Taiwan Odyssey

After so much anticipation we finally made our trip to Taiwan to pick up our daughter Sunny. I always get a bit uptight before a long journey while I am waiting to begin, but once the wheels are in motion I am more relaxed about it. Although the rest of my family had all been to Asia before, I had never been there or anywhere even close to that far away. It was an incredible experience and I can now see why we are always told that it is important to travel and see how other people live and what is normal for them.

We spent the majority of our time in Taiwan's capital city of Taipei. It is a busy place, like any other city. I enjoyed walking down the street and just mingling with the citizens like I was one of them. I even got caught in a downpour once, which was the best! What struck me almost immediately was the army of scooters flying down the street. Fully half of the vehicles on the road in Taipei are scooters. While you are in a car they are zipping around you as you go down the road. Those on scooters are often accompanied by small children who ride in front of the adults, standing up on the scooter foot rests. The nanny state leftists in America would have a conniption at the sight, but it is done safely and the kids probably have a lot of fun.

Kelly, Nikita and I had to travel the entire length of the country by train to pick up Sunny as she lived in Pingtung in the south. While this may seem inconvenient, I am glad we had to do that, for it gave us a chance to see so much of the country as we rode south. I cannot say enough about railway travel, it is the best way to go anywhere. It is also a chance to mingle with the people who live there, hang out in train stations, and observe their ways of doing things.

We first met Sunny at her school in the middle of her going away party. This was all part of their plan, but I was a little surprised that they did it that way. Then we went to McDonald's (yes, they are everywhere) and had some lunch. She then took the train back with us to Taipei and she has been with us ever since. She went with us without a fuss or a look back at her foster family. She has seamlessly become part of our family, which proves that there had always been a spot waiting at our house for her to get around to coming home and filling it. No child is an accident and the sometimes random feeling adoption can have is a false impression. God knows His will for our family, its the people involved that need to get with the program. Sunny is home with her family now for the first time, blessed be the name of the Lord Jesus without Whom this never would have happened!

James