Jet lag... so much fun

We have been in Taipei for a full week. It feels like we've done so much, and yet so little has happened. Let me explain.

After a fun but busy summer seeing our families and so many great friends, we arrived in Taipei last Friday around 11:00 pm local time. Grace's boss and her husband were there to pick us up and thankfully their car has a nice big trunk that was able to accommodate our many bags (and one guitar). Since then, we've been staying with this same couple and devoting most of our energy to finding an apartment. This has meant spending hours looking online at various sites, getting help from bilingual friends and coworkers to call and  set up appointments, and then navigating the subways, streets and back alleys of Taipei in order to find these places.

Throughout this process we've had a number of reality checks and disappointments, but there have been some good things too. We are greatly indebted to Ariel, the librarian at Grace's school who has helped us by making countless phone calls to landlords and agents on our behalf. We've also had a lot of success finding our way around Taipei, something that wasn't always so easy in Beijing. It's a small victory, but this week, I'll take it. Running all over the city has also let us get acquainted with new areas that we didn't see during our first visit back in January.

Overall though, this week has been a challenge. It's hard to make big decisions, let alone talk right, when you're jet lagging. Visiting so many places by foot is also exhausting. And, after a summer of living out of our suitcases, we came to Taiwan really looking forward to settling down for a time; but at the moment we're still living out of suitcases. But there is good news. We looked at a good apartment yesterday, and I went back today to negotiate with the agent. Hopefully things will work out, we'll be able to sign the contract tomorrow, and move in this weekend.

There's more to tell, but this is it for now. First post from Taipei. We'll try to make them more frequent this year, especially since we no longer live in a country where the government censors Blogger.

Grace started teacher orientation yesterday; I start on the 27th. Here we go!

UPDATE: Just heard back from the agent, Miss Leu. We got the apartment! We just have to go down tomorrow and sign the lease (and fork over the cash). Guess this means we need to stuff our stuff back into the bags that somehow exploded all over the room during the course of the week.