We're HERE!!!!!

Hello everyone!!

After a looooooonnnnnnggggg 31 hour journey we can finally say we are HERE!!

Of course the journey was not without it's fair share of.....hmmm.....sighs of relief (to put a positive spin on it...). We made it to the airport in plenty of time despite some wet snow/sleet/rain falling on our journey. Sigh of relief. We checked in with no problem and our luggage was blissfully well within the allowable weight range (HUGE sigh of relief!) The screener at the airport was the first person to ever inquire about my maiden name being on the front page of my passport (but not the last - it's been examined quite a few times since!). Security was a little hinky, but the line wasn't long and we had plenty of time.

Our bags were checked through, but we were not, so when we got to San Francisco we inquired about how best to address that issue and found that the ticket counter didn't even open for over 2 hours so we got a soda and watched a movie on my laptop. I thought I'd take advantage of WiFi, but SF airport doesn't have free WiFi afterall. Oh well. We thought we'd check in and then get something to eat over in the international terminal while we waited out the rest of our layover. Hmmm.... SF airport has a surprisingly small international terminal! We were doing laps (just to be doing something active) and could walk the whole terminal in about 10 mins. Our food options were slightly less than stellar(in number), but we stumbled onto a Japanese noodle place where we had a yummy bowl of Udon noodle soup with tons of chicken and seafood for $2 more than the place next door was charging for a white bread sandwich.

No problems getting on to our Taipei flight and it was really neat to watch the waves crashing against the coastline as we left SF. We saw the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz from the air and that was also pretty neat! Our flight was great and there were two adorable babies to watch for some of it (they were kind of far ahead of us). Now I'm antsy to hold that baby of mine! We landed, changed money, and went through immigration with no problems at all. Then it was time to pick up our luggage. Around and around the carousel went.....and around....and around.... and I said to Steve, "you know, I'd feel a little more comfortable if just ONE of our bags would show up (we had 3)." and he agreed. A couple more times around and two of them showed up at once. And then the baggage carousel went around and around and around some more and we kept saying "well there's still lots of people here...." and then pretty soon there weren't so much lots of people there. There was us and another couple and one bag which wasn't ours. Vermont anyone?? Thankfully, it suddenly came into view - alone and forlorn and we excitedly plucked it from the belt and met our driver.

I'm calling it quits for tonight, but will try to blog some more tomorrow night. I'm warning you all now - I'm not double journaling this trip, so you'll have to read whatever volume of material I decide to write for myself and LIKE IT! ha ha ha. I'll try to keep myself in check or divide it up or something. Tomorrow we're off to Taichung for the day and we're excited!