Taxis

I do not like the taxis here. It’s hard to communicate with taxi drivers here as none of them speak English (ok, maybe there are some, but it’s RARE) and they don’t understand my Chinese. So, unless I know exactly where we are going and can sort of give directions in Chinese, it’s useless to try and go somewhere. Another really annoying thing, taxi drivers are picky. For instance, the other night, I needed to go to get some passport size photos taken for Ryken and myself. The place I needed to go is about a 15 minute cab ride away. No one would take us – too short of a distance, I was told. I spent about 30 minutes waiting for a cab that would take Ryken and I, getting more and more frustrated by the minute, until I just gave up and went back home. The first cab I had gotten into actually said No and made me get out of the cab. That is so frustrating! The other day, we got in a cab and Liz got in first – climbing from one side to the other (cabs only open on the passenger side, so you have to slide across the backseat if more than one person is sitting) and she put her foot on the seat to push herself across – she promptly got reprimanded by the driver for putting her foot on the seat and he spent a great commotion “wiping” away where her shoe had been. ARGH.

Some interesting things I’ve noticed. People really seem to be money conscious here (SO different than Taipei). The air conditioning isn’t blasting everywhere, including taxis. They keep their windows rolled down in taxis (we’ve requested AC and they’ve turned it on) and I don’t freeze when going into restaurants or stores. When taxis are waiting in a que to take people, they don’t leave their engines running – and they push their car up the line if it needs to be moved.

We had the flooring replaced in the playroom – it was badly warped and the original agreement was to put wall to wall carpet in the room. Their idea of wall to wall carpet though was a rug that fit most of the room (a rug with all vegetables on it, hmmm). We said no to that rug, then decided the flooring was so badly warped and smelly that it should be replaced. What did they do? They just laid the new flooring on top of the old wood flooring. Nice. Took the guys about 2 hours to do the whole floor. I’m quite sure that it’s not supposed to be done that way – especially since they came with some sort of padding to put under the new floor and they didn’t even use it.

The place we live has many activities to help become involved here. They have sports, get togethers, playgroups, meetings, etc. I’ve met MANY people and lots of moms with kids. It’s been good – although hard keeping track of everyone. All the kids Ashley’s age are in school during the day, so it can be quite lonely for her. And many of the kids Liz’s age are also in school, so she hadn’t really made any friends yet. We went to a playgroup this morning, I think there were about 25 kids there – mostly 18 months to 2.5 years. The girls had fun – Ashley was the oldest and helped make the craft example, so she enjoyed that. Liz was a bit intimidated at first by all the kids and noise, but she quickly got over it and played for a while, not with anyone else, but alone.

We went to the playground this afternoon – there is one playground in the complex that a lot of people go to after school. I counted that there were 16 boys and 4 girls (2 of which were mine) – it was craziness seeing that many boys running around in the sand and on the playground equipment. Lots of horseplay and crying. The girls pretty much ignore most of it unless they accidentally get involved some how.

We are still looking into getting a car and driver to avoid the taxi hassle and feel safer taking the kids out and about. There are some yoga classes I’d like to try with Ryken, but haven’t gotten the courage yet to try and venture out on my own in the taxis. There are also a few preschools I’d like to visit for Liz, to find something for her 1-2 days a week, but again, same thing. I’m hoping we can figure the car/driver thing out, it’s just a bit expensive and we aren’t sure how to go about finding one.

Xiaoshu is working out well – she’s doing really well with Ryken, he gives her lots of smiles and some laughs. She seems to enjoy watching him and playing with him. She gets happy when I tell her I’m taking the girls to the park and leaving him with her. She’s doing ok with Ashley and Liz. Unfortunately, we don’t speak enough of the same language that I am able to give her a list of rules or things that girls can or can not do, so it’s all by trial and error right now. Ashley has learned that if I say no, she can go ask Xiaoshu and she’ll get it because she doesn’t know any better. So, that’s a problem we are addressing.

The weather has been pretty nice lately, although the past 2 days, it’s starting to get hot. Last night, we had thunder and lightening, with a little bit of rain. That’s unusual here, I guess, at least the rain is. There’s a guy that’s been here since August and hadn’t seen rain until the week after we arrived. Since then, it’s rained several times. Guess water just follows us everywhere!

Our stuff is here from Taiwan – it is so nice to have it all! To have the girls toys and our clothes and kitchen stuff. We’ve managed to fry a few of our appliances – our expensive air purifier, my bread maker, an alarm clock and a floor fan – all due to the voltage difference and the faulty converters we were using, along with some error on our part – plugging the wrong things in. I’m really hoping we’ll be able to get the purifier and bread maker fixed, but who knows. I also wanted to make some cookies and went to use our oven for the first time, kept turning the knob for temperature and it wasn’t getting hot. Called the service center who had guy come out and he showed me that there are 2 parts to the oven, one is electric to be used to “make things yellowish or brown” (this translated apparently is a crisper) and the other is the gas part to “cook things through”. So, you have to push a button in to get the gas to ignite and turn the oven on to cook. I did manage to figure it out, and Ashley and I made cookies yesterday – they are yummy! I also had to have someone come out to show me how to operate the dishwasher. It’s quite weird and strange, but it works. The washing machine we have is designed to hold 2 kg of clothes – yes, that’s 4.4 lbs of clothing. Um, not a lot for a family of 5. So, we are looking into buying a bigger one, that works better. It’s not really cleaning the clothes very well, especially the kids clothes.