A Family of Three

24 Feb 2010 – Today begins our last day as a family of three. We are now less than 27 hours to Gotcha time.

After breakfast, we came back to the room so Tian could get some school work done. Amazing how much her homework is stretching us as well as we scratch our heads over her math homework using words we've not used in many a year, much less think of them.

Next came a lunch, after which we took our first taxi ride to a Carrefour store, which is a department store here – much like Walmart at home, but different, being a mix of groceries and other items but of about equal size. We picked up a variety of things and on checking out one does not get a bag automatically to place one's purchases in, rather if one wants one, it has to be purchased as well, about 60 cents.

Here we encountered a most interesting selection of what is this?

Back at the hotel after discovering how to call a taxi, find someone who can do it for you! We had another ride of extremely economic cost, about $4. Next we went down to the 7th floor where Tian enjoyed the outdoor rooftop pool for a while. I got in up to my knees and held her so she could do some somersaults in the water but it was too cold for me to immerse further. Ellen decided to just sit it out on a cabana and watched us.

By then it was time to get ready for dinner, across town, where another family with the same Gotcha date, at the same orphanage had made reservations at Fu Lou Restaurant - fulou.com.tw. It was an interesting ride because it didn't take us long to know where we were, streets that we had traversed on foot in the last couple of days.

Dinner was nice, a hodge podge of Chinese food, including fried squid (which I ordered), roast beef, rice, chicken, tea, desert on the house – tea jelly. It was quite good. The five us ate for $1130 NT, which was amazingly inexpensive.

Now back at the hotel, just about 13 hours to Gotcha, we prepare to leave our home for the last few days, and become a family of four tomorrow.