Last week began with Ezra turning 13. We had church that morning followed by a trip to the grocery store for me. Terry took Ezra across the street to get his favorite mocha at The Golden Bee...
...and then to Mister Donut for some Pokemon donuts. I also splurged and got him his favorite cereal Honey Bunches of Oats that he hasn't had since we moved. It's expensive over here!
Our CBM member care friend Mei took Ezra (and Samuel) to Baskin Robins for ice cream.
I spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen making all of Ezra's favorites - spiral sandwiches, cheese soup, chocolate cake and frosting.
After dinner we took the kids up to the roof for their first time. It was the perfect time, right at sunset.
Two days before Evie and I had spent an afternoon at Mitsui to find a chess set for Ezra and struck out. I researched and considered going to Taipei to find one but decided on one from online that pastor Nanson found me. Ezra was surprised and pleased.
And this Lego dragon was his big gift.
Cake time! It was 100% homemade too since there's no box cake here. I'll get two months off and then make another one for Noah when he comes to visit in August.
Twice a week we have Michelle come into our apartment and tutor us in Chinese. We started in April. Usually she prepares a lesson for us. We're kind of struggling to learn though. So this week, Monday, Terry led Michelle through a lesson of our own. This is called a learner-led Language Acquisition Project, or LAP. They taught us this method at missionary training in November. It was fun!
We let Ezra sleep in a bit, talk to Gramma Kveene, and then his friend Tim as he was putting together his big Lego Ninjago dragon.
The school is closed now so I can't work out there anymore. I want to keep going though so I did a FASTer Way HIIT workout in my bedroom. Terry took the day off from running... the first one in 31 days! He did that 5k every day in the month of May challenge and didn't miss one. He finally rested. We thought maybe he'd get sick once his body had a chance to rest but he's been fine! Evie also ran this day in her new shoes and they felt great.
Terry got schooled by Samuel in their first game of chess. Ha! Terry beat him the second time but it took longer. The boys have been playing together a lot this week.
Terry went to the LKIC staff meeting that afternoon and then I accompanied them all to a special dinner out at a Mongolian Grill place. It was delicious!
The kids had leftovers all by themselves, as they're perfectly capable of now. Samuel was having occasional ear pain and was just exhausted so we thought he might need to go back to the doctor.
The next morning, Tuesday, I went to coffee w my friend Lillian. It was lovely. It's amazing we're aligned on so many things when we haven't known each other very long and lived on other sides of the world before now.
The kids do school still in the mornings since we're behind. Terry ran this day. Samuel's ear seemed to be fine so we didn't go to the doctor. I went out for lunch with Caroline, who is also w/ CBM. She's great. She homeschooled her 4 kids too, even while they were missionaries. So we have a lot in common.
Noah sent us this before he went to bed. We go nuts for pictures of Trouncer... and Noah, of course!
This was Terry's off-week from English conversation class in Taipei so we had an evening together. I was trying to cheer Samuel up here. He's been so anxious and needs reminded of the truth every day. I actually think his anxiety is what was making him so tired.
After dinner Terry and I went on a short walk and stopped in this guitar shop he's been eyeing. Just to look.
We were all so on edge this day! There was nothing openly wrong but we all felt like we were gonna lose it. I went to bed making plans for how to have a better day.
So, Wednesday, Samuel and I biked along with Terry on his run.
He took us out of town where it's wide open... and hot. It was so lovely to be out of the city where it's quieter, but poor Terry got pretty worn out in the sun.
He showed us this park he had found the week before.
And we watched him run through it. There's baby koi fish that will have grown bigger by the time this area is developed.
There is this huge plant on the edge of town. It's either for semi-conductors (what Taiwan is known for) or something else I don't know.
We stopped in a Family Mart for some cool drinks to cool off. SO HOT, seriously. And the humidity to boot. Oof.
We got cleaned up and even though we wanted to chill we all went to En Cafe to study/work. We all just really needed out of the house.
I think it was good for us even though we were still grumpy.
Evie was working on this silly and fun Forensic Science assignment and listed our favorite Substack author, Jeff Childers, as part of it. I thought it was funny so I posted about it on his X post for the day.
She was a little embarrassed b/c she thought he'd think it was dumb but he totally responded. He complimented her! That's one way social media can be cool.
Terry spent a good amount of his time talking to Rex and Theresa downstairs. They talked about their cafe and English. They could use more business and Terry would like to help by hosting more English conversations there. So we'll see! He also asked her a bunch of Chinese questions and asked her to translate many household nouns. Terry then wrote down the English and pinyin names to hang on our walls at home. This way we can learn some more vocabulary.
Heading home afterwards.
Once we got home, I worked out in our complex's gym, and then Terry and I took an Uber to and from Costco, since I was out of everything (which means all meat and dairy, among a few other things). 
While we were gone, Evie tried really hard with the boys and played Unstable Unicorns and Bananagrams, before going outside to even play basketball with them. Terry and I arrived back to the apartment to some grumpy kids though. Even seeing Pastor Nanson and Flora and their new baby didn't cheer them up much! We had Costco pizza for dinner and let them play games since it was such a hard day. We were just all out of sorts, irritated, and on edge. I wasn't sure why, but some ideas are just plain boredom b/c of too much empty time, being tired of school, going through the harder parts of culture shock/adjustment, missing home, needing a vacation, or all of the above.
Meanwhile Noah helped Grampa and Gramma B. vaccinate their calves. Uncle Dallas and little Brixton helped too.
This was a hard milestone for especially Terry to miss. We always help w branding. But they're not even going to brand this year without us.
On Thursday morning, the kids went to play soccer with a group of Morrison students that apparently play every week. I followed Terry's run on a uBike. He took us north of town to this really pretty trail he discovered w/ Samuel weeks ago. Look at that huge tree behind us!
Running through the forest is so different! So hot and humid. But at least it was shady.
Overlooking the highway and some bridges.
This is our apartment complex.
We had another learner-led lesson with Michelle that morning. It was surprising how many words we remembered from Monday.
We talked to Noah during lunch to hear about vaccinating and to catch up. He told us he got a part-time IT internship with a businessman that he did some work for last summer. Noah is already working part-time at Bass Pro Shop (for the last two weeks) so hopefully and prayerfully they can get the two schedules to mesh and Noah will get some good computer experience. He was very pleased.
And for whatever reason, we all felt better this day. Maybe the prayers of a few people I had shared with helped, and my own prayers, or perhaps the kids getting out in the morning was good too. Or all of it combined. Terry had an English lesson in our apartment with the student from our building. His mom and sister came over too and gave this hat to Porky. Her cats, maine coons we met the first week, are too big for the hat if you can believe that. They are frighteningly fierce looking.
Anyway, the three of them stayed to talk for like 45 minutes. She told us about how her son goes to the number 1 school in Taiwan, how incredibly competitive it is, and how at least one boy a year jumps off the school to commit suicide. How terrible! Asian culture is incredibly competitive. Success and good grades are literally everything.
That evening we all got this alert on our phones. Soooo different from home. We pray for rain at home everyday, especially for the ranch.
Enough was enough, so we finally decided to blow off school and go have a fun day on Friday. Terry organized it with our friend, Mei. We rode uBikes in the rain to the train station.
Taiwanese have a special talent for sleeping anywhere. I'm always so impressed how they just pass out.
It was a very full train that took us to Taipei.
We took the purple line to the center of town and then the blue line to the end at Nangang, where we went to this tall shopping mall, LaLaport.
We visited a Lego store!
It was a good thing we had chosen an indoor option since it rained all day.
The boys especially love Legos, but Evie and I can be patient so they can have fun.
Taiwan invented bubble tea so I thought this pillar featuring different bobas was fun.
Looking through the bins of accessories. We spent a very long time there.
Afterwards we went to the basement and had lunch.
And we got Mister Donuts for dessert.
The AI Expo at Nangang was sold out so we went to the underground mall instead. We walked until we were so tired and needed to go home, but we had time to grab some of our favorite wheel cakes. They're like fried waffles with fillings inside. We hadn't seen Oreo wheel cakes before! That evening we had a much smaller Bible study here at our house, probably due to the torrential rain.
Saturday was good and we slept in. Something about spending three hours on a train and walking over 10k steps is exhausting. Ezra bought two Lego sets with his family birthday money. He put together the first one while he ate waffles with The Price is Right in the background.
Terry took Samuel on a run that afternoon while I worked out.
It was good for Samuel's mental health to get out.
Here's me working on the blog, Porky snuggling with Samuel per usual, and the boys playing old school video games all while my pizza dough rose.
The boys were very sweetly playing Legos while I made pizza.
And that's the end of another week. It was a lighter week but sometimes it's like that.
Saturday marked exactly five months in Taiwan!
