Our last full day in Harbin was one of those days that restored your faith a bit in taxi drivers and the people who sell entry tickets for all the tourist sites in China. Typically when buying tickets for any sort of tourist attractions in China we had given up and just asked for 4 adult tickets. Inevitably when we asked for children's tickets or student tickets for Syd and Nick we were told that they had to have student ID's. Although Syd actually had her student ID and even I had since I had been registered at CU for the last 2 years for Chinese classes they typically said those ID's were not valid for the discounted tickets. So 4 adult tickets for us every where we went. The taxi drivers in Harbin typically didn't want to use the meter when taking us to places like the various ice festival location. They would always quote a price between 50 and 100 RMB and then the bargaining would begin. Today almost the first taxi driver we saw pulled over, let us in, and started his meter. Just like they were supposed to. Turns out a metered ride out to Sun Island for the ice festival is about 30 RMB and that is all he charged. Then he refused a tip. Then when we got to the ticket desk at the ice festival Sydney asked for her usual 4 adult tickets. The lady at the desk looked at Nick and asked, "How old is he?" Syd said, "13" and then she asked how old Syd was and sold us 2 adult and 2 kid tickets! First time ever in China!
The last ice festival we went to was the best. Its the original festival and its like a giant city made of ice with all sorts of activities. This year's theme seemed to have something to do with religions of the world. There were recreations of famous churches, temples, and synagogues in ice along with a gigantic carving of Buddha done in snow. There were bars and restaurants scattered through out the ice city along with all sorts of activities. Kids loved all the giant ice and snow slides. The best slides though were age restricted to people older than 16 and younger than 50. Which ruled all of us out. We found one slide that used 4 inner tubes for 4 people tied together in a square. We got in line for that one and when we go to the top of that one Syd heard the guy say while looking at Nick, "That one is clearly just a kid but they're foreigners so I don't care I'll just let them go." Little did he know we were all illegal. They also had a small ski hill with a single poma lift and an ice skating rink. Both kids skated for a while, Nick on his hockey skates. More unusual were the areas for swimming in ice water and all the weird vehicles for sliding on the ice. They even had dragon boat races on the ice. You could take sled rides in sleighs pulled by dogs, horses, or reindeer. We got roped in to paying $10 so the kids could get their pictures taken holding an arctic fox. Pretty sure it was heavily medicated as it barely moved even when being handed from one person to the next for pictures. We stayed for about 4 hours until we were totally frozen and then headed home. Taxi driver for the ride home asked for 100RMB and settled for 80RMB so things were back to normal.
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| Not one of the more popular activities! |
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| None of us are between 16 and 50 so we officially weren't allowed on this slide! |
At 5AM the next morning we left for the airport to catch an 8AM flight. I wanted us there as early as possible since I was pretty sure something would go wrong and I didn't want us to miss our flight to Taiwan. We dressed for the 70 degree weather we would be getting in Taiwan and not the -10 degree weather we were experiencing in Harbin The Harbin International terminal is very small as they only support a few flights per day. On our day there were flights to Korea, Taiwan, Russian and Japan and that was it. When we got to the check in desk as soon as it opened at 6:30 the trouble started. The lady at the desk seemed to be having all kinds of trouble printing out our boarding pass. She called multiple people over and kept getting higher and higher level supervisors involved. They kept dragging us to different computers to try different things. We were there an hour and during that time everyone on our flight was able to check in and they had already started on the second flight which was to Korea. I was starting to worry. I had made our reservations many months ago on Travelocity and it turns out that although their software would allow them to see the reservations it wouldn't let them print our tickets unless every field on the reservation matched our passports exactly. Although I had put our full names into Travelocity the Chinese software had removed the hyphens in the kids middle names and mashed all our first and middle names into one giant name. They were trying to edit the entries so that the software would agree that the entry matched the scan of the passports but between their lack of familiarity with western names and the difficult software they were really struggling. At one point I looked over their shoulder and they were actually trying to edit Sydney's reservation so that it matched Nick's middle name. Finally after an hour they got it figured out and we were rushed through multiple security checks and were the last ones on to the shuttle bus out to our flight. Then it was out the door into the -10 air in our Taiwan clothes and up the stairs to our flight.
Upon landing in Taiwan we waited for the Miller's to arrive from Vietnam. Then we all went to the station for the high speed train to Kaohsiung. Since it was Chinese New Year they were all sold out but unlike in China they sell standing room only tickets for the hight speed and then they cram as many people in as they can. There is a bullet train about every 30 minutes or so leaving for Kaohsiung. The lines for standing room were actually quite long and we didn't get on the first train but when it left the lines were almost gone. We spread ourselves out so that the 7 of us were in 4 separate lines so we would all be in the front of the line. We all go on the next train and after only 2 stops we all had seats for the rest of the way to Kaohsiung which is the end of the line. We got to Kaohsiung and were met by our host/landlord Shereen. We caught the last subway of the night to her house. We have rented her house for the next 4.5 months. Its a beautiful 4 story row house that sits on a little lane. It looks out over a canal or river and there is a park on the other side of the river. We are only about 0.25 miles from the nearest subway stop and only a few stops from downtown but the neighborhood is very residential. It should be a great place to live for our 4.5 months in Kaohsiung. Shereen originally rented us the house because she was planning on going back to South Africa to care for her father. Her father's health improved but she honored her original agreement with us and has rented herself a smaller place nearby. We are all very grateful.
The next morning we took a taxi out to the kids new school. The plan is to spend 4.5 months in Kaohsiung while Syd, Nick, and Piper Miller go to I-Shou international school. I had spent the last 5 years reaching out to schools all over China and Taiwan looking for a school where the students were all Chinese and most of the curriculum was in Chinese. We didn't want the kids to go to an international school since then all of their interactions with classmates and almost all their classes would be in English. The whole point of this trip was to force them to use as much Chinese as possible and push them out of their comfort zone. I struck out so many times that I was actually looking at Chinese schools in Malaysia and Singapore as another option. Then we found I-Shou. Its an international school but almost all of its student's are Taiwanese. It has two educational tracks. A predominately English immersion IB track and a predominately Chinese track. Our kids are joining the Chinese track. Its going to be sort of like going to school at Disney World. The school is next door to E-Da world, a giant amusement park, and also the giant E-Da mall. The area is full of vacation homes and hotels. The school itself has absolutely beautiful facilities. The classrooms, labs, sports fields, music rooms, and other stuff are unlike anything our kids have ever had. Kent, Colorado Academy, or Graland might compete but our kids haven't seen anything like it. Its about half the price of ISD and about a third of the price of somewhere like Colorado Academy. Syd and Piper will be in the same 10th grade class. Apparently their classmates have been told they will be getting some new girls but they have no idea that one will be blonde and the other will likely be the tallest girl if not the tallest kid in the school. We don't know as much about Nick's 7th grade class and we don't know what they have been told. School starts this Wednesday so we'll see how it goes. They have to buy uniforms that morning and then they get thrown into class.
A few days after visiting the school we went to ShouShan national park. Its a mountain park a bit north and west of Kaohsiung. We spent some time hiking through the park and also through Sun Yat Sen University. Its a very beautiful mountain right on the coast and covered in jungle. The whole area was once a big military base which helped preserve the jungle. Lots of monkeys there. Most are quite mellow but a few are very aggressive. Syd made the mistake of putting her back pack down and one started going through it. Then it wouldn't back down when we tried to chase it away. It wasn't afraid of sticks but when we threatened to throw stones at it it ran away. As we were leaving the park we saw a group of monkey ransacking people's scooters. They knew how to open all the storage compartments and baskets on the scooters and they were throwing everything they found on the ground. One monkey found a bottle of Pepsi which he tried to bite open. When it started spraying they all ran away.
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