My Daughters and their two Chinese Cousins had never met before yesterday, and despite not having a wholly common language, they’re getting along pretty well. I guess they speak the same language of toys and games and their Grandma’s pet turtle easily enough. My girls understand Mandarin Chinese suitable to their ages, despite being reluctant to speak it too much right now, but the local dialect here is MinNanHua, the source of so-called “Taiwanese” Chinese. So sometimes they, and I, are left out of the conversations.

So far, though, the conversations have been pretty basic: unpacking, drinking tea, eating, sleeping, playing–nothing too challenging as we’re settling in. But this is just our first full day here. There will be plenty of time for sensory overload as we go along. The 15-day Chinese New Year festival begins in just a few days, for starters.

Speaking of sensory overload, this amused me: the last times we were here for Chinese New Year, in ’96 and ’97, my Mother-In-Law was the paragon of celebrations and libations, lighting firecrackers and burning offeratory “Hell Money” with the best of them. Today, though, she showed us her official “Fireworks Volunteer Police” armband, telling us how she’s part of a neighborhood watch program to warn and report anyone in the neighborhood who rings in the Year of the Dog with a bit too much gunpowder, smoke and fire.