My family and I are in Taiwan for our 2nd annual Chinese immersion summer camp sessions for the girls. I cannot believe today is already the last day of the second weekly camp! On a bittersweet note, it is also the last day of alone time for myself and Daniel while knowing the kids are in a safe, fun environment and having no responsibilities or obligations (like we do at home).
To be perfectly clear, I love and adore my children and look forward to spending the rest of our vacation in Taiwan together with ample family time starting tomorrow.
However, before this trip, I didn’t realize how much I missed true alone time to myself, without the aforementioned responsibilities of parent life.
Last summer in Kaohsiung, Daniel and I had such a good time hanging out with Chloe while Olivia was enjoying herself in summer camp. This year, Chloe qualifies for camp herself (another bittersweet moment!), so it’s been the first time in 7 years where Daniel and I got to hang out by ourselves for more than just a few hours of daytime date nights.
For me, it has been quite a revelation.
Once I became a mom, I’ve been all-in on mom life and have fully leaned into it. It’s on its own level of wholesome fun, but wow, I really love hanging out with myself and with Daniel as well.
Yesterday after dropping off the girls at school, we walked across the street to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on a whim, and ended up staying over two hours exploring the democracy exhibits.
This simple sentence really encapsulates a lot of what I have enjoyed most about this trip to Taipei- being able to walk over to summer camp after breakfast at the hotel has been such a luxury. I love being part of the hustle and bustle of early morning life in Taiwan without the stress of actually participating in anything particular. It’s also been fun to not really have an agenda (even though I totally did my research and have many ideas in my back pocket if necessary), and just do whatever we want when we want to, because we didn’t have to worry about anyone else but ourselves from 9AM-4PM.
I cannot emphasize enough how wonderful it was to slow down and read through and absorb everything at the memorial hall. It was such a meaningful but tough exhibit to learn from. It actually wasn’t part of my original list of places to visit in Taipei, but I am so glad we did and it was exactly the type of history I was hoping to learn about.
When we were done, we walked back to the hotel, and picked up a delicious orange oolong tea boba from Ten Ren and Daniel got a scrumptious brioche cream bun from Sunmerry along the way.
After stopping by our hotel room, we went out to Star Rocket Coworking Cafe on the 11th floor of Syntrend mall that Daniel found. It was a great space to work out of- just purchase a drink and enjoy 2 hours of free wifi and comfortable work tables. If we wanted to stay the whole day, we just needed to purchase $300NTD ($9.45USD) worth of food and beverage. The cafe’s pasta actually looked really good. Too bad didn’t need the extra time and had already had lunch by the time we went.
Leaving the cafe, we stumbled upon massage chairs that cost $30NTD ($0.95USD) for 7 minutes, so we got to enjoy that too before doing some window shopping across the street and activating our YouBike app to bike over to pick up the girls from camp.
After school, the fun continued with a night out at Raohe Night Market with tons of good eats (Fuzhou Pepper Buns endorsed by Jensen himself! Freshly grilled scallops! Fire and Ice Sesame and Peanut Butter Tongyuan!). The weather was pretty awesome yesterday too, so all in all it was one of the best days we’ve had in Taipei, the perfect blend of work and play and play and play and eat.
Sooo bummed that this magical chapter of time is coming to an end, but eternally grateful to have experienced it.
Until next year, Taipei!
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