Announcement!!!

After much debate. We have decided to move back to the States in April. We could not be more torn. We absolutely love Taiwan. We love living Taipei. We have met some amazing people here who will be hard to leave. We have really found new strength in our testimonies. Our life and journey here will forever be missed and longed for. HOWEVER, we are so excited to see our families again. I can't wait for Jack to play with his cousins and aunts and uncles. Both Taylor and I are anxious to start our life and hopefully say goodbye to appartment living forever!!! See you soon

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Ok I admit it... it did get cold here last week. Right after we returned home from our really warm Vacation the temp dropped. We now have winter in Taiwan... a freezing 59 degrees. It was a cold front that came in for about a week... now however the weather is back up to 70 and all is well. Happy New Year to you!!!! We did get involved in the New Year fun here in Taipei. We, amongst 3 million other people, went to the Taipei 101 building to ring in the new year. We not only felt like sardines, we literally could pick up our feet and not drop to the pavement. There were so many people out on the streets that the radio was giving advice on what to do in a stampeed. The city shut down all the surrounding streets of the 101 Building. We live about five blocks away and our streets where filled with people. It was a fun way to spend our last minutes of 07. The 101 building is Taiwan's pride and joy. Up until the last couple of months it was the tallest building in the world. This is the last year (supposidly) for the firework show. We just had to be there. That night the Subway system here set a record of moving 1.6 million passangers to that location just in the hour leading up to and after the celebration. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! LOVE TAY BEAN AND JACK.

Merry Christmas

So, Our Christmas here was a bit different. We spent Christmas Eve with some good friends of ours. They were gracious enough to invite all the small families and single people in our ward over for the holiday. We ate Mongolian BBQ while the weebees acted out the Nativity. It was so cute. Then we exchanged white elephant gifts. We thank Hugh and Courtney for a wonderful night.
The next day, Christmas, we started our Christmas Vacation. We circled the whole island of Taiwan. I already did a post of Green Island so I will skip that part (even though it was the best part). We started in Taipei (duh). We took a train down the East coast. It is an amazing view and the train ride is literally on the beach the whole way.
We reached Taitung that afternoon and we spent the night there. Not much to do in this sleepy town. We have some pics of it for you... old run down houses, broken couches on the beach. The old guys house in the pics is literally facing the ocean. We had a hard time figuring out how someone with beach front property could live that way... actually all of Taitung was like that. Oh well.
Then the next morning we hopped a boat to Liudau. That was amazing, but you will have to read about it below. We spent three days there. After Liudau, we took another train to the other side of Taiwan to Kaohsiung. This city is huge and has one of the largest ports in the world. We watched tankers and battle ships and all kinds of ships do what ships do.... not much. It was fun though because Tay loved it and Jack loved it more.
We then took the High Speed Rail (bullet train) and sped back to Taipei at about 180 m.p.h.. our whole trip was just five days. We are planning to return to Liudau soon. Well, that is our Christmas in a nutshell. These pics are all over the place so I am sorry about that. I hope they are not too confusing, take a look.

Liudau (green island)

So I have to admit. Going into Christmas this year we were quite home sick. It is just not the same without family around. The spirit of Christmas is just not the same here. We went on vacation for the holiday though and found more Christmas decor and Christmas trees down toward south of the island. That helped a bit. We took a boat over to Liudau (Green Island). The ride was so fun. Really rough waters though and I am woman enough to admit that I did get sea sick. However, I still loved it. Then we reached our destination....... The cooliest island I have ever seen. No offense but, we lost all home sickness when we arrived. No Christmas to be found there but our hearts were warmed by the hot sunshine and beautiful coral reefs. Our lungs didn't know what to do with all the fresh air. We spent our days riding around on a scooter and playing in the water looking for hermit crabs, star fish and tropical fish. We gathered large pieces of coral and shells from the beach. We spent our nights enjoying HBO (big deal for us) and listining to the waves crash outside our window. We awoke early one morning and found a cliffs edge to watch the sun rise over the Pacific ocean. Our whole lives we have only seen the sun set over the Pacific. We thought it would be neat switch. The whole island has only a 8 mile circumfrence and is only about two mile across. We circled it many times on our scooter. (Don't turn us in for child abuse. Yes, all three of us squeezed our little butt cheeks onto our cool ride and felt the wind in our hair). Liudau also has one of only three salt water hotsprings in the world. We had a blast!!!!!!!! The rest of our trip will be continued on my next entry. These pics are all of Liudau.