The Move

We did it! We arrived in Taichung, Taiwan at exactly 8am this morning exhausted but in good spirits.  The last 24+ hours are blur of activity as we finalized cleaning up our house, packing our bags, and getting ourselves ready for the trip. Below is a break down of the events leading up to our arrival ...

So much stuff!

Cleaning House - I worked all the way until the end of August and started my time off from on on Wednesday Sept 1.  The following days were a tornado of activity as we packed up the rest of our house, moved our furniture into my sister's place, and packed our own bags for the trip. We planned on using half our garage for storage but I thought with our furniture gone and all the stuff we sold/got rid of we'd only use a portion of that. We ended up using the entire half!


Packing Worries - My sister and cousin Andrew graciously offered us one luggage check-in allowance for us. This gave us the option of bringing a total of nine pieces of checked luggage. However, according to the Malaysian Air website strollers count as a check in and the dimensions of your checked luggage cannot exceed some ridiculously small amount akin to a toaster oven. It turns out that the Malaysian Air check in peole were really quite relaxed about the stroller policy (we brought two) and didn't care about your baggage dimension though they were a stickler for weight.

Finally! Checked in at LAX!

The Flight - Our original project plan involved getting everything ready by Saturday night so we could enjoy Sunday and Labor Day relaxing with friends. In reality, I was scrubbing the sink at 8:15pm on Monday night. Lucky for us, our roomate Daniel bought dinner for us and help us stow away the last of our boxes, laundry, etc. Our good friend Scott and family came a bit early to wish us well and to drive us to the airport. That was also a blessing as we were coming down to the wire with packing and cleaning the house and Kyoko offered to watch the kids for us. Despite the frenzy getting out the door, the trip itself was remarkably smooth.  Scott dropped us off at LAX at 9:30, we we're checked-in by 10, went through security at 10:30 and were on the plane and down the runway by 1:00am. The only real 'issue' was when we realized the gate agent had changed our seat assignment and split my sister apart from us as she had checked in separately. Again this was a hidden blessing as they gave us four seats in the middle along with a bassinet. The seat next to my sister turned out to be empty so we essentially had six seats to ourselves along with the bassinet!  Seraphine slept most of the flight and Moses had conked out before take off and did not wake up until we were halfway through.

On Island - We arrived almost two hours early at 4:51am. The airport is one quiet place at that hour but one cannot mistake the heat and humidity upon arrival. There's also that distinct Taiwan airport 'smell/aroma' as we had arrived in the old Terminal 1 building.  It looks like they've been rehabing Terminal 1 as the arrival area was quite nice though the ceilings felt really low. Going through immigration and customs was a breeze and one of the customs officers (a pistol packing 5 ft tall Taiwanese lady who couldn't have weighed more than 90 pounds) even helped us push one of our luggage carts to the waiting area. Can you imagine an immigration officer at LAX doing that? My mom had arranged a driver to pick us up in a minivan. This was a good thing as, between the four adults and two kids, we had 8 checked in pieces of luggage, 11 carry on items, and two strollers. It was a tight squeeze (Moses and I shared a seat) but we were all in and in front of my parent's house in 90 minutes.

We made it!

It's 8pm local time as I write this.  I'm still doing well after having a shower, nap, and coffee this afternoon.  Tina and the kids have conked out and will hopefully be able to sleep in a bit today. I'm going to have a bowl a chilled tofu dessert ("do hua") and will see if cousin Andrew is up for some stinky tofu later.  Tomorrow begins our first full day of our Taiwan adventure.

-- Steve