Back home in Ankeny

We hopped in a taxi at our hotel at 6:30 a.m. on the 20th, and headed to the airport.  We enjoyed every moment of our trip, and we spent a lot of time on our journey home reminiscing about our time in Taiwan.  It was amazing in every way, and that's largely due to all the advance planning done by Alana and Paul so that we'd see so much of Taiwan.  We were so glad to spend time with them on location and gain a better understanding of their experiences and surroundings there.  It's always so much different from the perspective of just being a short-term visitor, but we definitely got a small taste of their environment.  We can never thank Alana and Paul enough for all the fun we had with them in Taiwan!! 

Eating breakfast at the Taipei airport (the pineapple from the street vendor was delicious!!)

Taking off in Taipei

Saying good-bye to Taiwan!

A view of the coastline as we circled

We were glad the turn was on the side where we were seated - such good views!

The Taiwan coastline

Last looks behind!

This is a town on Lake Michigan --- at first we thought it might be Holland!!   :-)   Maybe???

Well, the trip back was relatively easy, though it seemed longer this time.  So much eager anticipation on the way to Taiwan helped the time go by more quickly!  Our flight out of Tokyo was delayed 2 hours, so that made us miss our connecting flight in Detroit.  We had 3 extra hours in the Detroit airport - ugh!!  So we were pretty tired by the time we rolled into Des Moines a little before 9:00 p.m.   Grammy, Papa, and Beth were there to greet us!!  Beth was a surprise!  After the drop-off at home, we got a few groceries at Hy-Vee, and it felt very strange to see everything in English, to hear only English spoken, and to see no Asians.  We were totally in the minority for the past 2 weeks - especially in Sanxia, which is not a tourist area at all!! 

After a good night's sleep (we slept in until about 10:00), we got back in gear here.  Laundry, mail, unpacking, and a long walk filled the rest of our day.  I have spent lots more time loading pictures.  I hope everyone can see them all.  Still very frustrated with the videos - I finally got 2 to load from our day at school, but no more will load even though I'm doing the exact same process.  Grrrr!!  Oh well, at least there are LOTS of pics!! 

So there you have it - our blog of our Taiwan Travels.  I don't know if it made it easier or more of a pain to load the pictures on the original blogs of the days when the pictures were taken, but everything should be complete now.  Be sure to look for the photos from the beginning of the blog --- go back to the beginning and then through all the other posts to see the photos that were uploaded later!!!  

Thanks for reading!! 
Love,
-M & T-