Ladies and Gentlemen,

I'd like to introduce you to someone: Jovi. Before I tell you about our day, I'd like to tell you about this little boy. Today he came alive. His shell disappeared while we were at AIT and what we found was this funny little boy. He really does like music and he likes to dance to it. He likes playing with toys and walking around and being tossed in the air. He has the softest cry that you barely here when you're dead asleep. It's almost missable (is that a word?) when you're awake too. He's very observant, does what you tell him, and is so precious. He's not really fat so we don't know why they called him pang pang (fat fat in Chinese). He has a good arm for throwing, tossed a shoe at the laptop and hit it. (Thank goodness it was a Croc shoe!) He has thin hair, his teeth are coming in strangely, not the normal 4 in the front pattern.

He also has a brother: Jace. Jace loves deeply, has a high shrill cry at times, and he has these deep dark eyes. He has a great laugh and is tickleish and wiggles wildly when you kiss his neck. You have to be careful though or he'll whack you with his hard head. He's a skinny little boy, wearing 2T because of the length, but would easily fit in 18mo or possibly 12mo clothes. We know that he likes candy, wants things when he wants them, and is very spoiled. I'm not sure that we've got to see him yet. He's affectionate to Jovi, kisses him, shares snacks with him, and lays his head on Jovi's lap when they're in the stroller. Until Jovi has enough and tries to push him off.
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We woke up before our wakeup call came, but we knew we would. We had to leave at 7:15 for AIT at 8am. A quick bowl of congee for the boys (the one thing both will eat). The desk staff said they needed 5 minutes notice for a cab, we gave them 15. So at 7:14 we walk out of the breakfast room to no cab. The poor guy (we'll have to get his name) said he was having a hard time getting a cab. Total freak out time. Cause we don't know what will happen if we're late, and we have no idea how long it takes to get there. John starts heading to the street to get us a cab and guy comes out and says to wait, he found one and it will be here in 3 minutes. Lesson learned, there aren't that many cabs out and about at 7:15am.

We got to AIT and were able to go right in. We thought we were supposed to go to the 2nd floor but it was the 3rd floor. We met another couple with FEC, a mom using Heartsent, and a couple using Home of God's Love. And with them was Ted Skyles/Skiles. He was so incredibly nice.

I was surprised that our AIT appt took almost 3 hours. So very different from our China experience. After talking with Mr. Fu, we talked with the man from Haiti. He was really nice, talked us about how we were feeling about the boys, did we have any doubts about adopting them. It was really different from China. When we were finally finished he asked what our plans were for the day and we told him we were heading to Taipei 101. He said that was great to go see and we asked was it very far, in walking distance. He said yes if you don't mind walking 5 or 6 miles. And then laughed. We didn't get it, but we did when we got in the cab. Um yeah, 101 is right down the road from AIT but I'd say maybe a mile, much further than we wanted to walk with the boys. We laughed after we got settled in the car and noticed what was in front of us.

Taipei 101 doesn't seem that tall. I mean it is, but it doesn't look that tall. I wasn't sure what to expect when we got inside. Honestly I thought the entire building was a shopping mall. It isn't though I don't know what's on floors 6-87. Every store was a brand name, a high end brand name from what I saw. Way beyond what we spend. But it was great being there. The food court in the basement was amazing. And it wasn't expensive, that was really surprising. We got the boys 2 huge plates of rice for 45nt each (just for the record 30nt = $1), then John went to find some chicken. Jovi can't really chew it since he has almost no back teeth and seems to choke on it if the piece is too big. Neither of them wanted the fried rice and it was so good. They told us that they eat a lot of rice, but so far that seems to be limited to congee. And plain congee at that. I on the hand have gotten pretty good at eating with chopsticks. I can actually have a complete meal using them. Hey, that's something to be proud of if you ask me!

We didn't walk the shopping floors, we weren't looking to buy anything, but we did land on the 4th floor where we bought ice cream. My first time to ever eat from Haagen Daz. We gave the boys some. Turns out Jace loves it. Jovi likes it too but he's not too hip on cold things in his mouth. After we ate it all we went to the 5th floor which is where you buy your tickets to go up to the top. 400nt a person to see floors 88, 89 and 91. I think. Looking out from the observation deck was ok, but hey, I've seen it from a plane. =) They have a little recorder thing you can wear to listen and get a lesson from it all, but the recording never matched up to what we were seeing at each station. After a while we gave up. We saw the ball sphere thingy that keeps the building stable during high wind and earthquakes. I do have to admit I didn't want to stay up there forever just in case another earthquake hit. We went outside to where you can walk around (I think that was on floor 91) and they let us use a private elevator. At this point both boys had fallen asleep and I guess they thought the regular one would wake them up. We walked all the way around. I had to ask one of the girls working there if the guards still had to stand outside when it was cold or rainy and she said yes, they just wear raincoats.

Since the boys were asleep we didn't want to wake them so we went back to the Haagen Daz area and sat there until the woke up, for over an hour. Coming back from 101 both boys only wanted John which was interesting, but ok. We had the driver drop us off at the Bear clinic since we had forgotten the boys IC cards (like a health insurance card) so we had to go show them and get our money back from Monday. From their we walked back down the main road and then turned and headed towards Fangs. I was looking for the dept store that was supposed to be back here. Oh on the ride back Jace got really upset so the cab driver was translating for us. Turns out that this isn't all grief. We learned that some of the things that he's repeated over and over is 'I want candy' and 'I want to watch tv'. Too funny. We found the movie theater, but had just missed the beginning of a movie called Mary and the 3 Puppies. So we went into the department store and I remembered buying movies in China so figured they had them here. One of the things he told the cab driver was that he like to watch 4 characters on a cartoon with tvs on their bellies. "Is it Teletubbies?" I asked. Yes he replied, and I just groaned. Adam I'm sure you're groaning with me. At the dept store we did indeed find Teletubbies which Jace very quickly threw a tantrum because he wanted us to go immediately back to the room and watch them. haha This was all courtesy of the clerk. I found an entire set 1-10 of Dora in Chinese for Jani. So excited about that because Wei had found an episode online that he put on a cd for her. We asked the clerk to tell Jace that he could watch the dvd when we got back to the hotel room.

On the way back we stumbled on a playground and let the boys get out and play. Jace threw a huge fit about being there, I mean huge! Jovi loved getting to rock on the seahorse and walk around. But Jace was MAD. He went back to the stroller and tried to get the dvds out (tried) and just sat in his seat sulking until we left. And this all happened as a woman stood there looking on. I really wanted to stick my tongue out at her, but instead opted for a roll of my eyes. When we were leaving she really stared us down so I decided to just stare back. I know, not the most mature thing to do, but please. You know you would have wanted to also!

After getting back to our room we sadly discovered that the dvds were Region 3. The Dora ones worked just fine (thankfully). We figured out how to change the region on the computer but decided that wasn't the best thing to do. Did you know you can only change your region 5 times and then you can never change it again? And somewhere along the way we used one of those turns and are down to 4. Dora was acceptable to him, though he still whined a whole lot.

We had pizza for dinner and I was really glad to see Jace eat 2 pieces. Jovi gnawed it as good as he could and didn't do a bad job. Jace cried himself to sleep but I think it's getting a little better.

Jeri