Last week we packed up our apartment, took one last stroll down Art Street, bought one last loaf of bread from our favorite bakery and in general said “Goodbye” to Taichung. Now we are saying “Hello!” to a new city: Taipei, the capital and largest city of Taiwan, located about 2 hours north of Taichung.
There are without a doubt more positives than negatives so far. Two things that everyone warned us about, the weather and the higher cost of living, are not really so bad. (Of course time could change this opinion, but I’m not complaining yet.) Taipei is certainly not as sunny as Taichung, but the sun here is intense and hot, so a little cloud cover is actually nice. The cost of living is higher, yes, but because we are living in a dorm our rent is actually cheaper. And eating out may be more expensive than in Taichung, but still a far cry from the cost of eating out in the US.
Another thing that cannot go without mentioning is that our apartment is tiny. We moved from a big four bedroom apartment to a petite two bedroom one. In truth, our former apartment was much too big for us and this one is about the right size.
We think it will be good for us to downgrade and simplify our lives. In addition, a small living space requires organizational solutions(!)–one of my favorite things. (I’m not kidding. I wish I was, but I’m not.) Not to mention the fact that I think we barely squeaked into a two bedroom unit because of the new baby coming in March and I am so so SO thankful that we don’t all have to squeeze into one room.
We miss the garden area of our last apartment complex, but there are lots of little and big parks here with slides for Ellie to play, including a great playroom right in the seminary. The word we now hear most often from Ellie is: “Play!”. It’s the first word out of her mouth in the morning.
One huge bonus is the incredible public transportation system in Taipei. After three years of Taichung’s less-than-satisfactory bus system, including two years relying on the unreliable 88 route that only came twice an hour, we are thrilled–jumping for joy–over the subway (one of the best in the world) and (once we get it figured out) the bus system.
Right now things are a disastrous mess because we don’t have any furniture yet, so we can’t unpack much of anything. Enter IKEA. Hooray! We spent our first two days in Taipei at IKEA, and our bureaus arrived today. Jason has assembling to do. 
I’ll leave you with some pictures of our new place, letting you get a feel of the mess of boxes and suitcases and big black garbage bags we’ve been tripping over these past few days. I’ll try to put more pictures up once things are a little more settled.
This is the main dining/living area. I was standing in the kitchen, which opens into the main room, when I took this picture. For comparison I wish I had a picture of all the boxes back in our old apartment. They took up only a fraction of the main room! Of course one of the first things I unpacked was the Tide! We are thinking we need a smaller high chair, this one takes up too much of our precious floor space.
The little kitchenette. Most of the cabinets are already full (one of the few areas we could unpack into).
Ellie’s room. She gets it all to herself for now. We calculated every centimeter on every wall to work out how to fit another bed and some kind of clothes/diaper/toy storage action in here.
Our bedroom. Only the necessary walkways are free.
From these pictures you can also see one of our favorite things about the new apartment. LIGHT! There are so many windows and we get tons of light all day long. Another favorite thing that you can’t see is the CENTRAL AIR!!!!! Oh, it is so good.
Our not-so-favorite thing is that the place is really dirty. We were expecting this because it isn’t custom in Asia to clean a place before you move out, or for the landlord/owner to have it cleaned between tenants. And, of course, I had the bright idea to take out our vacuum bag before leaving Taichung (my thought was to leave all our old dirt there), buuuuut…we don’t know where we packed the new bags. Yeah. So all the dust and hair (yuck!) left by the last people have to stay for now until we find the bags or find a place to buy new ones.
There’s your first look at things here. More to come I’m sure!
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