your prayers being answered!!!

So now we had time to kill.  With our social worker, who lives in this area of the city, we went in search of some socks for Sophia to use with her leg braces (thanks for the heads up, Mandi!) and then were among the first lunch customers at the original location of Din Tai Fung.  It was so nice to see Sophia drink water with her spoon from a bowl, and try a few noodles and some broth...set my mama heart at ease a bit!

Our social worker showed us the proper way to eat dumplings (oops...no wonder people were laughing at us the last two times we ate there!) and we had a great time of fellowship.  After lunch we went to a local tea store and tried two types of oolong tea, made from tea leaves harvested in the high mountains of Taiwan, and jasmine tea, Dave's favorite.  We bought some to bring home, then continued on to a little food store for some dried pork powder to bring home for Sophia.  (Think ground pork rinds...only thing I can compare it to!)  We exchanged a few more dollars at the local bank so we could pay for our taxi to the airport (after spending money today!) and headed back to AIT to wait for Sophia's visa in the AC...it was hot!!

Promptly at 2 p.m. we were handed Sophia's visa and it was finished!  I took a photo of our "sealed envelope", but then thought twice about posting it...probably not kosher to share all that info with the world!  But we do have it in hand, along with her passport...praise God!  Now back at the hotel Sophia took her typical 45 minute nap and is now vegging on the bed, watching TV.  Good times!

We're not sure what we are going to do tonight...maybe venture out and check out the neighborhood a little bit...we'll see.  Last night we took the subway to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and it was lovely...much cooler than during the day.  The area around the memorial is a cultural park, and there are two buildings dedicated to the performing arts there, the National Theater and the National Concert Hall.  So many people were milling around in the cooler night air, practicing their break dance moves or ballroom dancing in the open air.  The subway station hallway leading out to the memorial was lined with beautiful paintings, and when we arrived, a blind musician was playing his violin accompanied by piano background music.  Sophia loves music and was simply mesmerized.  I tried out my camera's night feature...what do you think?

All in all, our time in Taiwan has been good.  Dave and I commented today that we want to bring Sophia back some day when she's older, along with her brothers...and it must be at a cooler time of the year!!  Had it not been so hot and humid, I think we would have meandered around a lot more outside, but it was just too hot.  I have never sweat so much in my life!  Sophia loves to be out and about...she just watches people and things and takes it all in.  However, we are ready to come home and allow Sophia to begin to adjust to her family and home.  It has been difficult to watch her grieve and not know what to do.  It has also been difficult to be far away from our sons.  Sophia's needs are different than we expected, and this has produced some anxiety and lots of talks with God on my part about unconditional love.  As is so typical in our journey of life, God uses circumstances and events to teach us more about His grace and character and our need to utterly rely on Him.  I'm a slow learner sometimes...

In less than 24 hours we will be hanging out at the airport.  This may be my last post from Taiwan.  I can't even begin to put into words my utter gratitude for all of you who have prayed us through this journey thus far.  Don't stop now!  God is answering your prayers in amazing ways...our faith has been strengthened beyond measure.  God is SO good!

Humbled and grateful...

Visit to Cathwel

Thanks to all of our prayer warriors, Sophia settled down last night and slept well.  This morning we allowed her to wake up slowly, as is her custom.  She sleeps fairly late, and today it didn't really matter.  She didn't want her bottle this morning, although in hindsight, having used a new bottle, I don't think she could really get the thick stuff that she drinks out of the bottle.  But she didn't complain.  She did eat a little egg, rice porridge, and mashed banana at breakfast, but still not a lot of anything.  She definitely needs more practice with solid, even soft solid, foods.

Around 11 a.m. we headed out the door to visit Cathwel and the Jonah House.  Cathwel is the organization here in Taiwan that our agency uses for Taiwanese adoptions.  They are a Catholic organization, and we have been very pleased with what our experience with them.  Our social worker suggested that we come down to visit today, and I'm so glad we did.  We took some extra diapers and other gifts for the workers and children, and spent about three hours in one of their play rooms which allowed Sophia to run around and play.  It was SO nice to see her playing.  It really gave me hope and settled my nerves some about how she will react when we get home.  I think she is bored in the hotel a lot of the time.  (Can't say that I blame her!)

We were able to see the baby room at the Jonah house with all of the cribs and the sleeping babies (it was nap time).  Upstairs the older toddlers were also sleeping, but one little guy woke up early and came to join us in the play room.  If I understood correctly, he is 20 months old and has cerebral palsy as a result of his birth mom's drug and alcohol abuse while pregnant.  Interestingly, the caregiver left him in there with us so I was able to interact with him and play with him and hold him.  He seemed to love the attention!  Sophia was not very interested with him, but she didn't seem to mind him.  Later, one of the therapists came in and showed us how she was teaching him to crawl.  Dave and I commented later that it felt as though we were watching a commercial for this little guy...he sure was a cutie, though!

I know that a lot of people think about little girls when they think about adopting, especially from Asia.  But the majority of the children at Cathwel right now, ages 0-3, are boys.  We were told that next year the laws in Taiwan are changing regarding adoption because the Taiwanese birthrate is at an all time low, and the government wants to keep its citizens.  But many Taiwanese do not want to adopt children with special needs, so Cathwel expects that special needs kiddos will be very much available going forward.  Could there be room in your heart and home?

We left Cathwel about 2:30, right before a good, old fashioned thunderstorm.  Cathwel is located in a suburb of Taipei that is sort of in the mountains a bit...so beautiful.  We enjoyed our taxi ride there and back.  Now Sophia is napping and Dave and I are vegging.  We might try to venture out tonight...we'll see what the weather holds.  Last night we got Chinese take out...thought you might enjoy that photo.  It still makes me laugh to get Chinese takeout in Taiwan!

We have been able to change our flight to Saturday, so tomorrow, Friday, will be our last full day in Taiwan.  We have our AIT appointment at 9 a.m. our time.  We will probably visit the original Din Tai Fung restaurant for lunch, as it is right near AIT, and then hang out downtown while waiting to pick up Sophia's visa.  We plan on inviting our social worker to join us...she has been wonderful and we are so thankful for her!

Thank you so much for your prayers and words of encouragement after yesterday's post.  I found this quote in an article on the Empowered to Connect website today and it really resonated with me:

"As an adoptive dad, like all adoptive parents, my tendency is to focus on the miracle, blessing and joy of adoption – and rightfully so. These are the undeniably beautiful realities of the adoption journey. But they do not negate the equally unavoidable reality that there is no adoption without loss and pain. Adoption is at the same time born from and a response to hurt, loss and sorrow."

While the bulk of the article was pertaining to his adopted son's grief and loss, I think that most adoptive parents realize that there is grief and loss in their own lives in some way as well through this process.  I so appreciate my adoptive parent friends who have honestly shared their hurts and hopes with me these last 48 hours.  I also am so appreciative of all of my family and friends who have been praying us through this journey...some for the last three years!  Dave and I told Sophia today that she is one prayed over little girl--God has big plans for her!

With continued gratitude...



Back to Taipei

This morning I had a total meltdown.  (Is it okay to admit that?)  Last night took a lot out of us.  We were prepared mentally for the grieving process, but I have never heard that kind of cry before.  And there's nothing you can do about it.  This morning, I took my turn at grieving.  It has been a crazy few months at our house with Dave living most of the time in Indiana and the boys and I in Pennsylvania.  I had to parent, prepare a house for showings, finish a school year, and get ready for Taiwan.  We had behavioral issues, sickness, and other stresses.  Through it all, I kept it together pretty well.  But today, I had myself a good, ugly cry.  I think it all came to a head and I needed to let it out.  Poor Dave!  But he handled it brilliantly!

My youngest sister, who has adopted five times, told me in the midst of my ugly cry, via Facebook chat, (don't you love technology!)  that I could be grieving the loss of my "normal".  I think she's right.  I couldn't help but think about how bringing Sophia home is going to change our life completely.  Of course I already knew that, but having met her in person, I realize just how much things are going to change.  I was also thinking about my boys, and all of the little routines and nuances of our life together pre-Sophia, and how those will inevitably change.  I'm not saying that the change is going to be all bad, but it is change, and we have so many changes in our lives right now.  So, I had my good, ugly cry, and hopefully, it's mostly out of my system now.

Being back in Taipei is definitely helping all of us.  The hotel we stayed at in Taichung was a boutique hotel.  It was stylish and unique, but not very conducive to having a young child who doesn't walk very well.  We also were in a part of town that did not have a lot of restaurants nearby and was hard to walk in, so we felt very isolated.  We are now back at the hotel where we began our journey, and we feel right at home.  We decided to upgrade to a triple room so that we had more room to spread out, and we have already sent three bags of laundry to be washed.  (That was one of the things I liked about this hotel...you can load up a bag of laundry to the tippy top and only pay per bag instead of per piece.  I have no idea how our clothes will be returned...hopefully the same size and shape as they went!)  The only downside to this hotel is that it is also not near a lot of restaurants, so I'm not sure what we will do for dinner tonight.  I don't think Sophia will sit well at a restaurant without some sort of restraint, and she doesn't seem interested in food, so it could be hard to sit and eat.  Dave might go check out what kind of take out might be around...we did Pizza Hut last night in Taichung and it was pretty good!

Below are some photos from the day.  We didn't do anything too exciting, just hung out at our hotel and took the train back to Taipei.  Tomorrow we plan on visiting Cathwel and dropping off some things for the orphanage and, if the weather and Sophia allow, we will go on to the zoo and the Makong Gondola.  Friday is our AIT appointment and we will probably hang around that side of town if we are told that our visa will be ready for pick up that same day.  Our social worker has assured us that it should be possible, so we are hopefully going to be coming home on Saturday, rather than on Monday...we are just ready to get home!  Thanks again for all of your prayers and encouragement...pray especially for a peaceful night of sleep tonight!

With a grateful heart...



Day #2!

We had another good day here in hot and humid Taipei!  We left a little after noon from our hotel and took a cab to the National Palace Museum.  This reminded us a lot of our Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C.  It is a museum that contains Chinese artifacts that used to be housed in the Forbidden City in Beijing, but were brought to Taiwan for protection in the early 20th century.  Since we have visited China before, a lot of the things we saw were not new to us.  However, the museum is very well laid out and the exhibits were pretty interesting.  There was an especially fascinating exhibit that took a well-known Chinese painting, and with the help of technology, brought it to life.  Very cool!

After leaving the museum, we hopped another cab to the Miramar Entertainment Park.  This was another huge, vertical mall that also contains an IMAX movie theater with the largest commercial screen in all of Asia.  At the top of the mall there is a huge ferris wheel.  Each car is air-conditioned and plays music for your entertainment pleasure.  When you reached the top of the ferris wheel, you could see pretty far...we got some good pictures, but it was cloudy again, so they are not as good as they could have been.

From the Miramar, we took the subway back into town.  Using our handy map, we made our way to the Eslite Bookstore where we picked up a children's book and some children's CD's in Chinese.  It's a HUGE store!  We then walked back to Din Tai Fung for dinner.  It was much more crowded tonight, but we got in pretty quickly.  This time I took photos!  Enjoy!

We arrived back at our hotel hot and sticky and tired.  Tonight we pack up and get ready for the real reason we came to Taiwan--to meet our daughter Sophia!  When you are sleeping on Sunday night, we will meet her for the very first time.  I'll post photos as soon as I'm able!  Thanks for all of your prayers and well wishes...keep them coming!

One more day until we see her face to face...

Our First Day in Taiwan

It is Sunday morning here in Taiwan.  We have had the privilege of speaking with our three children who are at my parent's house in Delaware, as well as one of my sisters in Chile, South America, this morning.  Isn't technology wonderful?  As we get ready to head out for our second day of adventures in Taipei, I want to let you know about yesterday's happenings...

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After arriving at our hotel and getting cleaned up and acclimated, we decided to head out and see what we could see.  It looked like rain, so we ditched the idea of going to the open air flower and jade markets and decided instead to head down towards Taipei 101 and that area of town.  The subway was pretty easy to figure out, although I'm pretty sure we looked stupid at first, trying to figure out how to get the card we needed.  But, we figured it out on our own, so I'm pretty proud of us!  The subway itself reminds me a lot of the metro in Chile--clean and efficient.  It was Saturday here, so I guess we were seeing the weekend crowds and not necessarily the business crowds.  We made it to the station where we were to get off for Taipei 101, but we had to walk quite a distance to actually get to the building itself.  We managed to make it before the rain, but by the time we got to the observation deck on the 89th floor, it was raining below.  We still got some photos, which I will post, but I'm sure the vista would have been much more stunning without the rain! 

Taipei 101 was the tallest building in the world from 2004-2010.  To the tip of the needle at the top it is 1610 feet tall.  The basement floor is filled with a large food court and some shops, while floors 1-4 contain some very prestigious stores like Tiffany's and Coco Chanel (no shopping there for us!).  You catch the elevator to the 89th floor on the 5th floor.  It takes 45 seconds to get there--amazing!--and once you reach the observation floor, you can observe the entire city all the way around you.  The mountains in the distance are just breathtaking!  Taiwan is truly a beautiful island.

A street view of Taipei 101 as we walked towards it.

 

Looking up from one of the bottom floors of the mall

One view from the observatory



This is the counterbalance...check out the cables!



By the time we finished observing, we were feeling a bit tired and hungry.  We decided to hop a cab to the Din Tai Fung restaurant since it was still raining.  We weren't quite sure how to hail a taxi in Taiwan, but waving your hand and yelling taxi did the trick!  Dave always climbs into the front seat--which I'm not sure is kosher, but he does it anyway--so the drivers always have to throw the seat way back in order for his large frame to fit.  This taxi driver was a hoot.  He didn't speak much English but he communicated his family history and the history of Korea and China and Taiwan to us via hand motions and doodles on his notepad, all while driving through rush hour traffic!  I may have to take back my thoughts about the driving here after that ride!  He used his horn well and we made it in one piece, thankfully.  I'm sure we made his day!

Din Tai Fung is a world-renown chain known for its dumplings and stuffed buns.  We had been forewarned about how you ordered at this restaurant, but what we weren't aware of was the size of their helpings!  We were pretty hungry, so everything looked good, and I think we ordered too much, to the humorous delight of the young couple sitting next to us!  To order, you look at the menu to decide what you want, and then you fill out this order form with how many of each menu item you want.  As the items are prepared, they bring them out to you, so your food comes in shifts.  Dave LOVES Chinese dumplings and stuffed buns, and these were outstanding!  The prices were very reasonable, and we are planning on going back again.  I'll take some photos next time!

After dining we attempted to find our way back to a subway station.  I think we took a wrong turn and missed the closer station, but along the way I found a cool little stationery store and bought a couple of things.  (Tiffany, if you are reading this, tell Amy Grace I have a neat Hello Kitty item for her!)  We eventually found a station and made our way back to our hotel.  The rain had stopped by now, but the humidity was quite oppressive.  We exited the station near our hotel at a different exit than where we had entered, so we were a bit turned around at first, but with our handy map we made it back in one piece.  The corner 7-Eleven was our last stop for an ice cream bar, and then we basically collapsed into bed.

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This afternoon we are heading out again to see what we can see.  Stay tuned...and one more thing...the humorous event of the day yesterday was when we were getting on an elevator in Taipei 101 and the door closed on me.  Now it was a little startling to me, but the 10 year old kid on the elevator thought it was hilarious!  His mom tried to shush him, but then gave up and told him to say "Hello" instead.  Glad we could be the comedy relief!!

Another day closer to meeting Sophia...



Dong Wu Hotel

We are staying at the Dong Wu Hotel in Taipei.  It is not one of the typical hotels that adopting families stay in, as it is not located in the heart of Taiepei, but rather in an area known as Dadaocheng, an older, historical part of the city near the Dadaocheng Wharf on the Danshui River, known for tea production.  It had very good review, however, and the price was right, so we decided to book here.  We can walk to the subway station to get around, and always call a taxi if needed.  I'll post some photos from outside later, but here are a few from our room, which they graciously allowed us to occupy as soon as it was cleaned this morning, long before normal check-in times.

The bathroom is equipped with all the necessities.

We have a "business double" room, whatever that means!

The shower is awesome!  It felt great after our long flight!

All the comforts of home...

The view from our 5th floor room.