and what about now?

When the weather is this hot and muggy all day and night long, it really slows everything down. The few times when I decided to mind-over-matter, one or the other of the children would spike a temperature and vomit from the heat. Their less mature internal temperature monitors are just no match for this climate. I looked up the forecast for Haifa this past week; The highs are actually about five degrees lower than in Kaohsiung right now. Joke's on us for thinking we'd be escaping the Israeli summer by visiting Taiwan right about now. I went running in the best conditions the other day: It was low 90s, about 80% humidity, at 5:30pm. Best conditions for real compared with every other day so far.

Is it good to be back for a visit? I love the food. It's just ridiculously perfect to my taste. Little soy sauce-marinated raw clams, meat sauce over the chewiest white rice, perfectly firm noodles in rich beef stock, real spinach. Etc, etc, etc....

But it's not real life, where I have friends to call up and hang out with (hence why living in Israel doesn't really feel like real life either), where I know the public amenities of the city and the bus routes to get there... This is my home but it's still pretty lonely, which makes it more lonely in a way.

I don't mean to be complaining again. I do love that there are these new bike paths and parks along the paths that are perfect for running as well, that go all the way to the harbor or Lotus Lake or Cheng Ching Lake or the Love River Promenade... If I didn't have children who need me to hold them (literally) within 30 minutes to an hour's break, I think I would just run all night, every night, enjoying seeing the many little shops, neighborhoods, and street names that make me feel a part of this land. I love that there're large shopping centers like Costco, Carrefour, Dollars, Geant, which have everything one could desire. Such a nice change from the many places I must trek to for each individual item in Israel.

After much searching, I discovered a children's library in a park yesterday. My heart almost melted into a happy goo in my thoracic cavity when I spotted Declan--shortly after I'd made the executive decision for us to leave due to his rowdiness in the reading room--sitting on a library bench with some books he'd selected from a nearby bookshelf, quietly flipping through the pages. When I told him we'll take some of the books to read at home, he got up and methodically put the rest of the books back onto the bookshelf without my prompting. All this was after our lunch a few blocks away at 牛乳大王, a restaurant I'd eaten at a few times myself as a child (read: very old establishment). There're cow statues in the restaurant. During the wait for our food, Declan ran to each of the statues and loudly counted the number of nipples after pointing at their giant sculpted udders and saying "Num num!" (Our term for breastfeeding.)

I love being able to read and understand everything everywhere I go, and comprehend everyone (as I eavesdrop blissfully and without any shame on random conversations). I love being able to strike up a conversation with strangers and discuss the many options with cashiers without feeling like a nonlocal-language-speaking jerk.  I love that Declan's starting to say Chinese phrases every now and then, and is finally becoming open/patient enough to continue sitting with me as I read books with him in Chinese.

And there's still a few places I want to show Declan, like the Science Museum, the Eslite headquarter in Kaohsiung, and the indoor gym at Central Park. There's always a bit of a lethargic "Now what?" when we arrive at a new place, even if the place is technically home. It is a sad potential fact that the same wish I've felt several times when we'd just came back--that I wish we could have stayed in Israel to continue the routine we'd set there--would resurface about Taiwan when we're due to leave again.