Taking Taipei by storm... or at least trying.

I am sorry that I have not posted sooner but things have been a bit busy and overwhelming. Because this is the first post it is a bit long... sorry.

It is now the end of day six for Katie and I here in Taipei, Taiwan and what an adventure it has been. The adventure started at the ariport as we traveled from Cleveland to Minneapolis to Los Angeles to Taipei. Beginning the journey, we were within our own element and comfort. We could relate to the majority of the others traveling with us as most of them were American and spoke English. As we traveled westward from airport to airport however, the majority population gradually shifted until the time that we arrived at our terminal in LA. The majority population was now Asian and therefore, we were the minority. Strange. Never before can I say I have been in the minority and felt so scrutinized. And talk about frustrating.... this never hit me before now but when you don't speak the predominate language, you have to wait. All announcements on the plane came in Chinese first and then were given in English. So, as everyone is beginning to put their seat backs up and do everything else that an airline asks, Katie and I are sitting just wondering what is happening. We could do nothing but wait and follow.

After a very long flight across nearly the entire Pacific Ocean, we arrived in Taipei early on Saturday morning. Driving from the airport to our "home" in Xindian City we were met with small, crowded streets and alley ways, a humid air, a host of motor bikes, and an overwhelming amount of Chinese. I will not bore you with all of the details from day one but I will tell you that it was spent wandering around like lost, tired puppies. We began by unpacking and moving into our home which was settling for us. The appartment is not much different than an appartment in the United States but still different enough to overwhelm (for starters everything was in Chinese... the microwave buttons, the remote, the news...) After moving in we traveled to Carefour (the Walmart of Taiwan) with our host mom Hariett. The whole way we were desperately trying to memorize alley ways and landmarks so that we would be able to get ourselves to the bus stop on Monday. Once we finally made it to Carefour we had a pre-shopping lunch of traditional Taiwanese hot pots (and we had no clue what was in them...). The hot pot was not terrible, the flavors were just much different and the meat less cooked. This was when the first tragedy of Taiwan NEARLY occurred as I almost took a bite of what I soon found out to be dried pigs blood. All I could think was how am I going to survive 7 weeks? We then began to naviagte the store and I felt like I was in the Veggie Tales movie about Madame Blueberry. The store is 4 floors and has excalator ramps so that you can push your cart between floors. Talk about overwhelming. The aisle signs were in Chinese, the labels in Chinese, the salespeople spoke Chinese... This for me was when reality hit. I was not at home anymore and really I could understand no one and no one could understand me. We survived though and all was well. Monday night ended well (aside from nearly frying our host moms appartment by plugging something into a 220 watt outlet instead of the typical 110 watt outlets) and I was relieved to still be living.

On Sunday we woke up for a day of adventures across Taipei. We began by meeting Sonia (a former student of one of our Ashland professors) at the MRT or subway station. Katie and I were pleased to have made it to the station from our appartment all on our own! Accomplishment number 1. Once at the MRT station we learned the ins and outs of the MRT and learned just what buttons to push on the machines in order to purchase the tickets we would need. We also memorized the station where our appartment was located so that when in doubt we could always get back to our starting location. As we were waiting to catch the MRT I felt a little tap on my shoulder. I was paranoid trying to think who would be needing my attention since I knew no one in this country. I turned around to meet a girl around my age asking me and Katie where we were from, what we were doing here and all of the other typical conversation starter questions. She is from Switzerland and just seemed desperate to find someone else who spoke English so she could have a conversation. It was amazing to me how meaningful this simple connection was and how even though we did not know this girl at all, we could immediately relate to her. For all who are curious we are now friends and plan to explore Taiwan together this weekend starting with the Taipei Zoo :)

After the start of our MRT adventures, Katie, Sonia and I had a lunch of beef and noodles in which I could only get the noodles down :(. They were good though. Lunch was followed by a walking trip (and some more MRT trips) around Taipei to visit the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and Longshan Temple. The Memorial Hall is a memorial for the "father" of Taiwan and the temple is one of the biggest in Taipei. These were both neat experiences but still I was overwhelmed by the mass amounts of people, the language barriers, the street smells and the lack of sleep. Pictures of these things will be added soon but for now I am ending here.

Tomorrow I will write about school and more culture things. It is just getting too late now and I have a long day ahead tomorrow since the school day goes from 8:40-5:30 (not including travel time).

Goodnight from Taipei :)