Hey, everyone! This week's blog just so happens to be a special-edition version written by none other than yours truly, Evie Biers! Mom is currently incapacitated when it comes to typing with healthy fingers on a keyboard... more on that later. So please, sit back and enjoy my retelling of our week! I may not measure up to Mom's brevity and bluntness, but I'll try my best! Without further ado, let's get on it!
On Monday, September 28th, Mom went and got buff with Dad at some point. She also worked on school with Ezra, because we recently discovered that he does the least amount of stuff possible and calls it good enough. She has to get on his case and make sure he tried harder than writing one simple sentence for every question. As you can see, I'm taking advantage of my time in the spotlight and using it to throw him under the bus. 😈 Meanwhile, Dad worked on an English Corner lesson and Samuel went to class.
Something I got to go and do in the afternoon was try and help my friend Eleanor make people try on different costumes for the upcoming play at Morrison. Lydia took this picture while we were waiting for a kid to get off stage and try something... but he never did. So we just talked.
My beautiful expressions. So lovely.
Oo yes and here's Noah. He got a haircut. Mom calls him her handsome son. I guess he is. He spent his Sunday going to church and working at Bass Pro. He got this haircut.
In the evening we watched a Sherlock episode on The Hounds of Baskerville... it was absolute cinemaaaaa. And that was all we were up to!
On Tuesday, September 29th, Mom and Dad went on a Costco run. I love when they bring home piles of food for me to eat 😍
They discovered Christmas decorations that were already up in the store! Dad did an excellent job of making them look extra appealing.
Dey like spending da moneys. (Not really. Mom hates it).
I captured this marvelous picture of Mother as we were bringing all of the goodies to the elevator. What a lovely lady. She proceeded to make me and my siblings shred up the four rotisserie chickens that they had bought from the store. With our bare hands. Deliciousness comes at a price, folks.
Here's Samuel wearing the gorgeous new pomelo hats that everyone seems to be wearing these days. They're all the rage, you know.
In the afternoon Mom and Dad went to go and get buff. Again. Their muscles are gonna be so big, they'll be ripping through their shirts soon enough.
They caught Samuel on their way home as he was also coming home on Scootaloo (my scooter). He had been at a meeting at Morrison about an upcoming 10th grade trip.
Da trees in da park are changing colors. I wasn't expecting them to do that, since the trees are never really bare, not even in the winter. They look so pretty!!
Mm. Yes. This is me and the gang after cross country practice. I joined for my second time ever as an *almost* assistant coach. I'm working on getting the paperwork and everything done for that so I can come and officially help these guys out twice a week! We did a whopping 7k on this day. I mean, everyone else did, but I got to take a shorter route with some of the other kids who weren't quite ready for that. Oo, and I bought a birthday present for my friend Moriah right before I arrived at the school.
The evening was concluded when Daddy went to Taipei for EC talk, Samuel studied to retake his last CS test, and I watched a movie called Steel Magnolias with Mom. Oh my word. It was amazing. Amazingly funny and amazingly tragic. We both cried a great deal. I loved it.
Here is da Noah. He had art class and made himself dinner. So independentttttt. And so flush with cats. 😡
Da BIG BOIIIII! We miss him so very much. 😭
On Wednesday, September 30th, da cat was cute. As always. Mom and Dad worked out and Mom went grocery shopping afterwards.
Here I am, sitting on the couch, either pre- or post- snickerdoodle-making. I decided to whip up a batch because we were having company over that night.
This is how Noah picks up Trouncer (not really). It's now officially one of my favorite pictures of our luscious cat. Noah's day was filled with an interview for an internship with this company called Daktronics. He also went to his internship and worked at Bass Pro and made dinner. How accomplished.
Da Mommy and da Samuel. Just chilling together.
At 11:15am, Dad and I went to Chang Gung University for Dad's second English Corner attempt. Two students came this time (doubling the amount of students from last time!). I mostly sat and listened to everyone talking, trying to learn how it's done. Once the English Corner was over, all us missionaries went out and shared the gospel in the university's food court. It reminded me a lot of Dad's past mall mission trips, only this was in Chinese. Don't worry-- I didn't do the Chinese talking. I went with a sweet lady named Sarah and tried to follow along as she did all the talking. But I didn't really know what was going on... I can only understand so much at this point. 😭 But anyways, it was good! And it made me sleepy.
That evening, we had our company over. They were some fellow Taiwan missionaries: Wayne and Grace! Mom and Dad had gone with them on their vision trip to Taiwan in 2024. We had a great time eating spaghetti and meatballs and swapping stories about our various experiences on living in the new culture and meeting new people. They were super nice!
Ah. But now we get to the part in the story that explains why I'm writing this blog and Mother is not. She kinda sorta was chopping bell peppers, when she up and chopped off half of her pointer finger's fingernail! It was quite dramatic. By dramatic, I mean that she had to wrap her bloody finger up in a towel and keep it elevated and make me take over chopping up stuff for dinner.
*Stomach proceeds to do a backflip.* And this was after it finally stopped bleeding.
After W and G left, Mom took the washcloth off her finger and it started bleeding again. So what did she do? What she always does. Slap some DMSO on it to make it all better! (It actually did make the bleeding stop, though). Then she called a doctor from home, who told her she didn’t need stitches because there was nothing to hold together. Dad went and got her some gauze and tape at the pharmacy like a good hubby. She went to bed with her finger all nice and obese.
On Thursday, October 1st, Mom and Dad didn't work out. *Gasps.* Instead, they drove into Taipei to sign up for some fancy shmancy Taiwan health insurance. While they were out, I wrote many words and the boys did school. I'm actually joining a writing challenge to write 30,000 words in the month of the October, which is equal to 1,000 words in a day, so I have been spending a fair amount of time in front of the computer screen!
They had lunch with Mei afterwards, who was their helper throughout the morning. Notice mom's huge finger bandage.
Um... I guess Mom liked the picture of this tree? Not really sure what I'm supposed to say here (Eva here - we had just left the athletic store, Decathlon, and were navigating to the bus stop to get home). T'was hot outside. That's a pretty safe comment to make, seeing as it's always hot out here. (Eva - it was crazy hot that day. Mei said they called it Autumn Tiger, which I just looked up, and signifies how hot fall still is.).
When Mother and Father returned home, Samuel was out on a run with his friend Patrick, and I was busy working out with three of my friends (Eva - I was so proud). We did Upper Body and struggled with that all together. None of us are particularly buff, unlike my parents.
Speaking of parents... they were pretty tired after their big morning out. Here's Dad on his deathbed-- I mean deathcouch.
I snapped this gorgeous 0.5 selfie at some point.
Meanwhile, back in Rapid City, South Dakota, Grandma and Grandpa B. were preparing to board their first flight to Taiwan! Here's Shari seeing them off at
the airport.
Off they go 🥺. (Eva - I have a core memory of this place from when we left Rapid City for Taiwan and we turned around and waved our final goodbye to Noah. 😱😭😭😭)
We sent them this encouraging selfie from the couch. The rest of our evening included Dad and Ezra playing basketball in the park, us eating leftovers for dinner, and everyone watching Hitch while I was out hanging with my Astronomy group. Daddy and the boys also played Mario Kart.
Here's an update on how Mom's finger was doing that night: Gory enough to be in a rated R movie. I'm starting to feel a little queasy... (Eva - I took daily pictures to track how slowly or quickly it healed. It's actually healing quickly).
Anyways... here's Noah! He got up in the wee hours of the morning (2am) to drive down to Oklahoma with friends from Parkview for a CaveTime retreat. He really enjoyed the first session, so that's good!
On Friday, October 2nd, we woke up to the news that Grandma and Grandpa had not gotten into a plane crash, missed their next flight, or gotten lost in the three airports that they went through. They were set to arrive in Taiwan at 8:30pm that night! The picture below is the RCC girl's tennis team at their final dual against STM before State! Seeing them in their uniforms makes me wanna be with them so baddd 😭
Dad made waffles and Mommy had coffee with Lillian, as is their Friday tradition. (Eva - I love Lillian!).
She came home and made Ezra clean all of the cardboard he'd been storing in his room to make as future forts for Porky... it looked like the box maze had died on our living room floor. (Eva - Ezra was like a pac rat, except he hoarded cardboard instead of shiny things. It was ridiculous. We all left so much more peace after all that junk was gone.)
Paparazzi shot of the boy splaying some Minecraft together later in the afternoon. Why does the back of Samuel's head look like Noah? (Eva - "Because that's why.)
I painted this beautiful lil cow on a jewelry plate to give to my friend Moriah. I spent too long on it and nearly lost my mind when things kept going wrong, but the finished result was sufficient enough to satisfy me.
Now comes the most exciting part of our day! We watched half of a Sherlock episode, before heading out to the airport at 7:30 to pick up the grandparents! Mom and I were immediately distracted by this big 'ol orchid display in the airport Arrival Hall that was set up for the mid-autumn festival, we think. (Eva - I'm pretty sure since there's a giant moon in the middle. 😂)
We were so distracted by the flowers that I was getting worried we wouldn't see Grandma and Grandpa when they walked in. Just as I voiced my concerns to Mom, I turned to look for them, and they were walking in! The five of us rushed over to them and were soon swapping some very happy hugs. YAY! We're all back together again!
A nice lady took a picture for us.
Now one with just Dad and his parents.
I don't know how they did it, but the orchids had the Taiwan flag stamped onto them! It was kinda super cool.
Talking and hearing about their flight. Grandma and Grandpa got up upgraded for their long flight over! But all of the TV screens on the flight malfunctioned, unfortunately and they were given some money back.
We began the trek back to the van, and I couldn't help but sit on this amazing set of dumpling chairs while we were at it. They're sooooo cute!
We made it safely back home! We proceeded to give Grandma and Grandpa a tour of the apartment. Then we made them feed treats to Porky so that he would decide they weren't out to get him.
And here we all are, sitting on the couch and talking. It was quite a happy evening.
On Saturday, October 3rd, Grandma and Grandpa woke up at 4:00am. I heard them moving around and was woken up along with them, but managed to fall back asleep. I still didn't feel quite rested when I got up for real, though. Once the whole house was up, we ate breakfast and watched Price is Right together (Eva - Fun fact: Our tradition of watching the Price is Right comes from Jerry's parents and from Jerry and Alice themselves.). After we were all cleaned up, we decided to be a little active, so we walked outside to give Grandma and Grandpa a little tour of the neighborhood. First stop was the wet market!
Then we headed on over to En Cafe and got ourselves some coffee.
Rex was able to meet the grandparents. Here's him and Father talking about going on road trip to this Tuesday to a place called Yilan.
You may think that all this walking was enough for the day. But you would be WRONG. Our next stop was Mitsui, the outlet mall! We walked through it and then went to the Brooks shoe store to get Samuel and Ezra some new running shoes. It took foreverrrrrr.
Here they are with their brand new kicks. Notice Ezra's especially beautiful expression.
As soon as we were all wrapped up with that, everyone else headed home, while Samuel and I went out for a run. I ran like a 3.5k and he ran around a 5k. It was exhausting. I hated running as a middle schooler, and I hate it now. But it keeps ya healthy, so it's a pain I'll just have to endure. (Eva - Samuel ran in his new shoes and wasn't nearly as tired and whiny as Evie.)
Daddy and Ezra went to buy some Bafang dumplings and brought it home for lunch. Grandma didn't want it, and Grandpa couldn't taste it 😂 I asked Grandpa if he was going to take a nap because the jet lag hits hardest in the afternoon, and he resolutely told me No. A few hours later, he was asleep on the couch. Jet lag wins again. We woke him up and had Family Movie Night. Our movie of the night was Project Hail Mary, but we stopped thirty minutes in when Grandpa fell asleep. Again. Him and Grandma wished us a good night and went to bed at 6ish. We switched to watching Sherlock and went to bed as well.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Noah had a lovely time at his Cave Time retreat. There were lectures, workouts, prayer sessions, pickleball, friend-making, baptisms, armadillo hunting, and more! Sounds like he had many adventures and good man time. This pic is of him heading back home. I think that's Mr. Jason and Gage in front.
On Sunday, October 4th, Mother's finger was still repulsive, but getting better.
Samuel went to church early to help the guy on his left, Johnathan, with AV.
We walked over to church and I thoroughly enjoyed Nanson's sermon. Grandma and Grandpa were busy meeting people before and after the service.
Here Nanson is talking about the picnic that he and Dad had arranged for the church to have directly after church!
We walked straight over to the park right after the service, grabbing some delicious burgers from this burger truck I like on our way over. Here's a bunch of kids playing Dad's Made-in-Taiwan Nine-Square game! They went at it for hours.
There were plenty of other games too, like cornhole, Kan Jam, soccer, and badminton. A lot of people came and it was a great time of fellowship! There was much talking, gaming, and laughs.
Tall Samuel in a short contraption (Eva - Terry made the game for two heights - this one is for little kids, whom Samuel obviously is not.).
Ah, yes. Me. This is me sometime before I played hide-and-seek with one little girl from our church. We both managed to find each other a few times, before it was her turn to seek and she never found me. Eventually I gave up hiding and hunted her down. She had befriended a girl her age and forgotten all about me 😂
Father cooking at Kan Jam.
These were some of the buddies who joined in on his game.
Playing cornhole with Lydia!! I was destroying her, before we got distracted by something or other.
Awww I absolutely love this picture 🥺
Grandma and Grandpa had a good time watching us play and meeting new people! Their favorite thing to show everyone was their cows and rollercoaster. It absolutely blew people's minds that they can manage a ranch and spoil their grandchildren that much.
And here is da Noah. He got home from his man retreat pretty late. But he's aliveeee.
We went and got Family Mart ice cream once the picnic was all wrapped up at around 4:30. It was pretty good! Papaya and milk flavor.
Then we walked on home. It was pretty hot out that day. I was intensely looking forward to our AC.
Past the wall of plants. I remember thinking they were so cool when I first saw them.
Over the final crosswalk before we get home :). We chilled the rest of the night and that was it for the week! The next week was full of adventures with G&G!
