Zai Jian, America!

And, all of a sudden it was our last day in America. With one last family dinner and a Wii bowling score for me of 199 (100+ more than any score of mine from regular bowling), it was time to say goodbye...again.

A forced family picture was taken with all of us yelling, "Pizza, pizza, pizza cheeeese," so that Jake would look at the camera and smile. Mom's eyes were closed, so Jeff masterfully photo shopped them in. This was the stellar result....parents, myself and Luke, my three brothers and their significant others and our niece and nephew.

Hugs all around, a few tears shed and it was in the car with my dad for the two-hour drive to the San Francisco airport.

While waiting in the looong line to check in, I looked around and lo-and-behold, we were two of maybe four or five non-Asians. And again, while waiting in line to board the flight, looking out over the crowd all I saw was a sea of black hair. It actually felt kind of empowering, as it started to dawn on me that we are doing something new and different.

We took off and after fourteen hours of dozing, watching movies and spacing out we started our descent in to Taipei. Our first sight of Taiwan was its jagged mountain peaks poking out of the hazy early morning clouds. I wish we had a picture, because it was really beautiful and a great first impression.

Later that day and over the following days we ventured out in to Taipei and had all kinds of other impressions. More on that in a bit...