Apartment Pictures

We're open to the public

I've just made our blog public to all (and have just emailed the address to my entire staff) so we are official! To our new readers I hope you enjoy and drop us a note every once in awhile. We will start posting more frequently in August when we actually make it to Taiwan :)

Excitement with a side of panic attack

We've been moving forward on our preparations and with each step our move to Taiwan is becoming more and more real. We have sold our house (yay!), and in the process sold, gave away, donated most of our belongings. Our material possessions have been reduced to a few boxes - which is actually much more liberating than I thought it would be. Our new apartment will be a 3 bedroom/2 bathroom and I vow to not collect so much stuff that is never used again (remind me of this later please!).

School is just about done for the both of us and then we have summer to visit family and get our ducks in a row before we fly out. More excited then ever, with the occasional wave of panic.

59 days and flight info

and... it's almost summer break! (see: sailing, traveling, swimming, sleeping in, movies, and relaxing)

here is the flight info:

until next time!

New Office

The current counselor at our school has just sent me pictures of my office for next year, she's so sweet to think to do this (she has also been a wealth of advice - too bad me coming to the school means she is leaving!). My current office is long and skinny and is storing a ton of stuff so this is a big step up for me. I'm looking forward to this new one and putting my own mark on it!

flight confirmation!

just found out we're bouncin out of portland at 7:40 pm on july 31st and getting in to taipei at 5:00 am on august 2nd. sounds like quite the flight... few hour lay over in san francisco and then heading out over the ocean for hours and hours on end. hopefully we get a brand new fancy plane and get bumped up to first class. we can always hope, right?

allison just got pictures of her new office, so hopefully she'll be posting those soon. her office is amazing... windows, couches, and it is huge. i'm guessing people are reading this blog yet, since we're still home. we leave in 113 days, not that i'm counting down or anything. talk to you later.

Preparations

As we get ready to move to Taiwan we get more and more excited. Our house is on the market, we've started to decide what to do with our furniture (a lot of it we are giving away or selling) and what things we want to keep and store while we are gone.

We have been reading blogs from people teaching english in different areas (blonde in taiwan and You Can't Go Wrong With a Fork) to get a feel for the culture and the types of experiences we can expect. I have been learning some chinese through a podcast that I listen to on my commute. I can say "I'm sorry, my chinese isn't very good. Do you speak english?" - "Duìbuqǐ, wo Zhōngwén shuōde bu hǎo. Nǐ huì shuō Zhōngwén ma?". I'm not sure anyone would actually be able to understand it but at least the effort is there. And I think these are the characters for "school counselor": 輔導老師. Not that I can read/write characters, I just copied them from the newsletter from AST where we were introduced.

Soon we should find out where we will be living!