Warren and Sandra in Taiwan

Hello family and friends, Here we are, learning how to manage our first blog webpage. Hope it's not too amateur, I'm sure we'll improve it as we learn more tricks. We have been here almost 3 weeks! We are definitely feeling more established and comfortable in our new home. Our shipment should be here in 3 weeks or so but in the meantime we have everything we need. I (Sandra) have found a job as of 3 days ago. I will be teaching at an English Institute for kids called HESS, it's the most reputable one in the country. My hours are 4:30-8:30 every day of the week and saturday mornings (not sure the hours yet). This leaves me some time during the day to learn mandarin, see Warren (yay!) and maybe do some yoga or some kind of exercise. I start work this week after a couple of days observing and training. Warren has been busy working but has managed to still enjoy some of what Taipei has to offer. We've explored by foot, buses and subways. Tonight we are checking out the night market in our neighbourhood, we want to walk there and see how long it takes us. We've enjoyed just watching people in general. Watching the customs, observing behaviours, seeing the fashions, especially the women, wearing the latest styles and very short shorts and mini skirts. The city is like one giant shopping mall. My favourite is the food vendors outside, especially the fresh fruit ones. They sell cut up fruit or make it into juice. There's guava, delicious mangoes, oranges, pinneaple and all kinds of other fruits i don't recognize. We went to see our first movie. We saw Superman and we entered an empty movie theatre, so we picked seats in the centre. Then it got full and a couple interrupted our conversation to tell us that we had taken their seats. (not in so many words but more with them pointing to a seat number on their tickets) Oh.... sorry, so we moved and found our seats in the right aisle. Little mistakes like that are now a common part of our lives. On the bus I rang the bell to get off at the next stop and the busdriver started yelling at me from accross the bus, I had to respond in English "I don't understand!" and then he opened the door and dropped me off in the middle of the road, with oncoming scooters. Scary!! Warren and I have woken up to 3 beetles in our bathtub (3 separate times) that probably crawled up the drain. We saw a tiny gecko two days ago in the hallway. There are mini ants that hang out in our kitchen, waiting for us to take out anything sweet. They love our cereal, they get right in the box. We must purchase some plastic containers for them. Also on rainy days when we are walking around our neighbourhood, there are tons of snails. I saw about 15 of them once, in the same corner of the sidewalk. Poor Warren stepped on one recently and crunch, a bit unsettling. Well for today this is it. I posted some pictures , check out our album. I suggest that you click on each picture until it gets to its full size, it allows the details to be much clearer and to see the expressions on people's faces more. Enjoy and send us replies!